“Which floor are you planning to go up to?” Ebony asked curiously, they never would have guessed he ‘sounded’ curious. He also realised how the young boy had been fooling around because with his Mana Perception, he sensed a small crack in his slightly enhanced bones and then started thinking, his kick didn’t really land on the boy’s belly as it was blocked with his arm behind the flat side of his sword.
“Well, on the subject of supplies, we can go without depending on scavenging and monster meat for two weeks.” A scrawny girl answered for them. With her curly and messy hair, her face could hardly be seen with the addition of a hooded dark brown robe and a wooden staff, she was likely the party's mage.
All of them looked about the same age group and to Ebony’s understanding, none of them were from around the area because there was no way Trailane Plains had so many young level 100s. The fact that even the mage was at that level was supposedly impressive. The only thing that he might have gotten wrong was how young or old they are since looks are often deceiving.
“Try not to rely on dungeon meat.” Ebony advised but gave no further follow up. Even if they believed him, they still needed to eat if they didn’t have any other food source. With no real cases of people demonising or turning into a fiend, there was no reason for them not to consume dungeon meat either.
The gun was actually made by one of the boys in the party, he wore gloves similar to those Kong Jing wore. Thick, cut and heat resistant, perfect for handling tools. Ebony put the idea of sharp and rotating bullets into his head and it wasn’t as if those were new ideas even to the boy who had the surprising job of [Crafter Lvl 100]. Although that probably wasn’t his full Class name, he was the first that had a vague crafting class other than Kong Jing that Ebony had seen.
His gun needed mana to work which made some sense, a small gun really wouldn’t really be threatening to most monsters or even people that have a ton of physical stats.
He forgot to ask for their names and they split off the moment they arrived at the end of the stairs. He saw that Ning Xin was still in a similar state of trance as he tends to fall into, mumbling some ingredients of the list and what possible reason there is that they would go bad.
Seeing her state, he led her onwards by grabbing her wrist reflexively. Surprised that there was no reaction, much less getting slapped away. She was too engrossed and he didn’t want to disturb her so he walked on leisurely instead.
On the second floor, his sculpture should be more than enough to handle whatever comes at them. Even without that, no monster actively went after them and he had seen monsters just turning around after glancing in their direction. He would bet that Ordina is very well aware of his or their presence and ability. Not having to kill those monsters was good for both them and Ordina.
‘Hmm. Her mask is distracting…Everlasting Tranquillity is going off and coming back on over and over again. Something must have happened in my trance but I don't think I fell into a trance earlier...’ Without the group of youths to distract him, he finally noticed how big of an issue he was facing.
None of his trances ever led to an issue this serious. Was it even one of his trances?
It was the only thing that could explain how he didn’t realise why he stopped running or even vomited on himself. Not to mention how his heart feels like it’s beating a little faster.
The soft but firm feeling in his hand was working wonders at keeping him calm though.
‘Must just be a bad day.’ Ebony chucked all his worries away since they were in the way. It didn’t matter much when he was a small boy since what problems would he have as a child?
But this was counterproductive now. And he noticed.
‘No, I should stop pushing aside any problems I face as an annoyance.’ He tightened his grip on Ning Xin. He didn’t know what happened in his trance but it was a sign. A sign for him to wake up.
❅❅❅
“The three robed men are just walking ice sculptures.” The hooded girl said.
“How could you tell?” The youth that sparred with Ebony asked.
“I saw the hand made of ice shoot out to block the iron ball so I tried to stand closer to them when you were talking to him, he probably noticed me doing that though, the ice sculpture put a finger to it’s lips as if to ask me to not to spread it. What do you think of his strength, leader?”
“I didn’t use any skills or body enhancement while he was using body enhancement, I used less than 30% of my strength but still felt his bones crack on impact. Although I’ll say that the way he moved was impressively smooth and trained I doubt he was as strong as we believed. As expected from a young hybrid, from your words he might be a more impressive mage than a close combatant so we have to take note of that.”
“The reports said he doesn’t speak much, even less to strangers. It also said he doesn’t react much to anything but I sensed not so subtle waves of panic.” A leather armoured [Rogue] said.
“Interesting, this hasn't happened the past week we’ve watched him right?”
“No.”
“Oh yes, what about the Xeng with that outrageous proportions beside him? I couldn’t spare an eye to see how she reacted when I immediately attacked.”
“She went to squat against the wall and mumbled something like ‘Pork storage’ and then to ‘combination of’ some word that I didn’t recognise, she might have been speaking in Xeng tongue. The boy who made the burstbow answered as he was watching their biggest threat very closely.
“Pork storage?! You’re not messing around are you?” The youth who attacked Ebony, the apparent leader blinked exaggeratingly.
The crafter could only shake his head in reply. “Too bad all the devices and even the memory lights I placed in their duelling rooms either break into tiny fragments or melt into nothing so we don’t really have a very good grasp on all their abilities. It’s clear that both fire and ice magic is going to be an extreme nuisance to handle.”
“They’re not going to be together forever so we’ll leave precautions for fire magic to a lower degree.” The leader replied.
The last member of their party, the Dwarven shield bearer cleared his throat.
“The real problem should be how half of those people in those stairs were doing the same thing as us. Observing the two. They’re pretty amateurish, probably locals who have similar ideas.”
“So that won’t be an issue?” The leader confirmed with the surprisingly observant Dwarf.
“A problem? No. They would be a nice cover, we won’t be too suspicious even if we ‘bump’ into them a few more times since they would also occasionally ‘bump’ into the target.”
They continued putting a little distance but still within range for their ‘rogue’ to keep track of the couple that were walking leisurely.
“Gah, the gravity increase is pretty annoying. It must be true that the gravity under Bubble Hills is strong.” The mage girl complained. They were all Master Classed and didn’t really have any issue traversing Ordina, the monsters were really weak but the environment was not as kind.
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“Weird.” Their rogue mumbled after a few hours.
“What’s wrong?”
“How many attacks have we received? Ordina’s latest record is still that of an ‘slightly aggressive’ dungeon right?”
“About 5 groups have attacked us so far, why?”
“They haven’t been attacked even once, I’m pretty sure the monsters saw them and turned around.”
“Hmm. Ordina might be smarter than anyone imagined, there’s a high chance it doesn’t want to waste essence on those that have beaten its guardian before.”
“Urhh! That means all the monsters that will come to us instead with how close we are!” The crafter complained about how troublesome that would be. They even had to hold back their power and capabilities so that they wouldn't stand out. All of them had hidden their Classes with an item that he made, which, although strong enough to block a very refined tier 2 Appraise or Identify type skills is very limited in duration and he was here to maintain it.
“Relax, we have those stealing our prey to take the heat for us. Did they notice the oddness?” The Dwarf asked the rogue to which he shook his head.
The five of them thanked the other parties who had the same goal as them.
❅❅❅
Ning Xin snapped out of her mumbling when it got too dark to read. Then she realised they were walking very slowly and the whole day had passed. The hand on her wrist was gently pulling her along, she only blushed a little with a smile creeping up instead of slapping it away.
They were still on the second floor and it was because of her but that wasn’t too big of an issue, they could always cover the distance the next day.
She suddenly remembered the bigger dilemma. Should she use the tactics her sister taught her to speed up their progression?
When Ebony said he’ll only propose for real after millions of spar or duels, she hadn’t been happy immediately because her first thought was how long or far away that was. Then she thought about it differently because they have so many spars together, millions would barely take a couple of years. When she thought about it that way, it seemed way too fast for her.
As they shared the same house for a week or so, she was going silly over whether she liked the distance he put or hated it. She pushed some of his advances away when she sensed that he was just being ‘casual’ and didn’t think about advancing. She imagined that her brain, heart and Sublime Instincts were in conflict with what she wanted.
Ultimately, she knew that she liked him and she really couldn’t be bothered about his origins or the silly tradition of losing to him. It wasn’t as if the non-combatant Xengs followed that tradition. With no real clue on how to make advances, she asked her Sister Jing. Even though her cousin would be less than clueless about such things, she was definitely smarter and had more ideas than Ning Xin.
“How to make advances on him?” Kong Jing slapped her mask so hard that Ning Xin could hear it echo over their call.
“You’re about to go into the dungeon together without anyone else right?”
“Why don’t you pretend to forget your tent or something.”
Ning Xin had been blown away by that horrendous idea that she hung up. Sleeping in the same tent was too big a step for her. There were too many issues with that.
She would have to sleep with her mask on. She would have to put more clothes on but she was used to sleeping light, even in a dungeon, she had special sleepwear that was not too far off in defensive capabilities but those were extremely thin. Then she had her bolster, it was made to regulate her body temperature so that she can sleep better.
Although Ebony’s natural body temperature was low, it was nowhere near freezing as long as he didn't cast enhancement. There was also zero chance she could take the large step of hugging him to sleep. She had already lost a night of sleep the first time she tried lying down beside him after she came back from the spider and moss realm. That was the biggest issue too, there was no point if she couldn’t be at ease and rest when he was in close proximity.
‘It’s okay, we can take it slowly. Let things be.’ Ning Xin told herself, her grandma did say there was no rushing a relationship.
She didn’t realise the effect Ebony’s blood had on her was greater than any of them expected.
“You can let go now.” Ning Xin words lingered in their ears.
“I could,” Ebony replied without releasing her.
She was confused for a split second as she let herself get pulled along.
“It’s late, let’s stop here for tonight.”
“Okay.”
With some lighting from Ebony’s cheap and old lighttube, she set her kitchen up but realised that she wasn’t really hungry. They did take it extremely easy today, other than the short race on the first floor they basically took an all day stroll.
“Nothing attacked us?”
“Nope.”
“I can’t cook if you keep holding my arm.” She could feel the immense reluctance he had when he slowly let her go. That was cute, too cute.
It had been the lightest dinner she had for a very long time. She had been careful and tried her best to inspect the ingredients she used but she didn’t find anything wrong with the ingredients.
“Thank you for dinner, it was delicious.” Ebony repeated, he never seemed to stop saying that after every meal. She didn’t think the repetition was annoying or that it grew old, it was always nice to hear positive feedback.
“I have an illusion ward, it’s not made for dungeon use and a little useless when used in a dungeon but it’s better than nothing.” She explained. It was helpful against most people and monsters but inside a dungeon, it tends to be ignored as a dungeon has good awareness of what was inside it. Illusions don’t work well against dungeons and hence, their monsters.
“Mmm.” Although she was aware that Ebony knew simple alarm and detection runes that if carved or inscribed around them would alert them whenever something attacked, it was quite pointless to him. He would be alerted way before that from the vibrations in the ground even when he was asleep. It was hard to catch him off guard in the past but it only got harder.
He still ran around where they decided to camp, he claims to have ‘moulded’ some runes in the earth when his feet touched the ground. He ran a bit saying he just came up with the idea and the problem was he couldn’t mould runes that fast. They were tiny runic circles that would burst out loud when something of a certain weight stepped on it, waking them up should anyone or thing get close.
As interesting or useful a skill or knowledge it was to have, she just couldn’t go through those books with dizzying symbols before getting sleepy within minutes.
“Let’s get some training in.” She naturally brought up. They need to train frequently or their Conditioning skills will lose levels.
“There are people watching us right now.”
“What?” She took deeper breaths to sniff the air. “There are some people around but it's considerably crowded down here so it's not surprising that there are some people watching us.” It was dark but she could still sniff out the surroundings. She didn’t find anything that would be a cause of concern.
“Let’s tone it down to swordplay training.”
“Sure.”
They would destroy quite a large area if they were to fling spells. The heat and cold would kill bystanders too so there was nothing weird about enhanced swordplay training.
“You might as well take the chance to improve your swordplay. No evading the attacks to your obvious openings, defend with swordplay alone.” They had already tried this but he had to consciously force his body not to dodge which, so far, only brought bad results. Once his mind tries to take over control of his natural body reflexes, just about everything goes wrong and he makes stupid decisions and takes attacks that aren’t even aimed at him.
She believed that he should still try to let his mind take over momentarily. His body doesn’t understand swordplay yet and he usually evades with insane evasive manoeuvres or magic to either block or disrupt the attack. Although there was nothing wrong with it and it always worked so far, he would never improve his swordplay like that.
Their exchange consisted of him getting poked a lot. The massive blade was too slow and inflexible to block both of her swords. She could easily follow up with a slash from a different direction after he blocked the first attack, she had to place balls of fire around him that would fire off whenever he moved his body to dodge the second attack. It was good training for her multicasting as well. She could only still barely triple cast with perfect accuracy unlike him who was far beyond her in this regard.
She changed it up to blood magic since she needed more practice with that and also so that they wouldn’t brighten up the place.
Having it as a halo above her head used to be because it was really flexible in the cave tunnel, it then got the most comfortable and easy to control when it was there. She found that it was just as good to have it there even against him. It might be her imagination but she could sense attacks from above exceptionally well, must have been from her time in that stupid spider cave.
She manipulated it to spin like how he does with his layer of mana over his greatsword. This ‘spell’ alone didn’t take much mental effort from her, almost as close to her degree of control over fire mana.
The tiny ball of blood behind him burst into red hot steam when he took half a step back to dodge by a hair’s breadth.
She went for stabs to point at all his openings. Forcing his body to learn what not to do if he couldn’t dodge or block with his magic or footwork.