Fortunately, or unfortunately as the case may be, Skandr was late. On the bright side, Astrid was able to change, eat, and wipe herself clean with a wet rag and a bucket of water. However, Skandr didn't appear until well after she should have been asleep, and when he did arrive, his knocks were so soft that it was obvious that he was hoping to easily put off the conversation.
Astrid pulled open the door, and he was already slinking away, though it'd been less than a minute since his two brief knocks.
"Come in, Skandr." Astrid called him, and he turned, his head down to the ground.
"Was too much to hope, huh?" He asked. "You can't blame me for trying though, can you?"
"Maybe if I understood what it is that you're hiding from, sure." Astrid allowed. "But I don't know anything about it and it's time to talk. Come in."
Skandr obliged, and stepped into her room. He stood in the corner, still looking down as she asat on her bed.
"I'm sorry, I don't have a chair or anything in here."
"It's fine. I could go get a stool from the inn, if you'd like."
"Only if I can get your word that you'll be back soon." Astrid shrugged. "If I can get that, then for sure."
"... I'll stand."
"If you insist. Now, I'd like to think I've been pretty patient. That I've given you space as you seemed to want, and that I've generally treated you pretty well. Since we're in this for a while to come, I'm going to need a couple more answers than those I've gotten from you so far. Make sense?"
Skandr merely nodded.
"Great. Who do you owe money to? How much? How close are you to paying it off?"
"It's not too much." Skandr shrugged. "I'm making progress."
"Ok, but how much?" Astrid demanded.
"One gold, fifty silver."
Astrid whistled under her breath. That was more than he was letting on, but at the rate they were making money, it wasn't so bad.
"Why do you owe someone money? Frankly, I'd say it's pretty obvious that you don't own anything worth that much, so where did the money go?"
Skandr shrugged almost imperceptibly. Astrid raised her eyebrows, waiting for any response. There was none.
"Did you… buy medicine for a friend? Bail yourself out of jail? Did someone somehow trap you in their debt? It just doesn't make sense to me."
She let the silence settle over the room, the space becoming more and more uncomfortable to both of them by the minute. Eventually, Skandr shrugged again and sighed.
"Gambling."
Astrid felt her mouth fall open. He… owed a gambling debt? How—
"Where did you get enough money to be betting that much in the first place?"
"I… had just gotten my Class. I knew that it would be valuable, and I was going to delve. I leveraged that to be able to bet more."
"And why were you betting that much? What were you trying to do?"
Again, he merely shrugged, though he seemed more helpless now. What exactly the rationale and so on in all this could possibly be, Astrid couldn't say. He was a kid with no money, and maybe no prospects, so why would he gamble like that if he knew he wouldn't be able to pay them back immediately? Of course, Astrid hadn't lived through what he had, but it just didn't make any sense!
"Then how close are you to being able to pay it off? Is this something that is going to get in the way of our delving moving forward?"
"No, I'm making my payments." Skandr shook his head, some measure of fear filling his eyes. "I'll keep delving. This is the only thing that's letting me get close to paying off my loan! And I already said that I owe one gold and fifty silver."
"Wait, then how much was the original loan?"
"Fifty silver."
"Then how has it gotten so out of control?!" Astrid demanded. "It's tripled in size!"
"I know!" Skandr said defensively. "But I'm making progress on it now!"
A thought suddenly occurred to Astrid. "Where do you sleep?"
Skandr averted his eyes. She felt her shoulders fall as the reality settled over her. Then she rubbed her face. "How much in interest does it accumulate daily?"
"One silver."
Astrid whistled softly. "That's criminal! That means it doubles in less than two months!"
As had become the standard, Skandr shrugged. She shook her head at him and grabbed him by the shoulders.
"I don't need money except to pay for food and my room, that's maybe two tenners a day. I'll put the rest to the side for now until we've paid it off. Who's your lender?"
"A Lemur Kin. His name's Aarta, and he doesn't leave his home in one of the bars downtown. Runs a gang that doesn't have a name, just focuses on shorting people and collecting debts."
Going off the vehemence in his tone, Skandr wasn't a fan of his creditors. Not that Astrid could blame him, her fellow delver had been scraping the bottom of the barrel in the hopes that he could survive ever since he'd taken out this loan.
"Then should we just start sending you with more of the loan for now, or should we save up more and more until we can go in and pay off the rest all at once? Has he been demanding more from you as you start to pay off more? Or has he been fair?"
"Squeezing a little." Skandr affirmed. "I think, if you're willing to do this, then we should prepare even double the total amount he says I owe before we go there to pay it off. He'll find some way to try to hold on to the debt somehow, I just know it."
"Well, you'd know better than me. I'll do what you suggest."
Skandr nodded, his face looser and somehow younger as he thought about it. He smiled and said, "Thanks, Astrid. I really appreciate it."
"Great. With Muti's new armor, I think we'll probably be able to get nearly to our limit every day, which would be nine silver for you every other day. How close are you to level 7 by the way?"
"About 3,000 away." He shrugged. "I'll get it soon, and that'll increase my mana enough that I won't need to rest nearly as often as I do now."
"Can I ask that you act like you need as much resting as you do right now?" Astrid asked with a halfhearted grin. "It'll help make sure that Muti and I are at our best with each fight. Her new armor should be enough that we can make do with mundane healing efforts and draughts, at worst."
"Or you." He replied. "Anyways. I'll be talking to you later?"
"If you want." Astrid shrugged. "Was there anything you wanted to say or do before you got going?"
Skandr just shook his head and stepped out of the room. For the first time, outside of the Dungeon at least, Skandr squared his shoulders back and walked with at least the appearance of purpose. That his steps would take him outside of the inn and towards whatever bush, tree, bench, or tent that would shield him for the night. Instead of pitying him and going to do something to help, Astrid allowed him to leave to wallow in the consequences of her actions.
Her party finally dealt with, Astrid set about creating some sort of calculations for how long she thought it would take before she and Skandr were able to amass three gold and pay it off to the predatory bastards that'd held his future in their hands. Assuming regular expenses and killing 100 gnolls every full day and 20 every "rest" day, she would call that ten silver in takeaway every two days. Six and a half silver between herself and Skandr, call it three and a quarter daily.
A paper was full of scribbles before she came to her conclusion that she was only somewhat sure was correct. 47 days to get the current total, so call it three months to gather enough to be three gold, counting however much he was paying daily? Astrid ran her hand down her face. Maybe that would work. She would need to talk with Klara or Anders tomorrow and see if there was something that she might be able to do about transferring the debt from this Aarta to the Guild. They would be kinder creditors, she was sure.
And how much experience would all that be? Guessing an average of 6 per kill for her alone, that would be basically 360 a day. With 100 days, just adding on another week, that was 36,000 experience. Halfway to level 9 at that point? But that would mean that they were on at least the second floor, probably the third. That would accelerate their ability to gain experience and money, so that threw off her calculations entirely, and Astrid, with a frustrated grunt, threw the crumpled paper to the side.
If they were done in less than 100 days, then that would be good enough.
As Astrid drifted to sleep, her subconscious whispered about the people who wanted to force delvers under their control. Could this Kin have something to do with that? Or was it mere loansharking? Her mind flitted from one idea to the next as the darkness overtook her vision.
***
"The Guild does not interface with creditors for the benefit of indebted delvers." Anders's answer was final, and Astrid had to accept it. Maybe she could have asked something of Klara, but she was still a little frosty with the woman after she'd spoken the way she did about the Duchess and Ginnastadt. She and Skandr would have to find another way, then.
***
"It is foolishness." Muti said, a disapproving look on her face as she looked at Skandr. "One does not use money they do not have. It is one of the first things to learn in you Humans' territory. However, for the benefit of my bound companion, I will loan much of my own income to you."
Astrid's smile was wide as Muti gave her answer. The Barbarian didn't seem to respond to Astrid's excitement, but as Muti's sharp teeth were exposed, Astrid understood that she was still in for the day's hard training. Fortunately, she was ready for the sudden punch that came her way and parried away for the most part. Muti wasn't nearly done, and though Astrid had responded well enough to the first ambushing strike, Muti always leaned into more and more combos in moments like this, and it wasn't long before Astrid was nursing a bruised cheekbone and sore ribs.
***
Muti screamed in challenge as a ranger shot an arrow at her. She twisted her torso, the arrow skittering off the scales of her cuirass and she shouted for joy as she leapt to close in on the monster. Astrid's shouts mirrored Muti's as she swung her hammer into the brawler's ribs. Bone crunched and it collapsed over itself as she dealt a killing blow, swinging her hammer to the side to clear the worst of the viscera from it. At the same time, Muti twirled and sliced tendons to keep the gnoll from running so she could bury her swords in the creature's head.
As the kill notifications all appeared, Muti flashed with a faintly scarlet light, and she raised both fists to the air and laughed.
"I am the victor! I am the strongest among us!"
She was the first to reach level 7, though Skandr wasn't far behind. Astrid herself couldn't help but check her experience as Muti lunged from one corpse to the next, plucking the materials without anything more than self-satisfied noises and humming.
Total Level: 6 (8,248/10,000)
10 days of delving resulted in this. Once they turned in the spoils of the day, there would be 49 silver saved between the three of them. Muti got another level and Skandr would get his own the next day, while Astrid would be waiting another handful of days.
With a groan, Skandr slumped to sit in the little clearing. His face was beaded with sweat, but his eyes also looked up. He didn't hesitate to allow his eyes to meet theirs, and laughed with genuine cheer instead of a sort of self hatred. Astrid laughed as their Lightningmage pulled his canteen of water out and pulled deeply from it. Then, as another reflection of how he had changed in the past, he pulled actual food out of his pouch. Astrid felt a deep pit of shame in her stomach that she hadn't realized her companion and party member wasn't eating more than a meal a day. The reason he would drink as much as he did on the days off was because of how cheaply he could buy the beer to hopefully stockpile some measure of energy for the next day's delving.
Astrid and Muti had forced him to eat more, and now, though he still wasn't a physically Classed person, he could keep up with them through a full day's delving. He still needed to recover his mana, and Astrid and Muti took the time to harvest the materials and take little breaks to make sure they were ready for anything that came up.
About the same time that Muti stopped dancing and humming, Skandr struggled to his feet. Astrid was going to warn him from doing it, but he waved her concern off.
"Muti's right about me being a soft Human. Too busy learning magic instead of exercising and eating. Now I pay the cost for not devoting myself to staying fit or something. We should get back, get some food, and get some rest tonight."
Despite his words and face flushed with effort, Skandr stood and stumbled for a couple steps before finding his balance and continuing on his path.
"Do you two think that this first floor is just too easy?" Skandr asked as the other two joined him on the path back to the exit. "I know, it's bad luck to talk like that and so on, but I wouldn't mind if things got a little harder."
Though she sighed and a part of her wanted to curse her companion, Astrid instead answered sincerely, "I wouldn't mind if there was a little more challenge, but only if we had a healer to come with. As it is, we have a strategy that works well for this floor, and won't past the second floor for sure. Even on just the second floor, since the packs will be bigger and we can see even packs of five, we'll need to be significantly stronger and more decisive, more than just another level each will be able to offer."
"I'm working on something for that." Skandr said with a little grin. "I've been studying a couple spells and I think I've got a good idea for how to deal with these groups, given both of your ability to kill things pretty fast."
"How does that work?" Astrid asked, ignoring Muti's grumbling about weak people relying on mana instead of their bodies. "What I always learned about as a kid was more about Skills than spellcraft. So what kinds of Skills do you want to use? Or get? I just… don't know anything about it."
"It takes an intrinsic understanding of mana," Skandr explained, "and how your particular Class's mana interacts with others. In my case, the energizing effects of my lightning mana lend themselves well to the speed enhancement that Lightning Reflexes grants, as well as debuffing like my base Lightning Bolt grants. Skills are nearly instant activation, while you can research mana and create spells, which aren't instantaneous and will be more flexible. Most Mage and Wizard Classes focus on a particular type of mana and build Skills to augment that."
Astrid nodded slowly. She didn't understand that much, which was part of why she'd wanted Spellblade as a Class instead of any of the other more spell-focused Classes. A couple magical Skills were all she wanted… not like she had that option available to her, anyway. Instead, Astrid pursued that course of thought.
"So were you planning on spending that gambling money on something that'd help with that?"
"A grimoire." He nodded. "I was almost there, too… Almost want to go try again but I've gotten my fill of gambling."
Before Astrid could get angry at him, he told her himself that he wouldn't return to gambling. She pursed her lips and was going to say something else when, suddenly, Skandr dropped to the ground, insensate. Muti's eyes flashed and she looked around, but there was nothing to see. Just an unconscious man on the ground and nothing that Rogue or Warrior could do about it. And his breathing was slowing.