Chương 12: Interlude 3 — The Internet Discovers Stats Are Real

By Day Eleven, America had stopped asking whether Dungeons were profitable. It had started asking why none of its teenagers were in school. One week earlier, the internet's primary concerns had been apocalyptic. Was the world ending? Were the gates alien? Would monsters eventually come through? Was civilization about to collapse? Now the questions had shifted almost entirely to the mathematics of the Gold Rush. Which Dungeon produced the most Mana Stones per hour? What was the current margin on Life Flasks?

How much should an entry-level Portal Scroll cost? What did beginner Boss drops sell for? Was Crafting actually a viable career? Everything had a price. The federal purchasing floor of fifty dollars for an ordinary F-rank Mana Stone had poured gasoline over an economy that had barely existed a week earlier. Social media feeds filled with success stories. MY FIRST $1, 000 DUNGEON WEEK! (NOT CLICKBAIT) SHOULD I QUIT MY PART-TIME JOB FOR GOBLINS?

MANA STONE PER HOUR SPREADSHEET — UPDATED DAY 11 BEST BEGINNER GATES WITHIN TWO HOURS OF PHILADELPHIA I MADE $420 BEFORE LUNCH AND ONLY GOT BITTEN TWICE Naturally, the youth noticed. Weekend logic came first. TeenDelver: If I go to the Dungeon on Saturday, I can make more than a week of shifts at Starbucks. Then weekday logic. TeenDelver: If I go Tuesday too, I can make even more. Humanity, being what it was, followed the money. A national news headline appeared before lunch.

SCHOOLS REPORT UNPRECEDENTED DUNGEON-RELATED ABSENTEEISM High schools, universities, and community colleges across the country were reporting empty desks. Not completely empty. Just emptier in strangely specific demographic clusters. Teenagers with machetes. College students who had recently purchased work boots. Anyone who had spent the previous weekend arguing online about Warrior versus Rogue. One school administrator appeared on local television.

SchoolAdministrator: Dungeon exploration is not an excused absence. We need parents to understand this. The clip was reposted to Reddit. TeenDelver: I made three Mana Stones today. That's $150. That's more than my entire paycheck from the hardware store. TiredTeacher: That does not excuse you from chemistry class. TeenDelver: Mana Stones are newer than chemistry anyway. The internet immediately produced a second phenomenon. Teenagers who believed they had been chosen by destiny.

ChosenBySystem17: My parents don't understand. This is literally my calling. I can feel it. NormalPerson: Everybody has the System, kid. ChosenBySystem17: Not like me. NormalPerson: You picked Warrior. You and three million other people. ChosenBySystem17: EXACTLY. News outlets began running stories about high school students choosing Jobless specifically because they had read too many web novels and were absolutely convinced it had to be a hidden ascension class.

One sixteen-year-old gave an interview outside a secured gate.

"I've read like eighty stories where the trash class becomes the strongest." The reporter asked:"And if it doesn't?" The boy stared at her.

"It will." That clip also went viral. Adults watched the chaos with cynical amusement. DadWithMortgage: Kids are stupid. They're going to get themselves killed over fifty bucks. FormerTeenager: Be honest, Dave. If a literal magic portal appeared in your town when you were sixteen, and hitting a goblin with a stick gave you levels, magic swords and money— would you have gone to algebra class? Silence. Then: DadWithMortgage: No. FormerTeenager: Exactly.

If I was fifteen and living in a world where I could level up in real life, my parents couldn't have stopped me with a tank. That response received thirty thousand likes. The adults stopped laughing quite as loudly. Because everyone remembered being sixteen eventually. And if they were honest— the teenagers had a point. Reality corrected some of the enthusiasm on its own. A significant number of students returned to school after only a few days. The reasons were not complicated. Gear was expensive.

Life Flasks were expensive. Portal Scrolls were expensive. Transportation cost money. Parking cost money. Cheap weapons broke. Dungeon food was mostly normal food sold at abnormal prices. And hitting oversized rats for three hours turned out to be physical labor. Actual physical labor. With sweat. Sore shoulders. Bad smells. And teeth. Bosses were terrifying. Parents became creative with threats.

One viral post read: CollegeFreshman: My mom said if I miss one more class for goblins she'll drive to the Dungeon and become the Boss herself. Reply: Threat Rank? CollegeFreshman: SSS. There were also students who discovered that the phrase: GOLD RUSH did not automatically mean: YOU PERSONALLY FIND GOLD A beginner posted a three-day result. Mana Stones recovered: 4. Equipment sold: $85. Parking, food, fuel and one replacement machete: More than that. He returned to economics class on Thursday.

The professor reportedly said nothing. He merely handed him the missed homework. Then the strange reports began. The first was small enough to sound fake. A high school student had skipped four days to farm a low-level Dungeon. When he returned, his teachers assumed the obvious. He had missed lessons. He would be behind. The school gave him a make-up exam to determine how much remedial work he needed. Because the student had access to classmates, the teachers did not reuse the old test. They wrote new questions.

On the spot. Different numbers. Different wording. Different examples. The student got everything right. Not eventually. Quickly. A perfect score. Faster than he had ever completed an exam before. A second student at the same school, also recently returned from a Dungeon, showed a smaller but still obvious increase in performance. That was where the story might have ended. Except a teacher posted about it. TeacherThrowaway: We changed the questions. He could not have had the answer key. I watched him take the test.

He just... solved it. Instantly. RedditUser: Maybe he studied in the Dungeon? TeacherThrowaway: HE WAS KILLING RATS WITH A BASEBALL BAT. Screenshots spread. Then similar stories appeared. A university student returned from a three-day Dungeon trip and began tearing through physics problem sets that had previously taken him hours. PhysicsProf: His processing speed is visibly different. It's not just that he knows the material. The way he integrates new information is fundamentally altered.

Another student reported that assigned readings simply stayed in her head now. Not perfect photographic memory. Close enough that she noticed. A computer science lecturer posted that one of his students had gone from slow but competent to writing and debugging code at a visibly different pace. A language teacher claimed a student was acquiring vocabulary faster. No one had enough controlled data to say anything scientific yet. The internet had no such restraint. TheoryThread: Is it Levels? Mana exposure?

Dungeon radiation? Unique Skills? Temporary? Permanent? Does it work outside the gate? That final question mattered. Because plenty of people still believed the System's more dramatic effects existed only inside Dungeon space. Then someone broke a basketball hoop. The video began in a high school gym. Four boys. A basketball. Someone laughing behind the camera. One of the players had spent the weekend in an F-rank Dungeon. He had reached Level Two. He had picked Warrior.

He had spent Monday morning telling everyone that he felt different. Nobody believed him. At least not enough. He stood near half court and looked toward the basket.

"I've got twenty-three Strength now." Someone off camera laughed.

"So?"

"I think I can dunk." He was five-foot-nine. He took a running start. Jumped. And discovered that his intuition had been conservative. He exploded upward. Not superhero flight. Not impossible. Just far more force than his body had ever produced before. The ball slammed through the rim. His momentum carried him forward. He grabbed the metal hoop to steady himself. The support groaned. The rim bent. The glass around the mounting bracket cracked. The teenager dropped to the floor. He looked at the damaged basket.

Then at his hands.

"OH SHIT." The gym went silent. The person holding the camera whispered:"Bro." The video title appeared online fifteen minutes later. SYSTEM DUNK BROKE THE RIM It went thermonuclear. Millions of people saw it before the school managed to request its removal from several platforms. That only made more people repost it. And suddenly, stories everyone had dismissed as adrenaline stopped sounding ridiculous. Posts flooded X. Reddit. TikTok. Fitness boards. Sports forums. Workplace chats.

WarehouseWorker: I can lift boxes I couldn't move last week. Thought I was imagining it. RunnerGirl: My 5k time dropped by almost three minutes and I wasn't even dying afterward. ClumsyGuy: Dropped a glass. Caught it before it hit the floor. It felt slow. Like REALLY slow. BaseballDad: My kid says the ball is easier to track now. He picked Rogue. ConstructionWorker: Two of our guys started moving material like we're short a forklift. Boss thinks they're showing off. Reply: Are they?

ConstructionWorker: This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. Yes. But that's not the point. Previously, one of the more popular theories had been that the System created temporary reinforcement only inside Dungeon space. Outside the gate, people returned to normal. The basketball rim disagreed. The internet, facing a rapidly escalating problem, invoked its usual solution. @GateGuide @GateGuide @GateGuide Thousands of times.

GateGuide answered a few hours later. It became one of the most widely shared posts he had made since identifying Mana Stones. GateGuide: ATTRIBUTES ARE REAL. The System does not stop modifying you when you leave a Dungeon. A normal human baseline Attribute score is: STR: 14 DEX: 14 INT: 14 When your Attributes increase, those increases affect your real body and mind. For example: A Level 2 Warrior commonly reaches approximately: STR: 23 DEX: 23 INT: 14 Those additional points are not decorative UI. They are real.

The internet stopped. Then exploded. GateGuide began with Strength. GateGuide: Strength above baseline translates into real physical reinforcement. It affects physical output, explosive force, fatigue resistance and load-bearing capacity. I do NOT know the exact mathematical conversion curve. Do not assume that going from 14 STR to 23 STR means you are exactly 64. 3% stronger. What I can say is simpler: 23 Strength is meaningfully stronger than 14 Strength. A response appeared almost instantly.

GymBro: HOW MUCH CAN STR 100 BENCH? GateGuide: Do not test this by putting a car on yourself. GymBro: coward GateGuide moved on. GateGuide: DEX is also broader than the word "Dexterity" suggests. It affects reaction time, movement speed, body control, hand-eye coordination, balance, precision and visual tracking. The sports world collapsed immediately. SportsFan: Wait. Are Leveled players allowed in normal leagues? CoachReply: Is Warrior basically doping now?

LegalNerd: System Enhancement is not a chemical substance. You can't call someone a drug cheat because they stabbed goblins on Saturday. SportsFan: BUT HE BROKE THE RIM. TrackCoach: I have two students whose sprint times changed enough that I'm not comfortable putting them in the same heats anymore. BaseballCoach: Same issue. One kid picked Rogue. He sees pitches differently. Reply: How do you know? BaseballCoach: Because he told me the ball feels slower. And then hit everything for an hour.

Several school districts announced temporary restrictions on known Delver athletes participating in official competition. Not permanent bans. Not yet. Just: We have absolutely no idea what to do with this. A state athletic association scheduled an emergency meeting. Nobody knew whether System-enhanced athletes belonged in a separate category. Nobody knew what happened if half the team leveled and half did not.

Nobody knew whether schools could legally tell students they were forbidden from entering Dungeons outside school hours. One principal was quoted privately as saying:"This is worse than steroids because at least steroids came with existing rules." That quote was leaked. It did not help. Then GateGuide reached the final Attribute. The one that turned a strange sports story into something much larger. GateGuide: Intelligence is also real. The internet collectively held its breath.

GateGuide: Higher Intelligence improves cognitive performance. It appears to affect: Information processing speed. Learning rate. Memory retention. Logical reasoning. Focus. Complex problem solving. Multi-variable integration. HOWEVER: Intelligence does not magically install knowledge. A high INT score will not teach you calculus, medicine, law or engineering if you never study those subjects. It upgrades the hardware. You still have to install the software. Someone screenshotted the last two lines.

Within an hour: IT UPGRADES THE HARDWARE. YOU STILL NEED THE SOFTWARE. was everywhere. Memes appeared. A photograph of a gaming PC: INT 100 Empty desktop: NEVER STUDIED A professor holding a textbook: SOFTWARE UPDATE AVAILABLE The jokes did not hide the implications. The high school test story suddenly made sense. TeacherThrowaway: So the kid didn't magically learn the material. He just processes it better? GateGuide: Most likely. Check his Job and any Skills or equipment affecting INT. The answer arrived later.

The student had chosen Jobless. Base Attributes: 14 / 14 / 14 Jobless Adjustment: +6 / +6 / +6 Result: 20 / 20 / 20 A six-point increase in Intelligence. Not one hundred. Not fifty. Six. And a teacher had noticed. For the first time since the gates appeared, the internet collectively looked at Jobless's balanced spread and thought: Wait. Is twenty Intelligence actually a lot? The broader question appeared almost immediately. FutureProfessor: Are you saying anyone can become smarter by raising INT?

GateGuide answered: GateGuide: Yes. That is the conservative answer. The internet broke. WTF THIS IS BIGGER THAN MANA STONES WHY DID NOBODY LEAD WITH THIS YOU'RE SAYING WE CAN LEVEL OUR BRAINS GateGuide replied to the last part. GateGuide: I am saying higher INT appears to improve cognition. Please stop phrasing it like an energy drink commercial. Another user asked the obvious question. WhyDidntYouTellUs: WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL US THIS ON DAY ONE GateGuide: Because people were dying to goblins.

That answer was difficult to argue with. The "Dungeon Genius" story returned. A university student had become minor internet folklore several days earlier. Normal undergraduate. Good, not exceptional. Then suddenly— Professors reported absurd learning speed. He was reading papers far outside his previous specialization and retaining them. Problem sets that had taken hours were finished in minutes. Two research labs had already contacted him.

Rumors claimed his Native Unique Skill granted a massive Intelligence bonus. GateGuide addressed it carefully. GateGuide: If the report that his Unique Skill provides approximately +100 INT is accurate, that would explain a great deal. Everyone: +100??? GateGuide: Baseline is 14. People did the subtraction. Then stopped. Whatever the exact scaling curve looked like, one hundred additional points above baseline was not a minor deviation. GateGuide added another warning.

GateGuide: Do not assume 114 INT automatically equals some specific IQ score. We do not have a validated conversion. He still needs knowledge to reason about. He still has to study. But if he is learning much faster and retaining far more of what he studies, that is entirely consistent with what we are seeing. A powerlifting account asked: PowerLifter: So somewhere there's a guy with +100 Strength. GateGuide: Almost certainly someone has something comparable. ComicNerd: SUPERMAN??? GateGuide: Not literally.

Probably. That word caused another argument. By the end of Day Eleven, the implications were spreading beyond Dungeon forums. Mana Stones changing the energy sector was easy to understand. That was a resource problem. Attributes were different. They changed people. STR mattered to manual labor, logistics, construction and athletics. DEX mattered to precision work, driving, sports, machine operation and any job where reaction time or body control mattered.

INT mattered to research, engineering, education, finance and almost every profession built around learning or analysis. The Dungeon Gold Rush had begun as a race for things. The world was slowly realizing it was also changing the people doing the digging. One economist summarized it in an interview: Mana Stones change capital. Attributes change labor. The clip went everywhere. Employers began calling lawyers. The lawyers stopped sleeping. Day Twelve. Where there was a Gold Rush, there were scammers.

Dungeon markets were no exception. By morning, counterfeit goods were everywhere. The first category was almost insulting. Fake Life Flasks. Normal red glass bottles. Red sports drink. A handwritten label: VERIFIED LIFE FLASK — $300 An Appraiser bought one for content. He touched it. Waited. Looked at the camera.

"This is Gatorade." The clip exploded. SportsDrinkScience: I TOLD YOU IT WAS WORTH INVESTIGATING. ReasonablePerson: YOU PUT IT IN A REAL FLASK LAST WEEK. SportsDrinkScience: AND NOW THE MARKET HAS VALIDATED MY RESEARCH. No one accepted that interpretation. Police in two counties seized dozens of fake Flasks after buyers reported them. One seller defended himself by claiming he had never said the Flask was magical. The sign behind him read: MAGICAL LIFE FLASK That defense did not survive long.

Fake Unique equipment was worse. Someone painted a Common Dungeon sword with luminous material. Listing: UNIQUE FIRE SWORD — $8, 000 The seller claimed:"It glows because it has elemental power." An Appraiser checked it. COMMON IRON SWORD Modifiers: None. Someone tagged GateGuide. He responded: GateGuide: As I have said before: Glowing is not a rarity. The old Day Two clip of the man demanding to know how glowing boots could be Common resurfaced. The community had continuity now.

That was unfortunate for everyone who had been stupid on camera. Then came services. A professionally designed advertisement appeared across social media. PAY $200 TO UNLOCK YOUR HIDDEN SKILL GEM EVOLUTION LIMITED-TIME DISCOVERY SERVICE MAIL YOUR GEMS TODAY GateGuide reacted within minutes. GateGuide: There is no verified "hidden Gem evolution service." Stop mailing your Skill Gems to strangers. VictimAnon: too late GateGuide: How many? VictimAnon: three The thread became briefly sympathetic.

Then: VictimAnon: including my only movement gem Sympathy became pain. A tracking group found the mailing address. It was a rented private mailbox. Federal mail investigators became involved. Nobody had expected Dungeon crime to produce postal fraud charges this early. Humanity remained inventive. Then came the fake GateGuides. The most successful account was called: GateGuide_Official It posted: Premium private build consultations now available. $99. DM for priority service.

The real GateGuide replied: GateGuide: This is not me. The fake responded. GateGuide_Official: He is impersonating me. Do not listen to him. The real account: GateGuide: I have never charged anyone for information. Fake: GateGuide_Official: That's exactly what an impersonator would say to gain your trust. The exchange became comedy for approximately forty minutes. Then people discovered the fake account had collected hundreds of dollars. The mood changed. It was mass-reported and banned.

GateGuide posted: GateGuide: I do not sell private build consultations. I do not ask for Mana Stones. I do not DM investment opportunities. I do not run a paid Discord. I do not sell Skill Gems. I do not have a crypto token. Someone immediately created: $GATE — THE OFFICIAL DUNGEON KNOWLEDGE COIN GateGuide replied: No. The token collapsed before lunch. The nastiest early market manipulation centered on Portal Scrolls. Everyone understood their purpose now. A Portal Scroll was not a luxury. It was an emergency exit.

That meant demand behaved differently from ordinary equipment. A small regional group of resellers noticed. They began buying. Everything. One town's Dungeon market had Portal Scrolls around $350. Then $450. Then $600. Someone noticed the same buyers appearing repeatedly. The market panicked. Prices reached $800. For several hours, one listing hit $1, 200. Delvers were furious. SafetyFirst: You're hoarding emergency exits. You absolute sociopaths. InvestorBro: It's called price discovery in a free market.

SafetyFirst: It's called being an asshole. InvestorBro: If people won't pay, price drops. DelverMom: PEOPLE PAY BECAUSE THE ALTERNATIVE IS GETTING EATEN. That comment received more likes. Several Dungeon Camps imposed informal purchase limits. One Scroll per person. Then two. Some sellers refused bulk purchases outright. Other sellers happily raised prices. The argument became political almost immediately. FreeMarketGuy: Price controls create shortages.

PartyLead: THE SHORTAGE WAS CREATED BY A GUY BUYING 74 SCROLLS. One beginner asked GateGuide: PanickedBeginner: Should I buy at $800 before it hits $2, 000? GateGuide replied: GateGuide: I wouldn't. Low-rank Dungeons continue producing Portal Scrolls. You are paying a scarcity premium created partly by people buying the supply you're now afraid of losing access to. The response was immediate. WallStreetWatcher: HE JUST CALLED A PUMP AND DUMP ON MAGIC TELEPORT PAPER.

GateGuide added: GateGuide: If you need one for safety today, buying one is reasonable. Buying fifty because you expect frightened beginners to pay anything later is a different decision. Within two days, new supply reached the market. Prices fell. Several speculators were left holding dozens of Scrolls purchased near the peak. The internet was cruel. Life Flasks completed the lesson. A week earlier: $1, 000. Now: $150 to $200 in many regional markets.

The earliest buyers remained emotionally committed to their mistake. GuyWhoPaid1000: I have not recovered financially from buying mine. GateGuide: Your Flask has. That reply became one of GateGuide's most-liked posts. Then someone ruined the Gold Rush narrative with accounting. A beginner Delver posted his weekly ledger.

BEGINNER DUNGEON WEEK — HONEST NUMBERS Gross Revenue: Mana Stones: $400 Gear Sales: $250 Materials: $100 Total Revenue: $750 Expenses: Better Weapon: $200 Life Flask: $180 Portal Scroll: $400 Gas / Food / Parking: $70 Total Expenses: $850 Net: -$100 The first reply: FinanceBro: GOLD RUSH!!! Second: MathTeacher: You literally lost money. The Delver responded: TheDelver: BUT I LEVELED. People laughed. Then stopped. Because he had a point. Dungeon profitability was not only cash. It was Levels. Stats. Skill access.

Equipment access. Experience. Even a Delver who lost money during the first month might finish it permanently stronger, faster, more coordinated or smarter than when they began. A finance professor summarized it: Financial deficit. Human capital surplus. The phrase spread almost as quickly as GateGuide's hardware/software analogy. Day Thirteen. The argument moved beyond Dungeon income. Parents who had spent the first week saying: Keep my child away from monster caves. began asking different questions.

MomForum: I am not saying I will let my son Dungeon dive. I am asking hypothetically. If a safe F-rank Dungeon has adult supervision, Portal Scrolls, Flasks and trained staff— is Level Two really that dangerous? NormalParent: YES. MinMaxDad: Depends on the Dungeon. NormalParent: DO NOT MINMAX THE CHILD. MinMaxDad: I AM ANSWERING THE QUESTION. Another thread: Should supervised low-rank Dungeon exposure become extracurricular? The replies were so hostile the moderator locked it.

A private company announced plans for a: YOUTH SYSTEM DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM It was cancelled two days later after lawyers asked approximately six questions. One was: Who is liable if a goblin stabs a seventeen-year-old? The company did not have an answer. Then the education boards discovered the Intelligence question. EducationBoard: Should I let my seventeen-year-old raise INT before college applications? Reply: Please do not send minors into goblin caves for SAT prep. EducationBoard: But does it work?

Reply: THAT IS NOT THE POINT. Private tutoring companies smelled money. By evening, the first advertisement appeared. SYSTEM-ENHANCED ACADEMIC PREPARATION The company did not send anyone into Dungeons. It merely offered tutoring specifically marketed toward students whose INT had already increased. The distinction was enough to make it legal. Probably. A less reputable company offered: PRE-COLLEGE LEVELING CAMP That one received considerably more scrutiny.

One parent wrote: ParentOfTwo: I cannot believe "Should my child fight goblins to improve standardized test performance?" is a sentence I had to read today. A teenager replied: TeenDelver: so that's a yes? The account was blocked. Nobody clarified by whom. Schools themselves had no idea where to draw the line. Absentee rules remained simple. Dungeon exploration was not an excused absence. But what happened when the absent student returned smarter? A superintendent summarized the problem during a press conference.

"We are not rewarding students for missing class." A reporter asked:"What if their academic performance improves anyway?" The superintendent stared at him.

"That is part of the problem." Physical education was worse. A gym teacher posted anonymously: GymTeacher: One kid is now too strong for contact drills. Another moves noticeably faster. We have no approved safety standard for this. What exactly am I supposed to do? Reply: Make the Warrior and Rogue fight. GymTeacher: I hate you. Several schools stopped System-enhanced students from competing temporarily. Others allowed participation while collecting data. Parents complained both ways.

Some claimed exclusion was discriminatory. Others claimed allowing enhanced players endangered ordinary students. College athletics organizations formed emergency committees. Professional leagues released carefully worded statements that said almost nothing. The Olympics were mentioned. That made everything worse. Employers had their own version of the same problem. A logistics firm posted a job advertisement offering a signing bonus to applicants above a specified STR threshold.

The listing vanished within hours after legal counsel reviewed it. A software company asked applicants to "voluntarily disclose Intelligence enhancement." That also vanished. A construction company took a different approach. It offered employees optional, paid Dungeon training outside work hours. Workers liked that more. Until someone asked: UnionGuy: If the company pays for my leveling, does the company own the benefit? Silence. Then: LaborLawyer: No. Probably. UnionGuy: I do not like the word probably.

A second problem arrived almost immediately. FactoryManager: If an employee voluntarily levels Strength and can produce twice as much, can performance expectations increase? A union representative responded. UnionRep: If someone levels their Strength and produces twice the output, they do not automatically owe the company twice the labor for the same wage. That post spread fast. HR departments began issuing memos.

One leaked draft said: Employees should not currently be asked to disclose Native Unique Skills without legal review. The internet focused on four words. HRHasEnteredTheDungeon:"Without legal review" doing heroic work there. Insurance companies became miserable. One insurer attempted to classify Dungeon exposure as a hazardous recreational activity. Its customers immediately asked whether employer-sponsored leveling was recreational. The policy was rewritten. Again.

The Dungeon economy was no longer merely an economy around Dungeons. It was leaking into ordinary employment. Day Fourteen. GateGuide finally posted about Jobless. The timing was not accidental. Until recently, Jobless had mostly been an internet joke. Now there were enough real beginners struggling with it that the joke was getting people excluded from parties. GateGuide posted: GateGuide: Jobless is not a secret ascension class. It is also not useless.

The first response arrived before most people finished reading. SecretClassBeliever: LIES. YOU JUST WANT TO KEEP THE HIDDEN PATH TO YOURSELF. GateGuide ignored him. GateGuide: Human baseline: STR 14 DEX 14 INT 14 Jobless Adjustment: STR +6 DEX +6 INT +6 Result: 20 / 20 / 20 MathGuy: Honestly that's not bad. GateGuide: Correct. The problem is not total Attribute count. The problem is specialization and Passive Tree position. A Warrior begins near tools a Warrior immediately wants. A Rogue does the same.

A Mage does the same. Jobless begins in a much more general position. The nearest useful early nodes include: Fire Resistance +18% Cold Resistance +18% Lightning Resistance +18% Those are good. Then he mentioned the awkward part. GateGuide: There are also three Jewel Sockets unusually close to the Jobless starting position. The thread stopped. ConfusedBeginner: What's a Jewel? GateGuide: Something you currently do not need to worry about. That answer had the opposite effect. Thousands of questions appeared.

GateGuide eventually added: GateGuide: No verified public Jewel drop has been reported yet. They appear later in progression. Think roughly Level Twenty territory. Do not build your Level Three character around equipment you cannot obtain. MetaGamer: WAIT SO JOBLESS'S BIGGEST ADVANTAGE DOESN'T EXIST YET??? GateGuide: One of its biggest advantages. And yes. That is one reason it struggles early. The Jobless community suffered collectively. GateGuide continued.

GateGuide: Jobless becomes much easier when you already have access to: Skill Gems. Equipment. Currency. Build knowledge. A Day One beginner has none of those. That makes it a harsh first Job. FirstCharacterJobless: awesome great love that for me Then GateGuide attacked Party recruitment. GateGuide: If you are Jobless, stop advertising only the word JOBLESS. Parties care about what you can do. Describe your function. Not your insecurity.

Bad: LEVEL 3 JOBLESS PLEASE HELP Better: Level 4 Spear User Basic Melee Skill Fire / Lightning Resistance Life Flask Portal Scroll Can hold a narrow frontline Within hours, LFG boards changed. At North Ridge, one new card read: LEVEL 4 — JOBLESS Spear Fire + Lightning Res Flask + Scroll Can Frontline Not secretly a god class unfortunately It received four responses. Progress. GateGuide's next post seemed unrelated. It was not.

GateGuide: If your Native Unique Skill description is unclear, unusually long, or uses terminology you do not understand— have a reputable Appraiser inspect it at least once. The replies were immediate. WhyAskWhy: Why? We can read our own Status. GateGuide: Because some of you apparently stop reading your own Skill descriptions halfway through. That sounded remarkably specific. PrivacyGuy: Who did you find? GateGuide: This is general advice. PrivacyGuy: That's what somebody who found something insane would say.

GateGuide ignored him. Then became more serious. GateGuide: A Skill may be valuable even if: Its activation condition is unclear. It affects a mechanic you have not encountered yet. Its benefit is indirect. Its terminology is unfamiliar. It does not currently appear useful. There are likely many people who do not understand what their own Unique Skill can eventually do. Appraisal booths reported a surge in customers asking for Native Unique Skill consultations. Then GateGuide had to post again.

GateGuide: IMPORTANT: Do not post your full Unique Skill publicly because you do not understand it. Do not allow random strangers to Appraise your private Status. Use a reputable Appraiser. Ask what they can see before consenting. If the Skill appears unusually high-rank, think before telling the entire internet. PrivacyGuy: THIS IS EVEN MORE SPECIFIC. GateGuide: It is good general advice. Nobody believed him. Within hours, stories appeared from people who discovered they had been underusing valuable abilities.

One warehouse employee posted: ForkliftReplacement: My Unique is called Load Share. I thought it just made boxes feel lighter. Appraiser says it redistributes physical load across my body and nearby supported surfaces. Apparently I have been using a logistics Skill to move my couch. Reply: How much did you pay for the couch? ForkliftReplacement: $900. Reply: Skill value probably higher. A hairdresser discovered her precision Skill affected any hand-guided cutting tool.

A machinist learned his "Fine Touch" ability reduced micro-errors far beyond what he thought. A baker posted that her temperature-control Unique worked on industrial ovens. That became an unexpected business story. Then came Crafters. GateGuide posted: GateGuide: There are probably people reading this while working ordinary jobs whose Unique Skills could generate more economic value than their current salary. Crafting is the obvious example.

A competent Crafting Unique can potentially produce commercially useful Dungeon equipment every day. Depending on Skill, limitations and inputs, $1, 000/day in gross production value is not absurd. Gross. Not profit. Equipment Bases cost money. Mana Stones may cost money. Crafting Currency costs money. Marketplace fees will exist. Taxes will definitely exist. Someone replied: OfficeWorker42: Are you telling me I might be staring at spreadsheets every day with a magic money printer hidden in my Status?

GateGuide: Have it identified first. Emily Miller was never mentioned. GateGuide, unusually talkative, remained in the thread. That was a mistake. The internet immediately turned the session personal. LootGoblin: Have YOU found a Unique item yet? GateGuide: No. A brief silence. Then: LootGoblin: skill issue tbh GateGuide: Correct. RNGVictim: How do you know literally everything and still have no Unique drop? GateGuide: Knowledge does not alter drop rates.

RNGVictim: finally something we agree on Another user asked: NecklaceEnjoyer: What Unique do you want? GateGuide did not answer. That created three hundred theories. One of them was correct by accident. Nobody knew which. By Day Fourteen, higher education and medical research had changed focus too. During the first week, laboratories had studied the things coming out of Dungeons. Mana Stones. Monster materials. Skill Gems. Unknown metals. Now they were studying the people coming back out.

Universities, hospitals, sports institutes and research laboratories announced the first formal System Attribute studies. STR versus measured lifting force. STR versus endurance. DEX versus reaction-time testing. DEX versus visual tracking. INT versus memory. INT versus learning speed. Job differences. Level differences. Unique Skill anomalies. Researchers immediately discovered that almost every variable interacted with several others. Which was scientifically terrible. And intellectually irresistible.

A medical researcher summarized it on television.

"We spent the first week asking what Mana was doing to matter." The interviewer asked:"And now?" She smiled.

"Now we're asking what it's doing to us." Dungeon Science had stopped being the study of magic rocks. It had become the study of human change. An old Day One thread resurfaced. Original Post: Will Dungeons destroy civilization? New reply: Probably not. Second reply: They'll absolutely destroy high school attendance though. Third: And professional sports. Fourth: And labor law. Fifth: And college admissions. Sixth: So civilization, then. That received the most likes. A headline appeared that evening.

SCHOOLS CONSIDER NEW RULES FOR SYSTEM-ENHANCED STUDENT ATHLETES Under it: TeenDelver: so dungeon counts as PE now right TeacherThrowaway: NO. TeenDelver: worth asking The first week had taught humanity that Dungeons contained wealth. The second was beginning to teach it something much more dangerous. The wealth wasn't only inside the Dungeons. Some of it walked back out.