The day finally arrived. Danjo had come to the decision that he would stick and Fate and the others. It was a decision John didn’t really understand, but if that was what Danjo wanted to do, it was what Danjo would do. Due to this, one last meeting was called in the clearing.

“A few things before we go in,” Fate told Danjo.

“Danjo. I’d rather you didn’t speak of my abilities.”

“Huh? But-”

“Just don’t, ok?” Fate sighed. “Battle mages are rare. I don’t want to reveal that I can both wield aura and magic at the same time. Please?””

Danjo nodded slowly. Personally, he’d love to be a battle mage. The ability to be proficient in both casting and fighting was something many desperately wished for. It was a genius level of talent that was a once in a life time kind of thing. He didn’t understand why Fate was hiding his power, but there was probably a good reason, right?

“Remember, this dungeon exists to check out your devices. Officially, you’re someone the guild has recruited in order to make the exploration of dungeons easier. ”

“That… that’s the excuse?” John frowned. “You’re serious?”

“What?”

“People are buying this?”

“...yes?”

John shook his head and muttered to himself. “Deal with it. It’s a story. It’s convenient. Deal with it…”

“Danjo. Despite this being under the guise of being a contracted worker, you know that this is training for you, right?”

Danjo nodded firmly.

“Good. If you want to save your sister, then you need to prove that you can keep up.”

“Um… how about him?” Danjo said, pointing to John.

“What about him?”

“He said he doesn’t do anything.”

Fate glared at John. “Seriously? Why would you say that?”

“What? It’s true,” John shrugged. “I’m like a mascot or something. What do you want me to do?”

“John, seriously. This needs to stop. I don’t know why you’re so flippant about everything, but at some point, it’s going to cost us our lives.”

“Nuh uh.”

“Nuh- forget about it.”

“Yeah, yeah. Sure. By the way, what’s Danjo’s role? What’s he gonna do?”

“Well, he mostly has defensive tools, right?”

Danjo nodded. “Well, there’s the reinforced tents, alarm sensors, communication devices and the electrical barrier… I’m also equipped with my gauntlets and some jet boots.”

John raised an eyebrow. “Jet boots?”

“Well, they’re just boots that I tried fiddling around with… I found a way to get wind magic to come out which should theoretically help me run, but they’re still a little experimental… they don’t do much else.”

John whistled. “Cool. No weapons?”

“O-other than the gloves, no…”

“Hm… that might be an issue. I get that you’re against hurting people, but we have to hunt mana beasts, right?”

Danjo nodded slowly. “Sorry, but I didn’t have time to prototype anything. They take time, so-”

“No, no, it’s fine. But for the next trip, I… ah, never mind. There’s no point in bringing it up now. Do you think you can fight?”

“I can do a little bit of earth magic, but I mostly use it at the forge.”

John rubbed his chin. “Damn. There goes my party strategy.”

“Party strategy?” Fate asked.

“There are some pretty obvious roles, I guess. Prota’s a mage, but a squishy one.”

“...squishy?”

“She’s easy to kill. If she gets hit a couple of times, it’s over, unlike you, who’s a lot more tenacious.”

“Is that supposed to be an insult?”

“No, no, I’m serious. You can take a few more hits. Ideally, we’d have someone that had a shield or something that could stand at the front and block a lot of attacks or rush into the enemy, a tank of sorts, but if you’re not using your sword then that’s not really an option.”

John looked at Danjo. “Theoretically Danjo could fulfill that role if he had the necessary tools, but that’s not the case right now.”

Danjo’s eyes widened at that. “Armour…”

“It’s just an idea. We shouldn’t be thinking about that right now, ok?”

Danjo nodded slowly, but a light was entering his eyes as his brain began to think of new ideas.

“Ideally, we’d have Danjo tanking, Prota dealing high amounts of damage from the back and Fate using his sword, but we don’t really have that. I was also thinking of something like Danjo setting up turrets to defend us while we defend Danjo, but again, kind of pointless.” John shrugged. “That’s for another day. Right now, Danjo, I hate to say it, but you’re a little, uh, useless. Combat wise.”

Danjo hung his head. Fate wanted to rebuke John, but it wasn’t a false statement. Combat wise, Danjo was pretty limited in what he could do.

“I mean, it’s not like you’re not useful. I just meant in terms of combat.”

Danjo’s head came back up.

“Your communication devices. How many do you have?”

“I was only able to make three,” Danjo muttered. “Sorry about that.”

“That’s fine,” John nodded. “One for Fate. One for you, and one for me.”

“H-how about your sister?”

“She’ll be fine,” John shrugged.

Everyone looked over to Prota, who had fallen asleep under a tree, Kit sitting happily on her head. Discussions like these weren’t really her thing. John would tell her what she needed to do, and that was enough for her.

“Look. I’m not gonna sugarcoat it. We might die. There’s a sizeable chance.”

Fate seemed mildly annoyed, but he was starting to get used to these kinds of predictions. Danjo, on the other hand, was shocked.

“W-what?”

“What, did you think you were gonna be safe?”

“Well…”

“You should be safe. Just, I don’t know, follow Fate. But if you’re managing equipment, I need you to be our source of information. If things go wrong, you need to tell us, ok?”

Fate turned to John. “You can’t predict something like that?”

“No?”

“Then aren’t you useless?”

“...yeah? We established this already. I told you, I’m the mascot. I just do a little song and dance and cheer you guys up.”

“You predicting our deaths is cheerful?”

“...it’s ironic?”

Danjo watched the two bicker with a confused look, then turned his head to see Prota waking up. She observed Fate and John with a bored expression, then turned to Danjo, who flinched.

Prota was personally alright with Danjo, provided he didn’t talk to her or get closer, and since he had no intentions of doing that in the first place, it seemed that they got along pretty well. There’d been a few times when he’d asked her yes or no questions, to which she’d responded with a single nod or shake, and that was the extent of their conversation.

This was such a time.

“Is this… normal?”

Nod.

“Are they ok?”

Another nod.

“Oh…”

~~~

Dungeon raid. A privilege available to adventurers B rank and above, a task that could potentially allow one to gain fortune, artifacts or strength, filled with mana beasts and dangers. A group of ten people were about to enter one today.

And three of them didn’t seem all that pleased.

There was visible tension between two out of three of the groups, namely Fate’s group and Draco’s group. The other three people, Kenina, Azar and Cyrus, if John remembered correctly, seemed to be dissociating from each other, which was good as far as he was concerned. Fate had a clear dislike of Draco, whereas Prota simply preferred staying away from the young noble. John's expression was like that of someone looking at a mangled corpse. He would’ve been displayed open hostility had Fate not told him to behave.

The noble, on the other hand, seemed to have a feeling of disdain towards Fate’s group. It wasn’t really malice; it was more like finding out that your house had a few cockroaches in it. Disgust and annoyance were some of the feelings that came to mind. He would snarl and shake his head every time he looked over.

“Are you sure I can’t kill him?” John pleaded. “Come on, surely no one will care if he dies.”

“His subordinates?”

“We can just kill them, too!”

“They’re just doing their job! You want to kill them for doing their job? And what about his family?”

“We just say he died in the dungeon!”

“You think they’ll believe that?”

John sighed. “Fine.”

He looked disappointed, though. Prota smacked the back of his head.

“Hey,” he complained but left it at that.

“Alright, looks good,” the guard at the entrance said, looking up from a sheaf of papers. “You’re all verified. Best of luck.”

The group shuffled as they entered the dungeon.

“Just to be clear, I have no intentions of joining you commoners,” Draco announced as soon as they were inside.

“Yeah, yeah. I got a parting gift for you,” John sighed, flipping Draco off.

“You-!”

Draco’s knight dragged him off as the young noble kept yelling, even after he was no longer within sight.

“Well… that’s been dealt with,” Fate said awkwardly.

Only seven people remained. Fate’s party and the three extras that had signed up last.

“Uh… Kenina, Azar and Cyrus, right?” John said, turning to the extras.

“Yeah. I’m Kenina,” a man with a rough beard said, raising his hand.

He was wearing knuckle dusters on his hands and a bag on his back. His eyes were covered by scraggly hair, but they were visible enough to see the circles underneath.

“Nice to meet you. I’m Azar,” the woman with long black hair announced. She was wearing laced leather boots and fishnets underneath shorts, with a short top. Twin daggers hung at her sides.

The last one, probably Cyrus, was wearing a mask that covered most of his face. He was wearing light leather armour and gloves, which made sense considering the bow on his back.

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

“You are?” Cyrus said in a quiet voice.

“Um… Fate. Danjo. Prota. John,” John said, pointing to each person respectively.

“Yeah. Cool stuff,” Kenina grunted. “So, what now?”

John shrugged. “Do whatever the fuck you want. Why’re you asking us?”

“...”

The three of them looked at John casually, but he could tell.

They were sizing him up. Thankfully, he wasn’t a very menacing figure.

“Sounds good. You guys can head on out first,” Azar said with a smile and a wave. “Maybe we’ll run into each other some time.”

Fate was going to protest, but John started pushing him towards a tunnel. This dungeon was much larger than the one they’d been to previously, so there were multiple paths one could take right from the start.

“I thought we wanted to keep an eye on them?” Fate hissed as soon as they were far enough.

“Uh… not really? It’s probably better to just avoid them altogether. We want to test Danjo’s stuff out, right? Let’s camp, hunt a few monsters, see if we can find anything useful, and then leave. Why pick a fight?”

Danjo nodded enthusiastically at that one. He was all for avoiding any fights they could.

“...fine,” Fate sighed. “Honestly, that makes sense. I just didn’t expect something like that from you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Well, I thought you’d want to fight them. Try to take them out early, something like that. Strategically, that’s the best move, right?”

Prota nodded in agreement. She wasn’t as against it, but that was more like John. She, too, was confused. It was unlike John to avoid something like this. If both she and Fate had anticipated an early fight, it was quite surprising for John to just drop it like this.

“Just think of it as a change of heart. Come on, there’s no point in discussing this any longer. Let’s go.”

Fate nodded hesitantly, but in the end, it was the easiest course of action.

[Prota]

Prota flinched as the message came up on her system. She still wasn’t entirely used to it, so it was a bit of jumpscare every time one came up.

[I’m much better at dealing with people than monsters]

John looked back at her, and she cocked her head to the side. What did that mean?

[So if you can, protect yourself more than me, ok?]

Prota’s eyes widened. John had lied. He wasn’t trying to avoid conflict. He was anticipating it. Waiting for it.

But why wasn’t he telling Fate? Why was he hiding this from the rest of the group? She wasn’t sure if she was supposed to have figured this out, but she had, and so a decision was presented to her.

Was she supposed to let everyone else know? Or did she go along with John’s plan?

~~~

A few hours later, a few acid spiders had been taken care of. Fate had let Danjo deal with one on his own, just to see how Danjo felt about fighting, and it went about as well as anyone would have expected. Danjo was afraid, but as Fate reminded him of his sister, it seemed to give Danjo a boost of courage. The boost of courage wasn’t enough, though, and Fate inevitably stepped in.

The dungeon was meant to introduce B rank adventurers to dungeons in general, so it was much easier than the one Prota had been in earlier. Despite Danjo being similar to a low C rank adventurer, he was doing alright with help.

Prota, on the other hand, was bored. She didn’t realize it herself, but she missed the thrill of a life or death fight. Knowing she couldn’t die was becoming engrained in her. She’d been trained in it so much that she was starting to lose her instinctual fear of death, and without that, everything else became a bit more dull.

However, that boredom soon vanished as she watched Danjo’s devices come to life. He threw a few balls onto the ground that sprang up into tents. Inside were cushions and pillows. It was bare but comfortable. The cloth had been treated with magic and blunt force resistance, so they were more secure than sleeping out in the open.

A few metal devices came out next, and he planted them on the ground. They immediately turned the colour of their surroundings. It wasn’t perfect camouflage, but you’d have to look for something out of place to know they were there.

“Um, Fate, would you mind stepping over one of those?” Danjo called out.

Fate obliged, and a bright flash lit up the caves, blinding everyone except for Danjo, who’d been prepared.

“Um… I think it works.”

“Wow, you think?” John said sarcastically.

Last was the electric barrier. Danjo set up a few poles that he’d been carrying around and then pulled a device out of his bag.

“Ok, everyone, this is it,” he said nervously. With an audible gulp, he pressed the button.

Nothing happened.

“Uh… is this supposed to be doing something?”

“Well theoretically, if something passes through, it should shock them…”

John nodded. “So we just need to test it out, right?”

Before anyone could stop him, he walked up to a pole and walked through. Or, at least, he tried. He yelped as he was shocked and fell down, his hair standing right up.

“John,” Prota said as she looked over him. “Stupid.”

“What?”

“Idiot,” she pouted. “Throw a rock.”

John turned to Danjo.

“Um… that probably would’ve worked, yes… I’m not at the point where I can differentiate between object and animal.”

“Rocks aren’t conductive to electricity,” John muttered, but it didn’t seem like anyone heard him. With the way things were going, the electricity was probably more like a weapon than it was a literal electrical field.

Fate stifled a laugh as John sat up. Prota pounded on his head like a drum as if trying to beat sense back into him.

“Yeah, yeah, my bad,” John muttered as he combed his hair back into place.

~~~

With a temporary camp set up, the group wandered out, looking for monsters to hunt. Fate left with Danjo, while John left with Prota.

“John,” Prota called out cautiously.

“Mm?”

“You… want to hunt those people, right?”

John stopped and turned to Prota. “What makes you say that?”

“Nn… John thinks they’re following us, right?”

“Well, probably, yeah.”

“Then why did John tell Prota to protect herself?”

John crouched down and put his hand on her shoulder. “Prota. I’m much better at dealing with people than I am monsters. Dealing with monsters just requires strength. Dealing with people requires messing with their minds. Monsters don’t react the same way people do. But… Prota, I hate to say it, but you’re especially weak against people. You're still scared of them, aren’t you?”

Prota flinched. Was she? She didn’t think so.

“You’re afraid to kill them, right?”

Prota’s arms dropped to her side as she thought about it. Was she afraid to kill people? Every time she’d fought. It’d always been to protect John, or it’d been a task requested by John, but had she really hesitated?

The bandits. The assassins. The dwarf. Had she not fought well?

“I didn’t think I’d need to bring this up, because I didn’t think we’d need to, but it looks like we’re going to be involved with other people a lot more than I thought. Prota. I wanted to deal with it on my own, but…”

John sighed. “You hesitate, Prota. Just a little, every time you attack. It’s not a lot, but it’s a very small flinch that could end up with you dead.”

Prota nodded slowly. She didn’t get it, but… sure. Let’s say she did. What did that mean?

“I… damn,” John sighed. He didn’t know what to do.

Suddenly a hissing sound caught their attention as three snakes slithered out of a tunnel. It was a welcome distraction for both of them.

“Wanna take them?”

Prota nodded as John sat back. She closed her eyes and focused as the flame in her hands turned blue. With a wave of the hands, the fire stretched into the shape of an arrow.

“Go,” Prota muttered, and the arrow flew forwards, piercing through the head of one snake. The other two immediately lunged at her, venom dripping from their fangs. A gust of wind pushed her out of the way in time, the acid causing her eyes to sting and water up, but she closed her eyes and felt for the cores, clenching her fists and surrounding their heads with water.

With a catalyst already present, she clenched her fists and froze the water, crushing their skulls, the sound of ice snapping and crackling as the snakes fell to the floor.

“...damn,” John nodded. “Pretty good.”

He got up and walked over to Prota, patting her on the head. “You didn’t use your staff or anything either. Your mana control is improving a lot.”

“John knows about mana control?”

“Mm… a little bit? I’ve read quite a few books where it’s a pretty important factor, so I can sort of imagine what you’re doing. The system in this world might be a little different, though, so don’t rely on me to be a good teacher or anything.”

They continued to go down the tunnel, fighting off various monsters along the way. Prota still had to stay alert, but it still just didn’t feel the same. It wasn’t that the enemies were weak. It was just that Prota was too used to fighting against enemies far stronger than her. Now that her enemies were of average level, it felt dull.

Despite the feeling of boredom that constantly bothered her, there was one more thing she couldn’t stop thinking about.

Were there really people after them?

She had to check.

Her sensitivity to mana was good enough that she could check for mana cores without closing her eyes now, so she kept following John as she scanned the area for people. She could sense a few mana cores here and there, but they didn’t feel like souls. They were probably mana beasts. Weak ones, at that.

“Prota,” John said quietly.

The small girl snapped to attention, but was relieved to find that John was only warning her about the orc that was in front of them. She remembered the first time she’d run into one of these. It’d been terrifying. Even now, she could feel the hairs on her arms stand up. But she knew.

She could take this one on for sure.

Frost gathered as she summoned a Blossom of Ice, the flower forming in her hand. Mist spilled to the ground, gathering as the spell grew larger and larger.

With a cry, she flung herself forwards, throwing the spell with all her might towards the orc’s face. It hadn’t been expecting an attack, so the spell immediately made contact, exploding in the monster’s face and coating it with ice. She threw her arm back, bringing up a large rock, then brought it up and smashed it into the beast’s head, shattering it.

Prota landed lightly on the ground and looked back at John, who was clapping politely. However, she froze up as she saw his expression change.

“Prota! Look out!”

She spun around to see a headless orc charging towards her. What? Wasn’t it dead?

It swung its arm in a wide sweep, but she wasn’t fast enough. She felt the impact hit hard, knocking the air out of her lungs as she was smashed into the wall.

“Prota!” John yelled, charging forward. It didn’t matter, though. The orc fell to the ground, dead.

Prota’s mind was hazy. Did orcs have that ability? Were they capable of continuing to move after death? She could hear a ringing sound as John’s voice yelled her name. It sounded so distant. The pain was supposed to be there, but it didn’t hurt. Her vision swam in and out as John ran up to her, grabbing her shoulders.

Eventually, she began feeling a tingling sense in her fingers, and the fog in her brain cleared up. Right. Mana recovery. She felt the staff on her back and drew mana, casting mana recovery again and again. Eventually, she could feel something knitting itself back together in her body.

“...you ok? Oh, thank god, ok, you’re fine,” she heard John’s out of breath voice pant. “Seriously, don’t do that again. That scared the shit out of me.”

He sighed and crouched down in front of her. “I didn’t expect the orc to do that. Is this a different breed or something? I should ask Fate about it…”

Prota’s eyes snapped open. Dust was still settling behind them, but something moved.

Something was there.

“John,” she muttered, but John was too absorbed in his thoughts to hear. “John.”

Suddenly, from the dust came Kenina, the knuckle duster wielding man, his fists raised high. There was no doubt about it. He was attacking them.

“John!” Prota yelled, but she was too late. He wouldn’t be able to react in time.

Time seemed to slow down as Prota felt herself move. The instinct to protect John made her hands raise up, an icicle forming in the air, ready to fire… But for just a split second, her body froze up. Something overcame her desire to protect John. The icicle began to move, but it was too late.

Metal met head, and John was knocked flat on the ground, unconscious.