Flashes of memory from the first time that she'd fought a drake filled Astrid's mind. How it had pulverized her legs and treated her like a chew toy, how the entire party of Wanderers, then level 10, had all struggled to do any lasting damage to the weakened, level 21 monster. As the largest drake in front of her lowered its stance to strike at Astrid's belly, she raised her hammer, as if she was going to greet it on the same ground that it was expecting. She screamed a challenge, but at the last second before they made contact, she planted her left foot hard and pulled back a half step.
The drake's head, a meter long and half as wide, snapped up right where Astrid's belly would have been if she hadn't dodged. Its claws followed through on that attack, and Astrid batted them to the side with her shield. As the monster moved to continue its assault, Astrid pushed Alacrity-aligned mana through her legs to sidestep the charge and smash her hammer into its knee. The hammer's head smashed into the monster and it roared in pain, but didn't stop as Astrid tried to press the attack.
Though she'd landed a good strike on its knee, none of the drake's limbs were out of commission, and it rolled its body in a serpentine motion out of her range before hopping back and slamming all four of its paws against the ground. A wave of stone traveled out from it, very similar to the ogre Boss's Skill. Instead of keeping cautious like she had with the ogre, though, Astrid knew this was just a disruption tactic when coming from the drake. Her enemy rushed forward, its jaws snapping at her feet as she regained her standing, but she wasn't going to let it retake the momentum of the fight.
Spectre Burst filled her hammer's head as she weathered a series of three attacks from the drake. The first hit knocked her back a half meter, even with the omnipresent mana she kept coursing through her greaves to keep her more immobile. As her legs threatened to buckle, the drake slammed its head and other paw against her. Astrid's footing slipped, and she grunted as the drake's head returned back to her. She smiled fiercely as she "suddenly" found her footing once again, twisted with her hips, and smashed her hammer into the side of the monster's head.
Deadly energy from Spectre Burst made the monster stumble and slow, but it didn't die with one solid blow. Its brown scales shattered and fell to the ground as it fought to strengthen its stance.
Astrid raised her hammer again, pure Power-aligned mana fueling the strike as she slammed it down on the crown of the beast's head. Again, its scales cracked and fell, and it allowed its head to slump to the ground. Astrid continued to press the attack, her hammer falling like a meteor half a dozen more times in the now exposed crown of its head. The more head trauma the monster experienced, the more it slumped to the ground until, on the final hit, Astrid smashed a hole in its skull. Mashed brain slurry seeped out from under her hammer as Astrid glanced at the kill notification.
Brown Drake slain. 1,640 experience gained, split among party.
A level 34, then. One level higher than Astrid, and she knew that the fight had only been as easy as it was because the monster was coming straight out of another fight. It lacked much of the speed and energy that it would have had if it was fresh, but Astrid didn't lament the monster not having every advantage given to it. She turned her attention to the other two monsters that were being fought by her allies.
Muti had blinded one, but as it thrashed around blindly, the Ambusher couldn't quite manage to get a solid blow in. In an effort to preserve her mana, she wasn't using much to strengthen her attacks, and her blades only managed to make surface level wounds on the infuriated creature. Its jaws and claws snapped recklessly in every direction, and Muti herself snarled as she was forced to keep her distance instead of finishing the fight already.
On the other side, Felix kept the drake occupied as he dodged its attacks, but his axe struggled to pierce the scales and hide to the flesh underneath. As the blade skittered off the monster's natural defenses, he continued dodging its attacks as its paws rushed through the air to strike him down. Nearby, Skandr shot several bolts of lightning at the drakes, but his spells failed to pierce their natural defenses. Different from the feathered serpents, which seemed to be effectively immune to lightning, the drakes simply had immense defenses that needed to be breached before anything could harm them. That was why Muti struggled to deal more damage as well as why Skandr failed to pierce its defenses.
Seeing that Felix was fine and holding his drake in a stalemate that favored the Wanderers more than the monsters, Astrid went to assist Muti. She didn't attempt to hide her presence as she rushed forward, the heavy metal of her armor jangling as she went. The drake turned in her direction and roared, small arrows of stone flying out of its mouth towards her. She raised her shield, the hail of missiles shattering against her superior defense, and she drew on Alacrity-aligned mana to make a sharp turn around its gaping maw. Astrid threw herself at the blinded monster's neck just above its shoulders, her shield's edge leading the way with all her weight and strength smashing into the monster.
Astrid was surprised at how effective her charge was, the drake's neck folding around her as it squealed out a breath. It struggled to breathe as Astrid raised her hammer to brutalize the already weakened defenses where her charge had made its effect known. With just a few quick swings of her hammer, a stretch of scales three hands long and one wide was made, the flesh underneath shredded from her attention and bleeding profusely. Astrid stepped back, breathing heavily as Muti raised her swords and started carving into the flesh. Only a few seconds passed by before a kill notification flashed in Astrid's eyes, but she had already turned to assist Felix.
"Get out of the way," Skandr growled, and Astrid obliged, skirting wide around the drake and giving the Wizard an opportunity to attack. Instead of the smaller, easy to cast and low cost bolts he had used before, a thick javelin of lightning smashed into the drake's neck. A deafening crack of thunder filled the air, and Astrid felt ambient lightning course over her armor. The drake shuddered and failed to keep its feet as its muscles failed it. Skandr's cloud floated away from the monster that was soon to be a corpse, and Astrid closed in.
Like with the rocs, when the monster's head was braced against the ground, Astrid's hits were more than twice as devastating. Only a single hit smashed open a large swathe of the monster's defensive scales, and Felix stepped forward with his axe in hand. Like a headsman, the axe rose, fell, and a life was ended.
As the kill notifications faded, Skandr spoke. "Level 34, level 31, and level 30. I guess these are on the upper side of the drakes found here, but not quite past that next watershed."
"That's true," Astrid agreed, staring at the wizard. "Are we not going to acknowledge that sudden anger? Just… trying to move right past it?"
"It's not sudden," Skandr grumbled as he kicked at one of the corpses. "If you come across something that can defend itself from your hammer, you can just hit it harder, try one of your Skills, and so on. When something just isn't affected by what I'm doing, I can't really hit it harder and have anything change except for using more mana. I tried something slightly different with that and was able to overcome his defenses, but if my lightning is going to be so limp against the drakes, I almost wonder if it's better to try to get our levels on the next floor instead."
"Or you can just continue to experiment," Astrid replied. "You're constantly coming up with new spells, and here in the Trials, you haven't got a quarter of the time that you would have had on the surface to develop new spells."
"And what, do you think that I have a bunch of time to start experimenting with spells now?" He scoffed. "I'm happy to be getting experience so quickly like we are and I'm looking forward to getting a boon, but I really want to have some time outside of the Dungeon to actually learn how my Class works. There's complexities to this that the rest of you don't have, and I envy you for being able to thrive without spending days and weeks acclimating yourselves to everything that's changed."
Astrid nodded, more than willing to admit the truth of what he was saying. "You're right. With everybody else's evolutions, we just got stronger Classes. For you, however, you changed entirely. Even as you spend hours studying whenever you have the spare second, it's true that you don't have the opportunity to learn and to experiment the way that other Wizards can and have to do. I believe in you, though. What did you do to strengthen that spell?" Skandr quickly devolved into an unintelligible, rapid fire explanation of interactions between incantations and sigils that effectively boiled down to, "I changed some things and it got stronger".
Duchess above was she grateful she hadn't gotten a magic Class.
Seeing that he had lost her, Skandr waved off the Warrior and said, "I'm working on something, hopefully it will work more broadly and without costing so much mana. That sound good?"
"Brilliant," she gave him a thumbs up.
The party finished harvesting what space-efficient materials they could from the three corpses before looking forward. Benedict went to begin harvesting from the felled rocs, but Muti stopped him.
"There is no reason to do that," she said. "We are constantly filling and emptying the bags that we carry, the less valuable being thrown out every day. Outside of the things that they need to carry, all of our spatial pouches are full. Do not grab more things when we will go to higher floors and get what is more valuable."
She was right, as for weeks now, a part of their nighttime routine was to mentally sift through the contents of their spatial pouches and toss out what was worthless. Thousands of ears, fangs, feathers, tusks, and even weapons and manassteel had been thrown away in favor of things which carried more value. The feathers from the rocs were valuable, but not compared to the trophies from the drakes, nor the materials to be harvested on deeper floors.
Benedict didn't say anything, but his face screwed up as he looked at the money that the party was effectively leaving on the ground. He grumbled something unintelligible to himself as Muti turned to one of the drakes and began hacking its tail off. Scales flew for several seconds before she was able to make deep cuts in the flesh and again, when she reached the spine, she was forced to return to smashing blows to break the bone.
When the party had finally finished all of the harvesting they were going to do, they looked at each other.
"So," Astrid clarified, "we're still going to keep pushing on this floor to the next watershed, right?"
***
Felix
Felix spat blood from his mouth as the roc fell to the ground. He checked his Status and saw that he was a mere 20,000 experience away from level 36. It made him smile a little to think that he was thinking of so much experience as a "little". He carefully rolled only his right shoulder and looked around. For days, he'd gotten used to not being able to use his arm, but the constant discomfort was something he couldn't get past. His arm simply would not move, and sometimes he almost forgot it existed, but it always felt as if his arm was asleep, tingles running down it. Then, whenever he got distracted and tried to move his arm, a sharp pain went from just below his shoulder specifically to his pinky finger. Why was it that the pain moved that way? He couldn't say.
The faint exchange of mana between himself and his armor became more natural to him day by day, and the feeling of his armor reforming itself after protecting him was a sort of a comfort. Though the armor sometimes seemed to prioritize puffing into mist instead of protecting him, he also realized that he wasn't getting batted around nearly as much now. The puffs of dusksteel did exactly what his note had said—weaken the attacks that hit him.
Maybe he'd try to get a good armoring Skill in Steel, he supposed. With two attention drawing Skills and his equipment Skill, he could spare the slots, especially since some of his Skills would definitely consolidate when he evolved. With seven slots to fill in Steel, Felix knew that he wasn't going to be able to have nearly so nice of a Skill lineup when he eventually was looking to evolve to Mithril, but even then, he knew how amazing it was to reach level 50 and have five Iron Skills. That alongside the fact that he was seriously thinking about his evolution to Mithril served as a reminder to how far he'd come.
"You kill so messily," Muti whispered as she leaned over his shoulder. Felix stiffened, surprised by her presence, even though she was constantly doing things like this. He turned and looked up at the tall woman, allowing a smile to touch his face. He wouldn't have been able to see it between the small lines in his helmet's mask, but going off of the glint of teeth he could see behind the cross hatching of Muti's facemask, he knew that she could see it.
"I may be fast, but I'm not graceful like you," Felix said, looking at the woman that, somehow, despite sending blood flying in every direction with every swing of her swords, stood without a speck of blood on her.
"It is not your place to be graceful," Muti waved off his words." It is your place to be solid, to be impossible to ignore. And that, you are."
Felix felt a touch of color on his cheeks at that. Since she saved him from falling to his death on the thirty-fifth floor, there had been constant moments like this, where he wondered if there was some measure of mutual attraction there. He could never get a read on the woman, though. She was flighty, except when she wasn't. She would giggle as she threw herself at monsters, purposefully surprise her party mates, and act like a cat, aloof, and disinterested. Except for when she didn't.
Whenever things got serious, Felix knew what look was on her face, despite being unable to see it. The fierce baring of her teeth as she saved him from a situation that he had put himself into. The desperation in her eyes as she'd wrapped him in her arms as he fell. The fiercely muttered words in her language that he couldn't quite understand as she carried his limp and bleeding body through the shadows, and then up a feathered serpent's back to solid ground. The fury she had shown at his hopelessness when he'd been crippled and the tenderness she'd shown when she accepted and moved past his moment of weakness.
"Then I will ensure I stay unignorable."
***
Muti
Many days, she remembered what Kalta had offered her. An opportunity to return to her people, regaining respect and given apology was nearly guaranteed since he'd offered his confidence and battle scar. The Hordemaster wouldn't deny the request of a Berserker Leader. If he did, Kalta would simply leave and establish a new Horde of his own. Steels and even Mithrils would follow in the wake of such a promising leader, and the Hordemaster's honor wouldn't allow him to do anything other than gracefully cede some of his land. The Hordemaster was no fool, and he would accept her back into the fold.
Yes, six years of dreams would come to fruition that day. With her presence in the Trials and Laisall's absence, she would be guaranteed to be significantly higher level than he could dream to be. Beyond that, she could guarantee that he hadn't qualified for a Very Rare Class as she had, and she had proved herself to be more than what she had been thrown out for being: useless.
However, there were also the Wanderers. Benedict, little fool that he was, was also a friend. He was willing to engage with her on the terms she set, while also maintaining his own will. He was a trusted healer, though his magic remained inferior to that of the Shamans of her home when it came to healing. The impact the Bard had on the battlefield couldn't be overstated, and Muti found herself embracing Humanity's acceptance of the magical Classes. Skandr was a further testament to that, though his excitement to become a Wizard instead of a Mage was surprising to her. Though limited, the Mages wielded as much power as Wizards, just with less difficulty.
Felix was a difficult subject, as was Astrid. Felix had grown as a potential mate in her eyes, though Muti also eschewed the idea of binding herself to a Human. He would lose the fight for supremacy, whenever it happened, and he would join her harem, which she did not dislike the idea of, as his strength and steady nature were calming. She still found herself seething as his weakness, though. She had experienced such weakness as well, but to leave his people because he was injured? It was disgusting to think of, though unsurprising as a possibility. Humans were more selfless and yet more selfish than her people, less willing to fight for themselves but also less willing to suffer pain.
Such a strange people. Like Astrid.
Her leader was, at times, more Barbarian than Human, though the compliment wouldn't be accepted as one by the woman. She would suffer for her people, and she did so willingly. Her Class was made around suffering for those she cared for, and she indulged in that agony every day. There was no masochism in her actions, only an urge to push herself and her people further. That hunger for progression, so common among her people, was rare among the Humans.
Muti wanted to make her her own, but knew she wouldn't be able to achieve victory over the Immortal Warrior. There would be comfort in becoming one of Astrid's, she knew that her leader would continue to trust and to accept her, but she also knew that the Warrior's desires regarding the future were different from her own. Astrid would throw herself deep into the Dungeon below, where the true mysteries of the world waited, and when she was needed, she would emerge to deal justice to all those that needed it.
Could Muti accept that as a future? Even if she remained one of the Wanderers and only returned to her home once to prove the mistake they had made?
Thoughts swirled in her head as she teased Felix, but a disgusted sound interrupted her.
"You're going to let it treat you like that?"