As the clawing grew louder Mel made her final preparations. She took a deep breath and did a light stretch, before dropping to one knee and removing her quiver of arrows and laying it on the ground.

Em and I took an extra step back so that we could both give her the space she needed and to react in time if she needed to back up.

As soon as the first few goblins rounded the corner I expected her to release an arrow, but she actually gave them a second or two to recognize we were here at the end of the hall. When they did they charged straight at us with renewed vigor it seems.

It was at this moment she released her first arrow. I'm not sure what her deciding factor in it was, she was the one with all the experience with the bow so I trusted there was one.

I marveled at the distance it covered. It was vastly further than anything I had seen even in the Olympics back home. It was definitely at least two hundred yards. I'm not sure what the exact distance bows are supposed to be able to shoot, but I don't think anything back home could compete with what she just shot.

Of course I was watching when I saw the arrow strike a goblin and still pierce through, even at that range, and bury itself in a second goblin. Before I had even glanced back to Mel another goblin dropped dead and another stumbled down just to get trampled by his peers.

At this I fully looked at Mel and saw she was not slowing down her rate of fire. As soon as she released an arrow, she was snatching another, knocking it and firing. It was truly an impressive display of marksmanship. One not possible without this world and its mana, I pointedly reminded myself.

The full draw on bows here were made for people using mana and having these enhanced bodies. I certainly couldn't recall any stories about arrows doing what Mel was having these do.

The goblins had made it about halfway down the corridor and Mel had actually gotten about half of the goblins down. I was seriously impressed, she may not even have to retreat to finish this fight.

I quickly knocked on the inside of my shield where some wood was located, superstitiously. If magic was real, who's to say jinxes weren't, and I didn't want to take any chances.

Mel cleared the little guys all the way down to a final three before they got what would be too close. Instantly Mel stood up and surprised me. I was anticipating running back a little, but before we could get to that she rushed towards the goblins. She released a wild haymaker into ones' head, a more controlled jab to another, and then a final kick at the third remaining goblin.

The first absolutely exploded, while the seconds head cratered and it instantly dropped to the floor. The third one almost made me giggle. Her foot had caught it square in the chest. One thing about the goblins is that when they catch sight of you they run at you in some sort of weird lunge where their upper half is much further forward than their lower half.

Due to the size difference between her and the goblins though, her kick was more of a field-goal kick from football. When it connected with the goblin's chest this caused the goblin to fly up. Not quite straight up from where she kicked but close enough. This slammed the goblins back and head into the roof the hallway before it dropped back down unmoving to the ground.

Shocked at the way the fight ended up unfolding I couldn't contain it anymore and let out a laugh. This caused both Mel and Em to look at me, and of course Em was back to scowling.

"Sorry...hah... sorrry. That was just spectacular though Mel, and completely unexpected." I smiled and gave her a quick clap as well, not the slow clap I gave Em earlier.

This of course made Mel revert back to her shy self, which made me grin even harder at the situation. I turned to Em, "Listen, I know you beat both Mel and myself in clear speed here, but even you have to admit Mel's job was a little more impressive than yours right?"

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Emilia stopped scowling at me and switch to a wide-eyed stare. After a brief pause, she too cracked a smile and nodded. "Of course, she is my sister after all. And our captain."

At that, we both broke into laughs before Mel huffed and then she too joined us.

Once we collected ourselves she had her confidence back and took charge of the situation. "Alright, let's call it a day early shall we? Help me collect my arrows here and we'll head back."

"Yes ma'am!" I shouted and jogged to the end of the hall to start collecting.

—----

Since we called it early we were very leisurely in our stroll back to the main room with the knight instructor. We chit-chatted and kept talking the whole way there, even Em wasn't scowling at me or anything! She was laughing at having just as much fun as me it felt like. Acknowledging how cool either she, Mel or both were must have finally loosened her up.

They ended up talking about their hometown which was a growing city just on the other side of Lucerne, called Zell. They said it was only starting to grow due to the founding of a dungeon there. Which of course was a revelation to me. I had assumed this dungeon was natural, but now I'm hearing that they can be installed somehow?

They explained that it was actually done by Lucerne, on the pledge that Zell would tithe to them for twenty years after the dungeon was formed. The town itself would be responsible for keeping the dungeon population culled. If they were unable to do so the city would become annexed if Lucerne had to step in and keep the dungeon in control. It was a win-win for Lucerne, and an extreme gamble by the inhabitants of Zell. I really hoped it paid off for them.

"So with all that going on, why did you guys come here? It sounds like you could just stick it out in your town for a bit longer and you would start to have better opportunities as the town grew?" I had to ask them their motives at this point.

They looked at each other hesitantly as we continued walking. Somehow they were having a silent conversation with each other. This stretched out for quite some time before I realized they were truly agonizing over whether to tell me or not.

"Hey no big deal if it's super personal for you guys or anything, please don't feel obligated to tell me." I tried to ease whatever was on their mind about the discussion and decided to share some of my own recent thoughts. "Look, here let me be honest if that's okay? I.... I've been questioning whether I'm cut out for this whole squire and knight thing, you know?"

They both glanced sharply at me. I continued on, "Its just that.... I just don't see myself doing this day in and day out for the next however many years. I... I forget where I've heard it, but variety is the spice of life, right? I was looking to see if you guys maybe had a more compelling reason to be here that maybe I could latch onto, see? Sorry if it was a bit selfish, but again, you don't have to tell me if its too personal for you."

As I finished we were still continuing down the corridor, but I noticed the sisters had stopped. I turned and looked at them quizzically. They were having another silent conversation before Melania finally just nodded to Emilia. Sighing at Mel, she nodded back and then they caught up to me and we began walking again.

It looked like Em was still having an internal debate so I was trying to figure out how to change the subject myself, since I didn't want it to be awkward with us when we had just broken through to real friends. Mel once again beat us to the punch and elbowed Em.

"Okay! Okay!" Em raised her hands to fend off Mel. "Look Will, the truth is we don't plan on staying here at the order."

I raised my eyes at that, this was a rather unexpected turn in the conversation! I thought they were going to come out with a story about why this was their only way out, not that it was actually just a temporary thing.

As she registered my surprise, Em continued. "We plan on going back to Zell and helping our home burgeon into a prosperous city, and helping our parents out. With the new dungeon, you're right our town's potential is high. However the concern is really about losing our town to Lucerne. Sure as we were officially considered adult enough to make our own decisions upon reaching tier three, we could join the mercenaries guild and dive into the dungeon to do our part and keep it under control."

She glanced at Mel at this point, who nodded and took over the conversation. "Our growth in a newly founded dungeon would be agonizingly slow. There's no way it could put out the sheer quantity of goblins this one does for instance. We would definitely still be tier three if we had stayed and done our part. Now not only are we tier four already, there's a chance we'll be able to hit tier five by the end of our time here. This is something that would have taken us the better part of five years to do if we had stayed in Zell."

She paused and looked at Mel who only shrugged and motioned for her to go on.

Seeing they were both in agreement, she continued. "What we plan to do is take our new power back to Zell once our year is up so that as the dungeon grows we can be among the first to hit each new floor of the dungeon and get the most benefits from it as it grows."