(A/N: I'm sure Leuen's system is wrong somehow, like one of the numbers is off. Can't for the life of my figure out where or how or what is wrong though)

 

Leuen’s morning went both as expected and completely unpredictably at once. Kara and his bodies were entwined rather uncomfortably by morning, as well as them being both rather messy from the night before, made for an awkward awakening. The two didn’t kiss or do anything romantic while waking and disentangling, because there wasn’t time. Or more specifically, it wasn’t known what time it was, just that the sun was out and that probably had been for a while.

 

Leuen did enjoy watching Kara scramble for something to wipe herself off with, up until the exact moment the same bucket of bathing water and same dirty rag were thrust into his hands, at which point he immediately vowed to find a way to make a proper shower happen if he ever learns magic. Regardless, Kara had dressed and left by the time Leuen had finished wiping himself down. Not a word was said by either of them, save for half syllabic attempts at communication there wasn’t time for.

 

Leuen thinks it’s just as well, by all accounts last night wasn’t a scenario he’d like to replicate, not within its context. From the perspective of one thinking about the sex, it was fantastic, and definitely worth repeating, but the objective situation is less desirable. For one, Leuen probably came as closer to dying (or at least something worth as much in suffering) from dungeon sickness than he had from any one combat encounter so far.

 

Kara saved his life, or at least his sense of self, judging by the descriptions of the affliction in the book Kara very pointedly left out for him to skim through. But, as she’d said, Kara had also scooped up someone who wasn’t in their right mind off the street, locked them in her room, then slept with them. The fact that he was fully in need of her care and fully willing to reciprocate her advances is frankly irrelevant in terms of the social implication he’s suspecting matter much more to her than others. Kara clearly has some baggage to her, sexually and otherwise, and Leuen doesn’t have the time to unpack it right now.

 

Nor does he have the urge to chase after her, despite how quickly she ran out the door.

 

--

Leuen (no surname)

Bio Age (Chrono Age): 19 (19)

Health: 30/30

--

Level: 5

Exp: 413/800

--

Phys.Stat

Hard: 3

Tough: 3

Dura: 15

Regen: 1/Day

Grit: 3

Absorption: 2

Stamina: 15

Regen: 2/Hour

CC: 60

M.Conductivity: 1.00

--

Mental.Stat

TA: 0.00

Cogni: 1

Hive: 0

H.Limit: 10

Cooling: 1

Analyze: 2

M.Fission: 0

M.Fusion: 0

--

Meta.Stat

Meta.Stat.Skill.Maximum: 1

Meta.Stat.Skill.Custom: Id= [P.K.S.] (Delete Skill?)

Create New Skill?

 

The changes involved with his character sheet take priority. Ignoring the fact that P.K.S. is being recognized as an official custom skill, there’s something wrong with his sheet. His Exp. He may not remember damn near anything of the last two days or so, but he definitely remembers the fights in the dungeon. Leuen can’t have killed more than thirty five-ish trash mobs, which were valued at roughly 11.3ish Exp a pop.

 

That accounts for plenty of the 150 Exp required for him to reach level four (he was some amount over halfway through his third level when he went in), but based on the scaling of Exp required for levels, he should not have had the chance to reach level 5. Especially not when level 5 itself seems to have ramped up the scaling. 

 

Did contracting dungeon sickness count as gaining a bunch of Exp? Like, ‘if you can survive this, you’ll be stronger’? That would be horseshit, though. Is it… Leuen’s theory stems from the fact that his level 5 offered him a ‘Meta.Stat.Skill.Maximum’ point. Maybe creating P.K.S. as a recognized skill in the system awarded me a lump sum of Exp. Like, I created a skill without technically having the ability to do that yet. An Exp boost for speedrunning, maybe?

 

After trying it for a moment, his Analyze isn’t high enough to check what Meta.Stat.Skill.Maximum is, but he can identify P.K.S.’s description.

 

Meta.Stat.Skill.Custom: Id= [P.K.S.]

Meta.Stat.Skill

Stamina Cost: 1

Effect: Initiates a three hit combo of parrying, kicking, then stabbing a target in rapid succession.

Hits: 3

Hit Scaling: Parry N/A%, Kick 100%, Stab 100%

Delete Skill?

 

The idea of hit scaling is concerning, but Leuen is mostly satisfied with the explanation provided, especially since he can already sort of… feel what the effect of having the skill is. He’d need a valid target, plus a stabbing weapon in hand to test it, but it’s pretty much just a button that trades stamina for perfect execution, as far as he can tell.

 

Rather than performing the actions himself and risking fucking up or being too slow or whatnot, he can inefficiently trade stamina for flawless execution. A sound design, in his eyes. It’s a substitute for having actual skill in an area. Someone like Ird could probably execute that series of actions at a much higher degree of competence than Leuen can currently even envision, but the P.K.S. skill isn’t a series of actions performed by him, it’s a button that forces his body to perform them.

 

Speaking of his weapon, though, Leuen decides it is time to stop standing around Kara’s room naked. I mean… I could probably wait for her to come back from her shift or wherever else she went, we could make it a routine, enjoy ours- Leuen slaps himself on the cheek. You want bitches Leuen? Reach level… eight. Eight’s a good number, then you can let her bite you as a reward.

 

Having secured motivation beyond ‘do not die’, Leuen gathers up all his clothes. Worryingly, the vest he’d held both his rocks and money in was spread out on what seems to be Kara’s only table, with a small handwritten note shoved into the pocket his coins are in.

 

‘I won’t tell a soul’, it reads. Not seeing anything around Kara’s apartment to write with, Leuen’s response is to leave a gold coin on the table on top of the note, hopefully returning the same message to her. He can tell she didn’t take any of his money, or at least not enough of it to be noticed if she did. If she admits to having robbed him… He’d probably not be too beat up about it. She did save his life.

 

-X-X-X-

 

“That’s quite a story… Glad you’re alive, Leuen…” Essandir’s tone indicates that she’s genuine, but Leuen can’t help but wonder if he should maybe get his eyes checked, since the green haired mage is refusing eye contact.

 

“Me too.” Leuen stretches himself against the dungeon’s door.

 

He’s back out here with Voran’s of Riverwake, sans Ird for some reason the group hasn’t yet explained, probably because they spent the whole walk out here listening to Leuen’s tale of why he was late for the scheduled second go at the dungeon. He’d only been late by an hour, but they’d wanted an explanation of the last several days. So after Lucius gave him some sort of blessing that may or may not be magic and after Cole poked him in the ribs, Essandir was the one to actually listen and react to his tale.

 

He left out the more ‘interesting’ bits, plus the parts about what he did inside the dungeon, only saying he was training there.

 

“Right.” Lucius has a different weapon today, a small metal clublike thing with studs on a bricklike part on the end. Some type of mace? Leuen wonders if Lucius has a plan, since the group’s heaviest hitter isn’t here and Cole clearly doesn’t have any more explosives. “Don’t give me that look mate, we’re not here for another try at pushing deep or anything, we’re performing a regular cleansing.”

 

“He means to say we’re just gonna kill as many as we can without exhausting ourselves, and then leave.” Cole helpfully lays out what Lucius actually means, something Leuen appreciates with a nod.

 

“I’m guarding her again?” Leuen walks up to Essandir’s side while stretching his arms. Essandir responds by clutching her staff in her right hand and taking a position behind Leuen’s body, using him as a meat shield against the door for a moment, before switching the side she’s holding her staff on and trying a different position. “Um…”

 

“Oh! Sorry. I was just trying to see where the most effective places to shoot spells from would be.” Essandir strokes her hair back with her free hand, something Leuen is beginning to suspect is a bit of a tic for her.

 

“No worries.” Leuen decides to just go for it and pat Essandir on the head, and to his immense relief, she doesn’t react negatively, simply accepting but getting a little red in her cheeks. With no wishes to delay, he turns to Lucius and Cole, who seems to be dumbfounded at his actions. “I assume you’ve got a plan, so I’ll just do my job.”

 

Leuen suspects his ‘use a rock to lure dungeon mobs’ strategy is a bit too unconventional for usage in a party, since Lucius and Cole’s plan is to have Lucius use magic to alert a large portion of the first hallway to his location. Leuen still understands next to nothing about this world’s magic, but in his mind, a ‘Faith’ mage’s abilities seem a little… strange. Like, in addition to the passive lie detection stuff, and healing, and light, they can also produce sound?

 

“Here stands a warrior of the heavens. Come and test the Virtue of Courage!” Lucius shouts out once the group is in position, and Leuen feels what just happened immediately. Essandir’s spells are not like that, they’re single words that she speaks softly before something elemental-y happens. Lucius’s healing is silent. This… It’s more like those elaborate ritual magics in movies and D&D campaigns.

 

Lucius is now glowing golden, but even when Leuen looks directly at him, the light doesn’t hurt. The light is coming out from beneath his skin, with a quiet rhythmic sound Leuen can’t quite make out emanating from him. The effect is clear, though. Every single door opens at once, with the thirty-odd gremlins the dungeon has always had spread between the rooms here rushing out in a tide, as if spurred on by pure hatred.

 

“Ah. Divine challenge. Makes sense.”

 

“Flameblast!” Essandir shouts at the same time Leuen mutters his understanding, making him slightly late on his reaction to his ally’s attack. Fortunately for him, Essandir now flamethrower-emitting staff is to his left, so Leuen’s immediate reaction of raising his sword to a right-side guard results in him being completely safe. If he was left handed or just preferred to guard on his left…

 

Leuen eyes the frontline of gremlins being hosed out of existence by magical flames. Lucius also has his weapon at a guard, and Leuen can’t see Cole, but he can see the occasional arrow fly out from behind him somewhere, so he supposes this is the part of the plan they were assuming Leuen already understood. This is the only part I wanted an actual explanation on, actually.

 

Soon enough, the first gremlin to push through the dwindling flames reaches Leuen’s striking range. It’s missing an arm and looks like it’s been sitting in an oven for an hour, but it makes it there. It dies to a quick slash to the head before Leuen has a chance to lament over Essandir’s flamethrower not being infinite.

 

The following five minutes are honestly rather boring compared to the first time the group came into the dungeon, and far less dangerous than his solo exploits. They had a plan, this time. A good one. There were less gremlins this time. Probably because of the two previous trips both solo and as a group killing a lot of them. So by the time the last gremlin dies to an arrow through its head, Leuen can only feel a little disappointed.

 

“Remind me. Why didn’t we do this the first time we all came here?” Leuen asks, earning him a chuckle from Cole.

 

“That opening spell… hard to prepare… Expensive components…” Essandir is the most exhausted of the group, something about using magic, Leuen assumes. She’s also using his arm for support, instead of her own staff, again, probably for some magic related reason.

 

“That and what I used…” Lucius whispers something under his breath as the glow he was giving off disappears. “Can only be used once per week or so, and I didn’t have it available then. It’s not divine challenge, though I can see why you’d mix them up. It’s called ‘Battle Drums of Courage’, the quiet drums you heard make monsters and some really evil people shake with fear as well as compelling them to attack me.”

 

That doesn’t tell me what a divine challenge actually is. I just said that because it seemed plausible, but I’ll take the explanation anyway.

 

“I take it we’re going back now?” Leuen asks before patting Essandir’s head, which gets her to stop holding onto him and stand on her own. Again, for whatever reason, Cole’s face seems dumbfounded by this. Lucius isn’t looking at him right now, but he does still respond from where he is, poking into one of the dungeon rooms checking if the coast is clear.

 

“For now. Ird will be back in town by tomorrow morning for the real raid. Guild wants this place cleared, I think, since they’re giving us double the reward for this job today compared to last time, and four times that whenever it gets cleared. We’ve got dibs, since we scouted it, but after tomorrow all the parties strong enough to try will take a stab at it.” Lucius exits the room he’d gone into, now holding something in his hands. “What do you say, Leuen? Want to be a temporary member of Voran’s of Riverwake? Essandir seems to work well with you, something we can’t say about the last member we tried to have join.”

 

He’s holding one of my rocks. Well. I probably should’ve suspected they wouldn’t just magically vanish like the gremlin corpses. My bad.

 

“What were they like?”

 

-X-X-X-

 

Kara nurses a headache with her palms against her temples. Compared to when and how she’d fallen asleep last night, and the pleasant memory of her conquest in the morning, her mood has significantly soured. Largely due to mundane work things, yes, but also due to something she hadn’t been expecting. Two reports.

 

A death report, a whole party of rank 5 and 4s, tasked with investigating strange noises and magical phenomena at the abandoned manor on the west side of town. Killed by something. Something big. With claws. Not good, but what was worse was that Kara suspects she knows what got them. Rumors among the powerful mage adventurers in town and among some of the church-folk are that a minor cult or fledgling demon are about, something the church has been investigating.

 

Claws like that are consistent with multiple types of demons, some weak and some truly dangerous. She’s only ever encountered a Thresher, but even if that is the cult’s only demon, it’s still, as evidenced, stronger than most adventurers in town. Ird of Voran’s, Kal, Miu, and Raz Jericho of Jericho’s, plus Bishop Riley, are probably the only ones it’d be ‘safe’ to send into battle against one. Back when she’d encountered one, she was a rank 4, and would have been torn to shreds in seconds if it wasn’t for her party, damnable though they are.

 

Speaking of, that’s the second reason she’s currently considering quitting her job and drowning herself in the river. Her old party is back in town. ‘Back’ in town, in that they’ve been here for one single day before, and are now coming for a ‘prolonged’ stay. She knows full well what that really means to a group like them.

 

They’re going to try and force her back into the fold, and she won’t be able to say no. That’s how it always goes whenever he’s around. Blackwood’s of Blackwood, the crime family masquerading as a noble house’s pet adventuring party has come back to press her into service, willing or not. She can only hope that man has enough girl toys around to not force her into a different type of use.