Usually, Marshall would be sending meaningful looks at Pyra or Yana while the Guild Rep was giving a safety speech. However, he found himself wandering down long, forgotten memories that kept resurfacing.
"What do you want to do?" Had been a favorite question of his grandfather. The old man had taken him in while his parents went to 'find their fortune', and he had never seen them after he turned eight. His life had been better without them around, so it wasn't what caught his mind up in the past. That was taken up by that simple question.
It seemed like each year he had a different answer to it. It was always something that had come up that year, and needed to be worked on or fixed. Which the old man loved his help, but always asked him after each project was done. His own words seemed right, "To help you on the farm." or "To be the head warrior of the village." Yet, he kept thinking about his grandfather's question.
Recently, he just wanted to live, and it seemed like fate kept putting its finger on that scale. Yet, he couldn't say it hadn't been exciting and a bit relaxing. He didn't need to really think about what to do next. Whether it was the System or something else, he had just been moving forward. Pulled along by the dangerous beauty that Pyra was. He admitted to having a crush on the woman, even if he had a far better understanding of what she was now.
An Elemental, a being of myths for both Humans and Beastkin. There were stories of them in the early days of the Empire and the Faerun, but always confusing. Regardless, the stories made them out to be creatures of nature and of instinct more than thought. Which is, probably, why his feelings towards her were so confusing. She clearly had no interest or concerns similar, but watching her play with fire, or bring delight to children. It always brought a smile to his face, and then a headache as it turned into something socially questionable, or outright murder.
In that regard, she fit the stories of being a capricious creature that could change on a dime. Though, recently, she seemed to be far more thoughtful and distracted from everything. Like when she nearly wiped out everyone in the testing group. While Marshall didn't know how he felt about Yana, he could be a bit intense, he had to admit the creature had saved everyone. It was his layered defenses that kept the damage only to the training ground, and only a few people had burns.
Like his sister, Yana, had been a source of consternation throughout the trip so far. Beyond the random 'experiments' and his unending barrage of questions. He had an unhealthy habit of just doing what he wants without concern for anyone or anything.
"This world is fascinating, and it's everything dies eventually. Might as well get the most out of them while I can." He would casually say. Usually while pulling the legs off a bug or something. Apparently, each creature could be broken down into categories based on their primary mana makeup. Which would be revealed during moments of great distress or death.
"Mother can technically create anything that she has the pattern for, which usually is best extracted from death within her domain. But, she could also just cause extreme pain or damage and gain the knowledge piece by piece." Yana had explained, when questioned about why he was skinning a living badger, "Of course she is far better at this than I, so she could probably do it mostly through observation." It hadn't made Marshall feel great to know that bit of information, and nothing he said to Yana seemed to pull him away from his habit.
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In a sense he had been acting like that cricket from the old fable. A bug that would sit on people's shoulder and try to show them the right away to act and behave. It wasn't something he was good at, but clearly something that was needed. Otherwise it was likely that a trail of ash would have been their path to this dungeon.
"Alright, the most important rule is to follow the commands of your squad leader." The Rep said, slightly raising his voice and snapping Marshall from his thoughts, "Not every squad will enter the dungeon every day, but there is a posted rotation on the board." He pointed at a wooden board with many papers hung on it.
"Generally, we don't go below the first layer, which is floors 1 through 10. And you will all be responsible for hauling the goods, harvesting the corpses, and mining the resources found in the walls." His words made it clear it was a repeat of the previous speech for people like Marshall who had been distracted. Marshall appreciated it, but couldn't help but compare these 'duties' to what he had done while in captivity to the Hold.
That had been him skeptical of such work and words. It still made sense to him though. In a village you didn't just walk in and start farming. No one would trust that you could do it, or that you weren't growing things the wrong way, which could be dangerous. Instead, you would apprentice for a year and a day, or longer depending on success. Then, you would be able to go about doing your own thing.
This was a pretty common practice in almost all professions. The difference here was that they had been tested on their combat abilities, been put in groups of five, and told that they would be going off to farm resources for the Guild. The groups only had an 'Advisor' who wouldn't go on dives, but would teach them how to collect correctly. This made Marshall think they were using their reputation to gather easy money and prestige. Who would miss some eager adventurers after all? In the end they would pay a small amount to any family, if any existed, and be done with it.
In fact, Marshall was pretty sure all those that were picked, were picked, because they didn't have standing families in the kingdom. He could be wrong, but he had gotten some sense for these sorts of things. Which brought him back to the question.
"What do you want to do?" Always in his grandfather's patient voice, but it seemed to demand an answer with incredible pressure. He could feel the desire to crush this fake speech and tell everyone here his thoughts. Perhaps organize a fair cut of profits or actual membership to the guild, but he couldn't bring himself to do that. There was always a reason for this stuff you couldn't see, and it was part of life that it was this way.
"What do you want to do?" He wondered if Pyra had a similar voice in her head that seemed to be demanding an answer. Sometimes he wondered if it only started after getting his core and removing the System. Would it matter if it did? Was there something more to this, or was it just his inner voice? It was easy to just go with the flow without a direction, but to grab a destiny for yourself? Now that was a challenge.
"What do you want to do?" He wasn't sure right now, but he promised himself that he would answer it, a little, each day.
"I want to see how this ends." Pyra's mission was insane, but she was an Elemental, and had done more impossible things than he thought. Within his core a small glow began, like the embers of a fire.