Looking in the direction Janik was facing, Sam took a more thorough look at them. They looked exactly like the previous one that attacked them, seemingly carrying something in their feet. Their feet looked more shiny and metallic than they should, hinting at their having the same claw blades as the first one.

“Rinse and repeat!” Janik commanded.

Sam, having already caught the darts before, knew the weight of the darts and what they were, meaning that he could plan accordingly more easily. He could use fewer Psyhands as he’d know how much he needed to catch them, and he could just return them to sender much faster unless he intended to keep them. After all, there was no need to send the darts back if it wouldn’t do anything meaningful. He could have kept them and used them to deliver Elars’s Venom in the future, as that would be more practical than using the toothpicks, a bit late for today but it could be something to consider in the future. The problem was that the darts were surprisingly heavy, not a problem to use here and now but it wasn’t viable for Sam to lug these around.

To save on Energy and effort, although all Psyhand-related effort was just thinking and reacting, Sam opted for a simpler solution.

Given his current weight limit per Psyhand, he could have one hand hold two daggers, though this was highly impractical for proper combat, it could let him temporarily free up some hands for other things but still have the weapons in the attack zone, not having to drop them and pick them up. Just a quality-of-life thing that sped up his attack time.

The reason for him doing this was to let him faster swap from grabbing or swatting incoming attacks away and be ready for his attack.

As they expected to happen, the ravens dropped two darts each, their distance gave Sam more than enough time to ready himself. Handing over four of his daggers to other hands, his now free four hands could grab the incoming darts. Though their weight and momentum meant they didn’t stop immediately in the air, he had plenty of time to slow them down, while redirecting them outwards, to make sure that they stopped and didn’t hit them. It was a super simple thing to do, something one would normally do with their arms if something was thrown at them. Then, if he wanted to throw them back, he could have just handed over some more weapons to other hands and Launched them, but instead, he just dropped them, letting the darts fall to the ground as he rearmed himself.

The Ravens now having only their claws and beaks, had no choice but to get in range.

“Janik, can you see how much health they have?” Sam asked if he intended to split up his arsenal between them before they decided to charge.

“70, each. I guess their stats are more in damage as this should be a relatively high-level dungeon.” Janik didn’t look away from them as he responded.

Sam needed to get himself the appraisal skill at some point, that was almost too practical even at the lowest level.

This also gave him what he needed, based on the dead raven, they were surprisingly easy to hit for him while diving in, partly due to the lack of dodging. He expected they would do that when they got close but there was no ‘need’ to dodge during the dive, making them a very linear moving target.

Sam knew the simple math behind his weapons, so he split them up simply, the named weapons and short sword went against one target, and his swarm of 20 cheaper daggers went on the other. This should split his total damage up, if everything hit it would be 102 damage on one target and 100 on the other. Expecting some misses and perhaps critical hits should be good enough for the two.

The ravens dived towards them, tucking their wings in closer to provide enough lift but less drag for speed, Sam had already split up the weapons and moved them in the rough path of their dive, striking at them as soon as they entered his Area.

Everything was working according to his plan, Shadowfang landed a crit, not that it was needed, from the daggers three of them missed, but three others critted, balancing that out. The end damage, not counting any Defences they shouldn’t have, was 122 damage on the first target and 100 on the second, they both went limp in mid-air with a dramatic pulse of blood, crashing into the ground shortly after.

“Yeah.... this tactic is kind of stupidly effective,” Janik commented as he took a more relaxed stance. “Normally this place is easy for rangers, but hitting them with arrows is not always easy, and mages can take them out easier but run out of mana... You’re just cheating both.”

He toned this like it was a negative thing for the other, but Sam could hear his smile even before he turned around.

Sam also felt rather good about the situation. Though his telekinetic combat had started rather weak and hard to use, he had long since realised the exponential increase in its practicality and damage output. In the beginning, even Sam didn’t realise it, but Janik did. Something Sam would always be grateful for. He would probably have featured it out eventually but Janik’s support helped Sam’s beginnings considerably.

“How much damage can you do now, if everything hits?” Janik asked Sam as he walked closer to him and Dia.

“If everything hits, not counting critical hits or anything else, 202 damage.” Sam had done the math when he stocked up. The Moonblade had a damage rating of 40, Shadowfang and Bleeding Edge had 20, the Vampiric dagger had 15, Short Sword was on 7, and all his 20 daggers were on 5.

“Ah... well... That doesn’t make me feel envious at all.” Janik commented surprisingly honestly as he sheathed his swords.

He had shared his damage before, the main difference was that he didn’t have any good weapons, so it might be worth doing some trade down the road with him. He could do 40 damage with one hit, which wasn’t more than the Moonblade, but he did it with 10 damage swords. This was also why he was so annoyed at Sam getting the Moonblade, because its damage rating of 40, in Janik’s hands would do 160 damage per hit, as per Janik’s math back when the Moonblade was rewarded to Sam.

A good thing was that, in a pinch, if Sam couldn’t do enough damage, he could loan Janik the Moonblade for a group damage increase, which was always nice.

“Ah well...” Janik ended his little complaining moment with a sigh before he vaguely gestured to the three dead ravenfolk. “You mind getting their cores before we push on?

Sam didn’t have anything to add to the complaint, and he did have an easier, or rather cleaner time when getting the cores. The first Ravenfolk was a bit messy to get the core out of, as he didn’t know exactly where it was, but after figuring that out the other two were much easier.

Dia looked at the massacre-looking dissection with a curious expression, seeming to wonder what he was doing.

Pointing at the dead birdmen on the ground she turned towards Sam. “Rukna?”

Sam knew this word! Shaking his head at first as he confirmed “No. No Rukna.” He knew the... Dia-language, whatever it was called, for No was the Yap-sound, but he couldn’t properly make it, and he had taught Dia yes and no in English, so that was easier for him.

But, after he had replied no, he wondered as he turned to Janik. “Are... they edible?”

“I... don’t know.” Janik replied surprisingly swiftly and without any weird expressions that Sam somewhat expected. “It just feels weird thinking about eating anything even vaguely humanoid... But... I guess predators can eat most things with muscle?” He seemed a little curious at the end before he turned back to Sam.

“Was that what she asked? That word, Rukna, is related to food?”

“Yeah.” Sam confirmed. “As far as I understand, that word means ‘food’.” Making air quotes around ‘food’ he turned back to Dia. He shrugged as he replied “Food?”. Really hoped that shrugging was a translatable expression.

Instead, he chose to make it a learning experience. One he wondered how she would react to. Having already taken out the cores of the monsters, he hovered the crystalline pearl-looking rough spheres in front of Dia. “Core.” He pointed at them as she looked at them.

She looked at him and back at the cores. “C.. Core?” Her pronunciation was a bit off but perfectly understandable.

Sam smiled back. “Yes. Core! Good job.” As she seemed to get it, he handed over a dagger to another Psyhand to move it over to her and give her some head pats as a reward. She seemed to like them, even though she jolted slightly as soon as the hand made contact. Perhaps randomly placing a hand on her in a combat-possible environment was not the best timing. He made a mental note to let her know about it the next time.

She leaned into the invisible hand as he gave her some rewarding petting as he used the hands holding the cores to put them into his backpack.

As he turned towards Janik he had a super wide smile, sporting the same expression as he did earlier when they had a moment, like a parent taking in the cuteness of his child doing something adorable.

Not being able to take this seriously, Sam returned a dissatisfied stare before continuing down the path towards the valley. Janik followed after Sam passed him as Dia trotted along, her ears twitching back and forth as she reacted to anything happening around them.

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The walk down into the valley took some time, it wasn’t that it was very problematic to traverse, but rather that they had to keep checking things they were uncertain about, the possibility of being attacked at any time was the main issue. As they entered the cloud layer everything took more time as it made just seeing the ground harder, only being able to see the ground a step or two ahead. Sheathing his weapons and using his Psyhands to touch and feel the ground ahead, helped Sam, Dia looked surprisingly adept at this and Janik just seemed to stumble forward not considering much, but doing it with an odd level of fluidity.

Eventually, they exited into the valley itself, below the fog or clouds, letting them get a proper first look at it. It was almost paradise-like. Though they couldn’t see too far into the distance as there were parts of the fog still lingering at a lower altitude, the grass was green and healthy, and the thick forest of trees and plants was lush and growing well. There were several ravenfolk flying in the distance, but still being a few hundred yards ahead of them, they didn’t seem to notice the group by the time they had disappeared into the thick forest.

“Isn’t this forest a bit too thick?” Sam asked the group, but mostly aimed at Janik as Dia didn’t understand more than a few words.

“What do you mean? It looks normal to me?” Janik replied, not seeming to get Sam’s point.

“If this is a Ravenfolk Dungeon, why is it so dense? Won’t that make flying through it problematic?” Sam looked at the trees and imagined a Ravenfolk, the kind they had fought a few times now, trying to find a place to land. Something smaller can make it through, but a man-sized creature with wings will have more problems.

“Hmm... Now that you mention it...” Janik commented as he took out his phone, checking a few things on it before he turned to Sam. “It seems there are also Goblins and Harpies in this dungeon. The Ravenfolk are the main targets and give the most XP, but as you guessed they usually don’t come down into the thicker part of the forest, the Goblins and Harpies live there, in the more open areas there might be a mix.”

Scrolling back and forth on his phone, his eyes darting back and forth as he did so before he finally locked the screen and put it in his pocket. “There are more of the Harpies and Goblins than the Ravenfolk, though the Ravenfolk are the most dangerous one-on-one, the others are more organized. They don’t fight amongst themselves so it’s everyone against us.”

Though it sounded like a horrible situation, Janik was smiling as he pulled out his blades. He looked like he was enjoying this more than he perhaps should be.

Trekking through the forest, became surprisingly easy compared to before. The shared experience of the group, having four sources of perceptive eyes, ears and noses as they snuck through the forest, they managed to find the locals before they found the group. Dia’s perception was the most acute so she found most of them before the others, quickly becoming the scout and alarm of the group. When they did find someone, as soon as Sam saw them he took care of them swiftly and without issue.

It was almost strange to Sam how easy this felt, he knew from the information Janik gave him earlier that the monsters in Dungeons were somewhat ‘dumber’ than the ones outside of it. Perhaps that was just how the System handled the Dungeons. As the layout changed a bit between runs of the same Dungeons, it made things easier for it to handle. Or perhaps it was just that the Dungeon Instance wasn’t considered as real as anything outside of it, meaning they never evolved into getting a proper culture or something? Sam had no idea, he was considering diving deeper into this later. Since Dia had emotions, personal thoughts, wishes and whatnot, it was clear she was not just ‘some Dungeon creature’, but she was still a System-created one. Likewise were the Kobolds and other Aetherians living on Earth or in Atheria settlements... it was strangely confusing.

The only new thing in this dungeon at this point was the first few Harpies. They were much faster than the ravenfolk, given their smaller size, though they were just as easy to fight even with their increased mobility. Sam didn’t show any aiming with a bow or something pointing out where things were coming from, like a weapon or spell, meaning that the locals had huge problems realizing what they needed to dodge from. He hit more than he missed and saved a few instances of enemies showing up after he had attacked further away, the others in the party didn’t have to attack much.

The 26 Goblins and 22 Harpies they had found so far fell even before they were a proper danger. The main reason for this was Sam’s remote-attacking style. The few that managed to get close were expertly taken down by Dia and Janik.

Though the shared XP had barely made a dent in Sam’s progression, and barely anything in Elara’s progression, Dia had levelled up thrice and was about halfway to the next level. She was now level 13 and had two more she could get before the level cap stopped her. He had put one of the points in Vitality, bumping her health to 170, and the two others in Dex, upgrading her damage a little bit.

“This... is oddly boring...” Janik commented. “Though I’m 20 Experience away from levelling, it’s been so long since last time, this is going to be good!

He looked pumped like he wanted to rush in and just find the first and next best thing. But, his cautious nature had him remain surprisingly calm as soon as he started moving. It was good to see that he was practising what he preached about patience and safety.

Sam had to admit that he really, really lucked out when it came to his first companion and Player mentor.

Continuing forward, looking for the next group of enemies, they came to a clearing in the thick forest, it opened up considerably and seemed to have some ruins of some old, forgotten buildings. They were once made by stacking large stones on top of each other, filling the space between them with some cement-like plaster, or whatever it was. The remaining walls and the odd stones here and the only things showing that the buildings once existed. Though there was very little in the sense of shelter, there was plenty in the sense of cover, lots of walls, piles of rocks and fallen pillars. They remained there for a few minutes, the quest log showed that there were 30 monsters left, not counting the boss. They had met surprisingly few Ravenfolk, hinting that there could be a bunch more left. And since this was the first proper area in the forest that they could comfortably move, there were probably a few in here.

After they had remained on the edge of the clearing, listening and trying to figure out what was living in the area.

“Var lokta ror.” Dia comments to Sam after having listened for a while.

Sam nodded and turned to Janik. “She can hear six.” There was a strange feeling of pride in understanding her sentence. He knew how to count to ten in her language, and anything above ten was just ‘many’ or ‘more than ten’, he didn’t know but since they had five finges on each hand it kind of made sense that their counting system would stop there for now.

Janik smiled and nodded. “It’s good to have our little radar with us.”

It was a weird compliment but Sam couldn’t argue with his logic. Patting Dia with his hand, as she was within reach, felt appropriate before they continued.

“Let’s try and sneak, take them out silently so we don’t get swarmed.” As the team leader, Janik explained the very simple tactic.

It was hard to translate this to Dia, but she seemed to understand their actions so far. However, this did make Sam realise that he needed to put in some extra effort to learn her language or have her learn English when they got back. It was nice how easily she picked what to do based on their actions, but communication would make tactics much easier.

Sam nodded to Janik, and they started moving, Janik went in first and ran as silently as he could over to the first point of cover, which was a collapsed wall. After he had made it there he spent a few seconds looking around a corner, showing Sam two fingers. He waited a few long seconds before he beaconed them to come.

Seeing a signal to move, Sam motioned for Dia to follow before he ran over as silently as he could. Dia did as told and made practically zero sounds as she moved, putting even his item-boosted stealth skill to shame. That’s what you get when you compare yourself to a professional, after all.

Janik motioned for Sam to come closer and look around the corner, swapping locations he did as instructed and saw two Ravenfolk fighting over something dead in a clearing between where the buildings once were, pieces of meat and gore were smeared across their beaks. It was hard to see what it was as it had been mauled so hard, but both had their backs towards Sam.

Turning to Janik he made a shanking motion in the air with an empty hand while looking at him questioningly.

Janik nodded, looking quite eager, probably for his level-up.

Sam looked back around the corner and analysed the situation. They were both within his Area, and there was no need to not use the same tactic as before, splitting up his weapons accordingly Sam waited for a moment they looked focused on their food. It didn’t take many seconds of waiting before one of them dove in to get a grab to bite, which caused the other one to react, poking him with his beak. This looked like a good moment.

Sam sent his weapons towards them.