Day 5, 5:10 PM
I invest my free ability point into strength, pumping it up to seventeen, and check my new level up condition.
Get initial proficiency with five weapon categories? Easy and annoying. If only I had an ax instead of an ax-shaped club.
I offer Fred a hand and help him up.
“I really mean it, a good fight. You too, Lucy.” The girl blushes at the compliment and bobs her head up and down. “I’ve got a feel for your skills, and I know what to expect in combat.”
It’s tempting to simply tell Gila to stay out of our way and leave the fighting to us, but that wouldn’t be fair. It would be smart and safer for her, but it could raise questions about sharing resources we find, whether we should send her home, which we should, and many other venomous topics best left unspoken if you want people to work in harmony.
What if she dies? I disregard the thought, Edna has described the levels of danger in dungeons, and until we reach the thirtieth level, there’s nothing more dangerous than me down here.
“How do you feel? Are you ready for our first exploration? The first floor should be simple, with a handful of weak monsters.”
Gila is the most enthusiastic, jumping in place, ready to go, Fred is still catching his breath while Lucy is looking at her club, blood rushing through her cheeks, marbling them in red.
“Could you teach me how to fight like you?” She asks, and Fred nods.
Yes, but not without sinking decades into it.
“Yes,” Blunt starts, and I shut my mouth before it finishes my thought. The skill is useful, but blurting out my thoughts like that at random times is as much of an annoyance as it ever was.
“But it would take time, and you would have to invest a lot of blood, sweat, and tears into it.” I add as soon as I’m convinced I’m in control of my own mouth.
“I’ll do whatever it takes,” Fred says, and I guess I can teach the kids some basics about fighting while we’re exploring the dungeon together, we’re bound to stay here for several days anyway.
“Sure. We can start with you fighting monsters until they become too strong for you to handle.” Gila shrinks. Her shoulders draw together, and she stoops a bit, as if she’s about to curl up. Meanwhile, the other two are enthusiastic.
“I won’t force anyone to do anything. Once the monsters grow tougher, we fight like a team. The main objectives are to survive, to stay safe, and to gain experience.” I’m lying.
Once the monsters grow too tough for me to handle alone, I’m shipping the kids back home, regardless of what they say. Funny thing, I could tell that straight to Gila, but it would hurt the other two’s feelings.
“Now, the stairs for the next level should be somewhere near the entrance, do you know where?” Edna told me exactly where they were, but as a foreigner, I can’t know such details.
“It’s over there.” Fred points left. “Hidden behind those yellow ferns. My father explained everything about the dungeon when I was younger.”
The question is, why didn’t his father explain those things before Fred and his cousins set out for this little expedition of theirs? There’s something here the kids aren’t telling me, but that’s fine. Their small-town intrigue has nothing to do with me.
What I’m more interested in is the layout of the dungeon. The mages who created this place made it so that delving down to the deeper floors doesn’t require navigating through the ones above.
If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
A dungeon-delving team can go straight down to level eleven unchallenged, but after the eleventh floor, the monsters become stronger and more aggressive. In theory, a beginner delver can reach the bottommost floor unobstructed and die to the captured wormlord, but it would require a whole lot of luck and an utter lack of common sense to achieve such a feat.
Each floor is large, and it takes hours to explore, and descending the stairs takes around five minutes. So more advanced teams don’t bother with the upper floors, wasting two hours to go down and back up is enough of a time-sink to keep the first few floors clear for the beginners.
“All right, Lucy first.” I motion the young woman to take the point.
Fred is about to protest, but I raise my club. “Be a gentleman. Ladies first.”
He frowns in confusion. The blend word probably doesn’t exist in their language. I’m about to tell him a gentle man would treat women as equals, but I don’t want to have that kind of conversation right now.
“Let her take the first monster, you can take the second, the third one’s mine, and we take turns training like that until we have to fight like a team. All right?”
The two of them agree, and Gila seems uncomfortable. “Gila, this is training. Since you’re not interested in gaining experience, we’ll split your share of monsters.”
Everyone knows I’m lying, but nobody will point it out, since they all stand to benefit from the arrangement. Gila gets to stay safe, the other two get her share of monsters to fight, and I’m the one lying.
Why do I care so much about these kids?
There’s plenty of reasons I guess, even without considering the regrets I carry over from my previous life’s fatherhood, which I’m not certain I’ve handled all that well.
I dismiss the thought and follow Lucy into the trees. While she’s keeping an eye out for creepy-crawlies, I’m keeping an eye out for any valuable herbs.
I don’t want to change my class, I don’t want to change my class. The chant goes on and on, and I can only hope BSD understands me and my intentions. All I want is to get some local currency to buy real weapons.
If my level up condition is any sign of things to come, I think I’ll need a ridiculous amount of different weapons.
I’ll probably have to commission some exotic ones from a blacksmith. Wait, all I need is one more weapon right now, and I can make it with what I have on hand.
I look around and quickly find what I was looking for. Sturdy vines, as thick as my index finger, cling to a tree.
Herbalism identifies it as a spiral sitter, a harmless creeper which climbs trees, circling around their trunks in a spiral pattern.
“Wait a moment.” I dash over to the vine, collect some seven-eight yards of it, and loop it around my waist. The others are shooting me strange looks, and I beam them a smile.
“I’ll show you something neat later.”
Lucy and Fred nod, apparently trusting me, while Gila just stares at me curiously before we move on.
About ten minutes pass, no precious herbs anywhere, when a bush to our left rustles. I motion Fred and Gila to step back. We retreat, leaving enough room for Lucy to maneuver.
The monster tramples the fern bush, its ten insectoid legs scuttling across the damp soil, its complex claw severing the plant to clear the way towards us. It’s the same species of dog-sized lobster as the one which achieved mutual destruction with the tarantula.
The lobster clicks and hisses, scuttling towards Lucy. Most women from my previous life would have ran away screaming if the same monster, half this one’s size ran towards them. The spider-like eyes, the alien mouth, a cross between mandibles and tentacles, the spiny carapace and multi-segmented pincers, which don’t really make sense to me, all of it creeps me out from the bottom of my being.
But apparently, to Lucy, this thing is like a dog or a pig. There’s no sign of disgust on her face, no hint of fear, but her hands are trembling with excitement.
The lobster snaps its claw at her, the multiple segments clinging together to form a single pincer with sharp hooks sticking out. Lucy jumps away. The move is horrible. Her jump was too long, too far away to capitalize on her opponent’s poor stance, and instead gave the lobster space for another charge.
The lobster lunges at her again, moving surprisingly fast for a nearly seven-foot-long crustacean. Lucy dodges it and the two subsequent attacks, getting a hang of how the lobster moves. Then it strikes for the fifth time, and instead of jumping away, Lucy hops to the side. The claw misses her and she pounces. The club strikes the eyes with a crunch, and the lobster shrieks.
Lucy lifts her club, revealing the lobster’s ruined eyes, before bringing it down again. She whacks the creature again and again, crunching its armor further, until the lobster curls up. Its body forms a wheel almost reaching her chest. I’m about to shout for her to watch out in case the monster’s playing dead, but she steps away from it on her own and cleans her club on fern leaves.
Lucy looks up towards me, expecting praise.
“Great job. Your movement towards the end was excellent. There was no need to jump so far from your enemy as you did the first two times, but better safe than sorry until you get used to it and develop your combat instincts. As for your attack…”
She was hitting it like a panicked child squishing a spider with a shoe until it well and truly became a pancake, but I use gentler words and point out areas for potential improvements.