by Brent Tyman
People were shoving each other left and right and I wasn’t entirely sure how to respond. Heck, if Aurielle shoved someone, they would probably end up flying straight toward the clouds above. Causing intentional harm to other participants at this stage was definitely against the rules.
Not that many of them seemed to be taking that rule to heart, with the amount of shoving going on…
Finally, after getting through the entrance and into the Dungeon, trudging down the stairs behind a green clad party of Hoganna students, we found ourselves on the first floor.
“All of these auras bunched up like this look so strange to me,” Anny noted, once we got well away from every other party.
“Time is of the essence,” Juliana said as Clarissa caught up to us. It seemed she’d ended up lagging behind just a tad.
“Wait for me!” Clarissa yelled. “I can’t believe Stephania got through before us.”
“Hence the reason for swiftness in our actions,” Juliana said.
“What next, Alex?” Aurielle asked. She had pulled out her sword and already held it at the ready, the cool metal gleaming in the low light. She gripped her new shield tightly in her other hand.
“That area where we grinded a few days ago, that’s our first stop. Should be able to get fifty Rats done easily,” I said.
We made our way through the Dungeon to our destination, and Juliana took the lead once she recognized where we were going. It seemed she was really fired up to win this stage of the tournament, though I certainly could understand why.
She meant a lot to me and I planned to do everything in my power to ensure we won this tournament. Since everyone around us was running as if they had monsters on their heels, we did too.
I didn’t want to be the one to hold us back, but I was the slowest. Everyone’s Speed stat somehow made them faster runners. I really didn’t understand how it worked.
The hordes of adventurers and Academy students eventually thinned out, and the rather large amount of racket they generated finally dimmed to what I was used to hearing in the Dungeon—quiet shuffling, stifled grunts, and the odd squeal of an enraged rat.
We passed by plenty of people already busy dispatching Rats, which did make me question my decision to head further in before we started grinding. Should we have found a closer area to grind in? The area we had settled on was a fair bit away from the Dungeon entrance.
“Do we…” Clarissa breathed heavily, “really need to run? I don’t wish to get too worked up in this dress.”
She turned to me and smirked.
“Unless you prefer that, handsome…”
“None of that,” Juliana snapped. “We must put all of our efforts into this trial. Keep up, Clarissa.”
Technically, I was the one lagging behind, but I wasn’t going to complain. Still. I thought, maybe a few days of Speed training wouldn’t be the worst idea ever.
We finally came to the cavern that should house dozens of Rats close together. I let out a sigh of relief when I saw that there was no one else here. Just us and the Rats.
“Great, looks like no one thought to come here first,” I said.
“What next, Alex?” Juliana asked, all business here.
“Right. Anny, you have the bag, don’t you?” I asked and Anny nodded. “Great, remember what we discussed before about our strategy?”
All of the women nodded, and I turned to face the Rats.
We had discussed a fairly organized way to approach any fight in the Dungeon. I would use my spells on half the Rats before engaging, and Aurielle would take out the other half. Juliana would take down any stragglers while Clarissa supported us from behind with her heals.
Anny’s role was to collect the loot at the end and support Juliana, if necessary.
Aurielle and I would keep any stray monsters back from the rest of the party, which I supposed made me more of a Tank here. Heck, both of us were able to do plenty of damage on these floors, so maybe we were more of a blend between a Tank and a damage dealer.
In any case, it was time to get to work.
As opposed to how Rat engagements typically went, the packs here could consist of up to twelve Rats—as opposed to the usual four. At least four seemed to be the norm when I’d started Dungeon delving on this world.
Their behavior largely stayed the same across the whole floor, with only their various sizes being the only thing to differentiate them. Some were a bit larger than usual, but I’d never really noticed a meaningful change in behavior with the larger Rats, or even with the larger packs.
The same probably applied to any monster in the Dungeon I had faced thus far.
The first pack we encountered was a pack of nine Rats which idled towards the front of the cavern. We hurried over to face them.
As soon as I was in range and without wasting any more time, I cast my Icy Cloud spell and felt the familiar tingle of dizziness. Compared to how much worse it had felt only yesterday against those Turtles, this was a welcome improvement.
Aurielle ran right past me as she held her shield in front of her at high guard, her sword also held high at her side.
By the time I had cast my Blast Currents spell and watched as the ice spikes sailed through the air, Aurielle had already crushed one Rat under her boot.
She just crushed it in an instant…
It seemed she had taken my monster behavior theory to heart at first, by stopping just shy of their aggro range, but since we were trying hard to dispatch as many Rats as quickly as possible, it was much easier and faster just to fight them all at once. She was able to limit the number of the Rats that focused on her by approaching from one side. The others simply snarled and growled at the rest of us.
I bit my tongue out of reflex as the Blast Currents spell sapped a lot of my energy. Again, the chill and dizziness weren’t nearly as bad as they’d been yesterday, which was a plus. I still felt lame, though, barely able to get out a single volley of spells.
As for my ice spikes, I didn’t want any of them hitting Aurielle, so aimed them away from her, at an angle. While the Icy Clouds spell presumably wouldn’t harm my party, I wasn’t entirely sure if the safety constraint applied if I used it this way, in conjunction with Blast Currents.
Due to the weird angle, the ice spikes tried to curl towards the Rat furthest out to my left and ended up missing most of them. My attack only managed to skewer two of the Rats, the rest quickly darting towards me as I ran forward with my sword.
We didn’t have any time to waste, though.
A fireball streaked through the air and struck one of the Rats which was rushing towards me. I couldn’t help but smile at that, as it only left me two to fight.
Going through the motions I had done so many times, I could probably do them in my sleep, I stabbed my sword through the first Rat’s head, ending it in an instant. The other one managed to slam into my shin before I quickly struck it in the side. My Strength caused my blade to slice completely through its torso, splitting it in half.
By the time I looked up, Aurielle had finished off the five Rats that had gone after her. She cleaned her sword off on one of their corpses and slid it back into her scabbard in one smooth motion.
Anny disappeared in a blur, then suddenly reappeared beside me and reached down to turn the Rat I had just ended into a pelt. I watched as her hand zipped between the two Rats by my feet and she subsequently scooped the pelts into the infinite storage bag provided by the Academy. I blinked, but she was already gone, blurring away before reappearing next to Aurielle.
“Nice work, handsome!” Clarissa said as she came up behind me. “This turned out to be extremely fast.”
“As it should be,” Juliana said, nodding. “With this speed, I fail to see how any party can hope to compete with us.”
Juliana turned to Aurielle, who was walking back our way. “I am impressed at your sword skills, Aurielle. Your strikes were too fast for me to keep track of.”
Aurielle smiled and bowed her head slightly a
t the compliment.
“Thank you. It is a result of my training, but truth be told, these monsters are much less formidable than what awaits me in my homeland.”
“I can’t wait to see it,” I replied with a smile. Aurielle's eyes widened at that, but I didn’t want to idle here too long.
“I have all the pelts, Alex!” Anny called, holding up the bag at the side of the cavern where my ice shafts had dispatched two rats.
“Alright, let’s head on to the next pack,” I said.
The women nodded.
If we kept up this kind of momentum, dispatching fifty monsters on each floor of the Dungeon would be easy enough.
Stephania appeared to be our biggest competition, thus far, but we hadn’t really interacted much with any of the other Academy students or adventurers.
Maybe another party would end up matching our speed.
There was only one way to find out…
21
Even with the urgency of the tournament driving us forward, I was still surprised at how fast we were able to clear each floor.
The Ravens of the second floor proved easy to deal with, using my method of simply lying on the ground below their attack range. In our last run through this area, Aurielle had used her gravity magic on a few packs to see if that made things any faster, but we found that she was able to contribute more with her high strength and defense using my method, instead.
Aurielle’s gravity magic had a few limitations, the biggest one being that it was meant to be used on a single target at a time. Although she could extend the effects to more than one target, the cost—in terms of Magical Capacity—grew exponentially. Not that it mattered much, given her overpowered magic stats, but it also rendered her unable to do anything else until she broke off her spell.
It was a limitation I’d need to be aware of, once I learned the spell.
Any day now, hopefully.
I noticed a lot of adventurers were having trouble with the Red Ravens, not in terms of them being that much more powerful than the Rats, but simply because they took much longer to deal with, because they could fly around. I wouldn’t want to face a flying monster outside of the Dungeon. At least here, they were somewhat confined.
The Spiders and Foxes of the third and fourth floor weren’t difficult to dispatch, but due to the need for speed, we decided to forgo my usual monster behavior methods of dealing with them in the interest of saving time.
Aurielle and I ended up making short work of the monsters in our way.
I suppose this was the result of being significantly over leveled for the first couple floors of the Dungeon. Heck, I was pretty sure it took us more time to jog through the tunnels on our way to the next floor than we’d used dispatching the monsters themselves.
In terms of competitors, we came across fewer and fewer of them as we raced through the floors. I doubted anyone here was not actively participating in the tournament, given how busy it made the Dungeon. Although, I supposed if you stuck to areas well away from each floor’s entrance and exit, you might not encounter anyone other than the monsters.
The fifth and sixth floor made me think I was running a marathon, as we only needed to sprint to the exit down to the next floor. This wasn’t as easy as it sounds on the fifth floor, thanks to the humid air and uncomfortable heat.
One thing I noticed was that I was getting quite a few looks on the second and third floors. Since many of the participants here were Academy students, they naturally recognized Juliana and Clarissa. Every single time we got close enough to a group of students, they’d immediately bow. Unless, of course, they happened to be blue uniformed Yunissans.
The adventurers had picked up on this as well, and while it seemed many of them weren’t from the three nations, they stared at me for a completely different reason.
Namely...
“Whoa, that guy is in a party with four women!”
“Four lookers, too.”
“He must be one of those major Clan types or something.”
That couldn’t be further from the truth. My Clan was anything but what could be considered ‘major’. Juliana once told me her father’s Clan had tens of thousands of members. Most soldiers were part of the noble Clans that ruled chunks of Tasberg, but Juliana’s father had absolute control over his nation’s soldiers, no matter what Sovereignty Clan they were from.
Compared to my paltry four members, five once Juliana was able to join, we remained smaller than most minor Clans. At least this kept the messages in the Clan Chat much more manageable than whatever the major Clans had to deal with, thanks to their large member lists.
By the time we reached the seventh floor, there was no one else around. We’d pretty much been on our own during our marathon sprint across the fifth and sixth floors. This gave me hope that we were well on our way to coming in first place for this stage.
“What shall we do for this floor, Alex?” Aurielle asked.
I stopped for a moment, still breathing hard, to think about it. My method of going after the lead Wolf would end up being detrimental to our efforts to loot fifty pelts as quickly as we could. The last thing we wanted was for the Wolves to flee, and that meant we had to ensure that lead Wolf went down last.
Between the five of us, especially given Aurielle’s significantly overpowered stats, we should be able to gather fifty Wolf pelts in no time at all.
“Same as usual,” I finally said. “We’ll just have to make sure no one hits the lead Wolf until the end of the fight. It wasn’t much of a problem when we fought through here to get to the Turtles, but I don’t want to take any chances with my magic.”
“This is the last one,” Anny said excitedly, hopping in place. “Just need to collect fifty more loot.”
“It appears we have our pick of locations,” Juliana said, looking around at our snowy surroundings. “But this floor is vast, as we all know.”
“Unless handsome here has a particular spot in mind, shall we make use of Anny’s pathfinding skill and seek out the biggest clump of auras?” Clarissa asked.
“Yeah, that’s probably best,” I admitted, shrugging. “I think a lot of people will get stuck on this floor. The Wolves are spread out way too much for my liking.”
“Then it will be my honor to lead the way forward,” Aurielle said, drawing her sword and pulling her shield off her back, once again. “Please direct us, Anny.”
Anny closed her eyes for a moment and pointed down one of the many corridors before us. Aurielle moved forward at a fast jog and the rest of us followed. It seemed Aurielle planned on finishing this floor quickly, and I could tell Juliana approved.
When I recognized the first Wolf pack we came across, I had to stop to truly process what I was seeing. Aurielle had simply disappeared from in front of us in a flash of white light. It was almost as if she had dematerialized, leaving absolutely nothing behind.
A moment later, she appeared behind the pack of three Wolves, which were still rolling about in the snow, not even aware of her presence. With quick, deft movements, Aurielle’s sword swiped through each Wolf in turn and ended them in the next breath.
The whole thing happened so fast, I was still trying to work out what, exactly, I had just witnessed, when Aurielle’s form flashed again, and she appeared back in front of us, as if nothing had happened.
“What was that?” Juliana blurted out, her eyes wide.
“Gods, that was her Ethereal… uh,” Clarissa snapped her fingers as she tried to recall what she had seen of the woman’s spells in the Clan interface. “Ethereal… ah right… Ethereal Blink! I noticed it among her spells when she joined our Clan. I didn’t realize it was so… effective.”
Was effective a strong enough word for what we had just witnessed? Those Wolves probably hadn’t even realized they were under attack before they ceased to exist!
Aurielle tried to pass all of this off as just another day in the dungeon, as she absently ran a hand through her crimson hair.
“Shall
we not have Anny collect the loot before we move off to the next pack?” she asked, her expression as resolute as ever.
“Hold a moment,” Juliana said, raising a hand. “All of us wish for an explanation. I had heard about your skills from the others, but I don’t think any of us realized what you were capable of.”
“I mean, she has her gravity magic, which I thought was pretty powerful on its own.” I shrugged.
“Teleportation of this caliber is truly amazing,” the gorgeous brunette continued. “I’m just puzzled why she did not use it before.”
Aurielle seemed a bit troubled at this comment and I was just about to let her know that she didn’t need to feel like she owed any of us an answer, if she didn’t want to, when she nodded to herself.
“My ethereal magic is incredibly taxing,” Aurielle explained. “When my curse still drained me, I could typically only cast Ethereal Spear once before pain overcame me. With my curse lifted, my Magical Capacity and Magical Power have significantly increased, allowing many more uses than before—though I am sure it is still not as many as you might think.”
I supposed, once I really thought about it, she wouldn’t be able to cast Ethereal Spear all the time. I struggled to cast my spells only once each, before I needed to rest.
“I resolved only to use my Ethereal magic in times of need,” Aurielle said.
“Oh,” I said, “I wouldn’t really call this a ‘time of need’, Aurielle. I’m pretty sure these Wolves won’t be able to harm us all that much, even if they manage to get a good bite in every once in a while. Clarissa has hardly needed to cast any heals, today.”
“Ugh,” Clarissa groaned, “don’t remind me. I would have bought a useful attack spell or two from the library, but everything had been sold out and that librarian favors Tasberg students a little too much. She kept telling everyone who would listen that she had personally served Juliana Vos Tasberg.”
Juliana’s cheeks turned red at that. “Yes. I believe she was very, ahh… accommodating the other day,” she admitted.
