“What took you so long?” Daryl didn’t sound happy when Serenity arrived outside the dungeon. He didn’t seem to have noticed that anything had changed about the dungeon, simply that Serenity was late.
Serenity forced a smile. He didn’t want to arouse any suspicion. “I wasn’t quite ready. I didn’t take that long, did I?”
Daryl just grunted, while the other two Silver Blades ignored the man. Well, he’d tried; sometimes things took time and Serenity didn’t want to actually explain himself right now.
Serenity looked around the area near the dungeon as they walked through it. A few of the buildings were damaged by the earlier dungeon break, but the damage from that was less severe than the deterioration of time. There were more people out and about, but it was still quiet, almost desolate, despite the occasional sight of a person.
The people Serenity did see tended to take one look at the quiet but well-armed group and fade into a building. That was normal behavior for people at a low Tier, but it bothered Serenity. The Silver Blades didn’t seem to notice. If he wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt, he could say it was because they were exhausted, but Serenity suspected it was simply so normal that they didn’t notice.
Most of the walk from the dungeon to the portal was silent, but when they were close Daryl opened up again. “Look, I know I told you I’d take you to see my sister about enchanting when we got back, but I need to go by the Blades’ Guildhouse and take care of some stuff, then I’m going to crash. I don’t even want to deal with the Mercenary Guild payout for the dungeon clear right now. Why don’t you meet us at the Guild tomorrow morning and we can take care of both things then?”
Serenity checked the sky and his internal clock. They both agreed; it was just past mid-day. He didn’t feel at all tired, but he’d been invigorated by the chair instead of drained. “I’d prefer to get them done today, neither should take much of your time. If you’re not up for it, I guess we can meet tomorrow.”
Daryl nodded. “An hour after sunrise tomorrow. I should be able to be there by then.”
“Do the rest of us have to show up?” Gabriel didn’t sound happy. “Because if we do, let’s get the payout tonight. I hurt right now, but I’m barely going to be able to move tomorrow.”
Daryl groaned. “That means an hour of dealing with things, plus I’ll have to walk past Emery’s shop instead of portaling to the North City Node, and she knows we were headed to get a fire heart. She always wants to talk, and I’m just so tired,” he complained.
Naomi chuckled. “Then sacrifice Serenity to her. He wanted to talk to her anyway. If we don’t take care of it tonight, it’s an extra trip for everyone. That’s why we always take care of it on the way back, you know that. Hells, you’re the one that usually insists on it!”
“Fine.” Daryl sounded sulky.
Naomi laughed the rest of the way to the portal node. It wasn’t all that far, but it still took a couple of minutes. Every time she started to calm down, she took another look at Daryl’s long-suffering expression and broke out laughing again.
Serenity assumed her laughter was a combination of relief from being out of the dungeon and the silliness that can happen when someone is very tired. He didn’t feel tired at all, but the Silver Blades all showed it in the precise way they walked as they paid attention to each step.
The transaction at the Mercenaries’ Guild wasn’t in Etherium; it was in small bars of metal instead. Serenity had picked up a few around town; they were the local currency, but the value was determined by weight and metal content instead of a stamped value. This was a fairly common secondary currency, so Serenity had picked up a fair bit of it during the trip from Lyka to Ranar and Asihanya.
It wouldn’t hurt to have more; until Legion started doing some dungeons or found other work, Serenity was slowly bleeding Etherium to fund the group. It wasn’t unsustainable but it was noticeable. On the other hand, Legion’s presence was like having a small cohesive mercenary company at his service whenever he wanted; it was well worth paying for Legion.
Once they were done, Daryl led the way through the city to a street filled with relatively plain buildings; they were painted with an individual color on each wall rather than the far more elaborate schemes that many homes and businesses used to attract attention. There was also no ornamentation or attempt to make them look fancy; they were little more than large boxes with roofs slanted enough to shed water.
Well before they reached Daryl’s destination, Serenity saw a woman walk out of a building. He didn’t know it was their destination until she looked around, saw Daryl, and hurried towards them.
“Daryl! Did you get it? I’ve been waiting - why do you look so tired? Did something go wrong?” The woman’s eagerness morphed into concern as she took in Daryl’s condition. She had to be Emery, Daryl’s sister. A closer look at her face showed Serenity some similarities to her brother.
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Daryl tried to perk up and look awake. Serenity was willing to give him points for the clear effort it took, but even he could tell that Daryl was exhausted. “There was a middling dungeon break before we went in, so it took longer than expected. That’s not why I’m tired, we had time to rest in the dungeon. It went better than we expected, but you remember how I’d always come home and sleep for a day after a trip with Master Zany?”
“Is he back? I know you look up to him.” Emery looked like she wanted to say more, but Serenity wasn’t sure if it was a happy response or not. Her tone of voice seemed slightly off, as if she didn’t like Zany as much as the three Silver Blades did.
Daryl shook his head. “Not yet, but we may be able to bring him back. Gabriel found out where he was and I got some instructions from him; we’ll be heading out to help him in a few days. Do you want to-” Daryl stopped and seemed uncomfortable. “Never mind, there will probably be fighting.”
Emery didn’t just roll her eyes at that; she imitated the movement with her entire head. “You say that like I didn’t kick your butt the last three times we sparred. I may not have a combat Path, but that doesn’t mean I can’t fight. Where is he and why are you going to go after him?”
Gabriel stepped in to distract Emery. “We should plan later, after we’ve had some sleep. We only came by to drop off the fire-heart.”
Daryl sent a grateful smile at Gabriel, then dug the fire-heart out of his pack and handed it to Emery. “Here you go. You can ask Serenity here all the questions you want, he’s still awake. Love you, bye!” Daryl started to walk away. A moment later, Naomi and Gabriel followed/ Daryl didn’t look back, but the other two did; both were grinning as they left.
Emery shook her head at her brother. “Silly boy. He needs to stop being so serious all the time.”
Wasn’t that a contradiction? Serenity wasn’t sure what Emery was talking about.
Emery turned her attention to Serenity, shuffled the fire-heart into her left hand, and stuck out her right. “I’m Emerald, but everyone calls me Emery. You’ve clearly met my brother; he said your name was Serenity?”
Serenity nodded. “He mentioned you when we got the fire-heart. He said you use them to add Fire Essence to your work?” Serenity hadn’t forgotten that. This might be a way to learn more about Essence. If it was used to make things, he might have to stop and learn something about how it was used.
Purely so that he could apply the knowledge to his Essence-using spells and come up with more, of course. He had no interest in learning how to enchant for its own sake; it sounded neat, but Serenity knew he was entirely unsuited to crafting.
“Yes, that’s right.” Emery wrinkled her nose at him. “You were in the dungeon with him, then? How deep did they get?”
“Ninth floor,” Serenity answered. He glanced after the group; they were already out of sight. They must have picked up their pace once they were a short distance away. “I can see why they don’t normally get that far, they don’t have a good way to deal with the environment.”
Emery chuckled. “Who does? They look up to their Guildmaster because he can get them through it, but the place is inimical. I set foot on that floor once, then we turned right back around and left. There has to be a good treasure hidden somewhere on a floor like that, but I’m never going to be able to get it.”
Serenity shrugged. “The floor ought to be doable by a group of Tier Nines. It is the ninth floor, after all. Gabriel needs to practice his Shield Skill to defend against the death-field; I’m not sure Daryl even has a shielding Skill. If he doesn’t, he’ll need to pick up a Skill or get his hands on an item that does proper aura shielding; since he doesn’t really use his aura, that should be enough to help him get through if they clear the level quickly. The two of them won’t be able to do it alone; they’re going to need at least two more Tier Nines, maybe a third if they don’t have a specialist in either Death magic or shielding with them.”
Serenity might not have cleared the level the normal way, but he knew what sort of things a level with a strong environmental hazard should have; more than that, he’d seen two of the monster types and the Guardian. He’d also seen the rest of the dungeon. That gave him a pretty good idea of what to expect from what he hadn’t seen. There should be at least one and possibly as many as four more basic monster types plus a final encounter; there might also be a secondary powerful encounter, but Serenity doubted it. The Guardian held that role, after all, and the Layered Dungeon tended to skimp on monster types and hide encounters.
“Five Tier Nines is … well, I think there are currently six in all of Takinat, assuming you’re Tier Nine since you got them through it.” Emery looked a little doubtful. “There used to be seven, but Guildmaster Zany’s missing and Claude…” Emery shook her head.
“I’m Tier Eight,” Serenity admitted, “but I’m a Death mage. The ninth floor doesn’t bother me and I can manage to protect people around me from it. It’s an unusual Skill, so I don’t expect others to have it. On top of that, we didn’t exactly do the whole level.” He paused and tried to redirect the conversation. “What happened to Claude?”
“The same thing that happened to Takinat,” Emery stated bluntly. “He tried to stop the explosions when those flyers first appeared. There were at least twenty of them and they didn’t like it when he pulled one out of the sky. That’s why no one attacks them now, even though there aren’t so many.”
Serenity hadn’t realized there were that many planes; he’d heard there were more in the initial wave, but he hadn’t heard twenty. “Were you there?”
“Closer than I wanted to be,” Emery confirmed. “Close enough that I saw the fight and had to help pick up the pieces.” She huffed slightly. “Look, if you want to talk, we can, but I’m going to tell you the same thing I tell Daryl when he comes by after a dungeon run: you’re not getting inside the building unless it’s on the way to the bathing room. You can come out when you’re fit to be around people. Otherwise, you can come back later.”
A bath did sound good. A shower would be better, but that might or might not be an option. It was fairly random which worlds had showers, though they were more common on trade routes; the library didn’t have one, but that didn’t really tell Serenity all that much.