Lillene

Enjoy!

Kaasi was confused by Miss Black. She was oddly endearing in her continual childlike wonder at the world. She also seemed incredibly desperate for a friend, which made Kaasi question the assumption that she was close friends with the deadly anomaly, Colorful. In some ways, that was too bad; Kaasi really did need to know about the woman and if Miss Black, Amaia, couldn’t lead her to Colorful, there was no real reason for her to spend time with Amaia.

That would be a shame. Kaasi found Amaia fun to spend time with. She was not someone Kaasi would have to include in her report; Kaasi had known people like her before. She was very focused on herself, rather than on others, which meant that she simply didn’t naturally push her aura out. It was a little unusual, but Kaasi tended to think of it as a sign of potential power. Everyone she’d known with the same oddity had reached Tier Five with no trouble.

Certainly less trouble than Kassi had. She’d almost gotten stuck at Tier Three. The only reason she was able to push past it was the Empire. They’d conquered her home while she was trying to decide if she should give up and accept her future as an ordinary Tier Three adult instead of the extraordinary Tier Five she’d always wanted to be. Her parents pooled their Etherium and sent her away to another world; the experience made her realize that the reason she wasn’t moving along her Path anymore was that she’d already given up even if she hadn’t admitted it. 

Which made it supremely ironic that not only had she learned how much bigger the universe was than her small home town, but she now worked for the Empire. It wasn’t official - it couldn’t be - but she knew exactly how to sell the information she’d gathered on Earth to the Empire once the protective ban was gone. 

She didn’t really like doing it, but she didn’t really have much of a choice. Her Path was built around gathering information from people and if she wanted to keep progressing she needed to practice her Path. It wasn’t like she could simply settle down and gather gossip, either; she’d tried. If she didn’t use the information somehow, she might as well not have gathered it. Selling it was the best thing she’d come up with; the fact that there were always many others trying to gain what benefit they could from an integration made it quite a bit more palatable.

In the case of Earth, it might even be enough to deter the Empire, at least for a while. Kaasi had every intention of emphasizing the way they had, at Tier Zero, fought off more than one Tier Five invader. The fact that ten years probably wasn’t enough to ready them to fight off Tier Eight people, or even large numbers at Tier Five, wasn’t something she planned to mention. It wasn’t like she was loyal to the empire; rather the opposite, truthfully. 

She’d seen more people on Earth like Amaia than like her supposed employer, Landon Carter. He was not just an opportunist; she was fairly confident that he preferred it when others were troubled. Unfortunately, he was also the only employer she’d been able to find that would accept her with no references and still use her in a manner that let her practice her Path.

The Eternus trio was not a group Kaasi liked. They weren’t one of the groups she’d looked into while she was learning about Amaia from the other delvers around the Adventurers’ Guild, but they already reminded her more of Landon than they did Amaia. She didn’t know why Amaia specifically wanted to join their group, but she knew Amaia was interested in them for some reason. She’d overheard Amaia talking to Becca with a simple redirection of the wind.

She’d even dared to confront Amaia about it. That wasn’t something she could do with most people, but people like Amaia often tended to take questions at face value rather than try to figure out why you were asking or what the group of questions together meant.

Amaia wasn’t willing to say. She’d just tapped her nose and said it was a “seeeeecret!” It had to be a reference to a movie of some sort, but it was one Kaasi hadn’t seen.

Kaasi watched Amaia do something that made the oversized serpent boss’s movements change from fluid to jerky; it was almost like she’d cut through some of the muscles in its long tail, but she wasn’t even close to the serpent. Kaasi had no idea how she did that; she’d normally have assumed curses, but it was obvious that Amaia wasn’t a curse witch. She wasn’t angry or mad enough, even before the fact that there was no Curse affinity leaking from the injuries she inflicted.

Kaasi threw one of her hand axes at the serpent’s left eye. It dodged, of course, or at least tried to. That was why the ax was coated in wind; Kaasi made its trajectory shift with the serpent’s movements. When it hit, the ax penetrated far deeper than it should have; that was the effect of Arthur’s buff, multiple strikes somehow overlapping and continuing. 

Kaasi had to agree with Rolan about that; Arthur’s buff was not minor. It wasn’t enough to penetrate the giant snake’s skull, but it was enough to ensure that she hit the eye even if she was a little off on her aim. She wasn’t; a Tier One opponent like this gave her more than enough time to be certain she’d hit, even if it was the Floor Boss. 

Unfortunately, Arthur was the only one of the three who was pulling his weight. Rolan’s “gravity” Skills seemed to be useful only against small creatures. They’d fought some of those earlier in the dungeon and he was able to hold them in place while Kaasi killed them one at a time, but against the large serpent he was either helpless or not trying. Up until now, Kaasi had wondered why they’d looked for another battlefield controller; his skill set and Amaia’s were simply too similar. Rolan seemed to be better against large groups and Amaia was definitely better against a single giant, but she still thought they’d be better off if Rolan practiced and Amaia joined another group.

That wasn’t just because she didn’t like them, either.The whole group needed practice. Morgan’s ice spells weren’t accomplishing anything against the great serpent, either; she’d been marginally acceptable against the small ones she could just crush with her ice, but it was doing nothing against the serpent’s armor and she didn’t seem to have the skill to aim at weak points. 

The serpent didn’t even have true armor; its scales seemed to be stronger than true snake scales, but that still meant that they were barely stronger than fingernails, certainly not up to the quality of good enchanted armor, even at Tier One. Its defense was more about its mass and the sheer amount you had to cut through to get at anything important than actual armor. A blunt weapon like Morgan’s iceballs ought to be good at bruising it, at least, and she didn’t even seem to be achieving that.

Honestly, it was almost like Morgan was faking it and using a poor secondary Affinity. There was no way she should be a high Tier Two delver with attacks that bad, and Rolan’s limitations were just as unlikely. This was a Tier One boss; yes, it was strong, but it should already be dead! 

Kaasi dodged as the serpent spat something at her. From the way the grass melted, it wasn’t just venom; it was probably acid or something. Dungeons did things like that; out in the world, snakes wanted to eat their prey, not dissolve it. In a dungeon, however, that wasn’t a factor.

Kaasi knew she wasn’t up to delving at her own Tier. Yes, she had a shield, but it was fragile. Wind simply didn’t make good shields and fighting wasn’t her specialty. There was a reason that someone like Amaia could keep up with her; Amaia’s training was probably better than Kaasi’s, she’d just never used it. That much was obvious when she sparred. She’d also learned from someone a different size from herself..

Kaasi reminded herself to ask about that when they were out of the dungeon. Amaia hadn’t indicated that she had any friends other than Kaasi but Amaia clearly knew other people. She was so self-sufficient that she probably just needed a push to reach out.

Ice hit the ground where the acid spit pooled. Kaasi jumped backwards. This was more evidence that the Eternus wasn’t a group of skilled delvers. Morgan had completely missed the gigantic snake once more.

Well, either that or she was trying to kill Kaasi, but Kaasi doubted that. If it was deliberate, they had to be the best actors Kaasi had ever seen.

Amaia shouted something Kaasi couldn’t make out and waved her hand dramatically. Kaasi wanted to talk to her about that; it was probably just her natural exuberance instead of something she thought she had to do, but it was still a bad habit. If you could use a Skill, without moving, you could use the Skill when you couldn’t move. The fact that it concealed what you were doing was a secondary benefit, as was the possibility you could conceal the fact that you were doing something at all. That part was more important in Kaasi’s line of work than Amaia’s.

Kaasi was really beginning to think that Amaia was the only actual delver present. Kaasi could fake it because of her relatively high Tier, but the three Eternus were just sad.

The snake seemed to freeze in place for a moment, then it thrashed like it was choking. Kaasi didn’t know what Amaia had done, but it was the perfect chance. Morgan and Arthur seemed to think so, as well, but Kaasi thought their attacks were more likely to get in her way than actually help. 

Kaasi used a different Skill on her ax this time. She didn’t need to direct it, she needed it to penetrate. Wind wasn’t normally very good at that, but if you got enough of it together you could do some really odd things and she had a Skill for exactly that. It wasn’t a Tier Two or lower Skill - it was Tier Four - but she was certain she could get away with that with this group.

She timed her throw for when the serpent’s head twisted a little away from her and threw it fast. The ax didn’t flip as it flowed through the air; instead, the wind carried it in exactly the angle she’d thrown it at hard and fast. It thudded into the snake’s spine and the snake collapsed to the ground. 

It would probably disappear soon. Kaasi was happy that many of Earth’s dungeons used that method to tell delvers the monster was dead; it was far safer to have the monster disappear than to have to confirm every death. It did mean that you missed out on the chance to gather any materials directly from the monster’s body, but Kaasi hadn’t yet seen an Earth dungeon that was used infrequently enough for that to be more valuable than the Etherium most runs produced. 

Technically, the value of the Etherium wasn’t all that important to Kaasi. She was getting paid by Landon Carter for observing Amaia and she’d get paid again when she sold the information on Earth to the Empire. She still wasn’t going to turn down Etherium. Especially not after she and Amaia had essentially duoed the dungeon level for the five-person party.

Lillene

There were a lot of teams as hopeless as Eternus early on, but most of them figured out what they should do, figured out they didn’t belong in dungeons, or messed up a little too badly and were badly injured or died. New teams still have that issue, of course, but the available training in most places is a lot better and more individualized than even the Tutorial was … if you can afford it. Those who can’t learn the same way people have learned in dungeons for centuries, until they CAN afford training (if they’re smart).