Gobber's point of view

Master said I should be out training instead of watching the fortress. He's right, I need to get stronger. If we're going to stand a chance against the pirates, all of us need to get stronger. I'll work on the adventurers guild quests I can do while traveling between dungeons. Me and Hilda are the strong front group. If needed, I can fall back and support with a crossbow. We have a spellthief from the demon tribe. He isn't nearly as strong as I hoped but the mage counter makes up for it. The beast rider has a bat and wolf pet she rides. Kline is… Well not the best white mage… He's the weakest healer I've grouped with so far. I guess I was just used to such good healers compared to him.

The town of Shienta will be our base of operations for the first six months. We'll expand outwards. We need to carry food and water with us since we don't have Kite... Who could cook the monsters and make water out of anything… For being so weak he sure was useful in other ways... It makes me miss him when he's not their to think up strategies or solve problems in unexpected ways.

Three months into the adventurers guild quests and dungeoning. Most of the group is stronger. We're getting to a point where we could possibly do higher tier dungeons but we still have a weak link… Kline is so weak he's almost killed a few people by not healing them. Why did master give me such a weak person... That is the only thing holding us back.

I've started training Kline on our off days. If he has higher fatigue points, he wont slow us down so much. That wont increase his slow reaction speed though. I wonder if there is something I can say to help him be better. We'll keep this up but I really want to replace him with someone better… Why did Kattie have to die, if she was alive I could be grouped with Gargarz. Dammit! Her death caused so many problems. With Kline, I don't feel safe doing tier four dungeons. Doing easy dungeons is still much better than just sitting in the fortress all day. I've also been making a lot of money by doing adventurers guild quests.

We'll try to do a tier four dungeon once I feel we're more up to it… Just catching up to the general team we had the last time we did a tier four dungeon... It is taking longer than I'd like. They are all generals for a reason though. Maybe I should go ask for some knife cannons from Kite to help us cheat a tier four dungeon? No that wouldn't help the main problem…

Freaking Kline needs to get stronger. I should have Kite teach him another class… That won't solve the problem, the core problem is Kline. He needs to care if we die. It feels like he puts so little effort into anything. Fine, then I'll put Kline through the death gods realm for the next few weeks. Beating fatigue points into him with constant training.

The first few days Kline struggled… Struggled to do anything… Me beating him with a wooden sword when he slacked off motivated him though. If we're going to rely on this guy, he needs to be more reliable. A few days after trying and I barely have to hit him anymore. I keep up the training though, making it harder and harder everyday. He has zero fatigue points at the end of each day. This will take care of his running out of steam one or two floors into dungeons. Now I have to think of a way to get his healing time up.

I've started having him heal practice sparring matches between myself and the spellthief. I have to hold back to keep it fair. If he heals to slowly, I throw a rock at his head. If he can't heal me within five seconds of taking damage, he'll take damage. He should be more concerned about us taking damage to begin with. Well a few more weeks of this and he should be ready to heal a tier four dungeon.

We finally make it to a tier four dungeon. With my training I put Kline through, he should be able to do fine now. It is a warrior dungeon. Ah man, we lucked out. These are far easier than most. You can say it's the most straightforward dungeons. We wont have to deal with any difficult enemies with complex attacks. I'll switch to my giant crossbow for now and support. I can instantly one shot most things with this bow… Kite is such a genius. Even when he's not here, he's helping us. We easily make it to the rest floor. Kline had enough fatigue points to not have a problem making it here… I think he's finally realizing how hard this would have been without my training.

We talk that whole night… Kline is far more talkative than usual.

“Hey… Gobber… I get it. I understand now… If I didn't get stronger. We couldn't move forward as a group… I've never really gotten close to other people. It's always been me by myself... I've worked as a spy for the capital ever since I was a child. One of the things I've had to deal with is betraying people I've gotten close to... So I've never put much effort into healing. I never put much effort into anything... If I did I might have gotten attached to people more easily... What I'm saying is… Thank you.”

“Yea no problem. It's good to see you finally taking this seriously. A single slip-up from the healer and we all could have ended up dead. We'll push the boss tomorrow and since you're finally on the same page we can start clearing these harder dungeons.”

The next day we finished clearing up to the boss room. Fighting against warriors is easy enough to deal with so we get there without any problems. Warriors aren't very complex when it comes to fighting. Without Kite here, I don't know which boss we'll get attacked by. We'll just have to wing it…

We enter the room, it's a… What the hell is it? We walk in and there is an old man sitting in the middle of the room… He can't possibly be the boss. I'll have to ask.

“Does… Does anyone know what this boss is about? If it's just a little old man like that, we shouldn't have a problem right?”

Kline knew what it was.

“No its not as easy as that. It's a quiz master… What is it doing in a warrior dungeon? Well the gist is he'll ask questions and if we're right we'll get experience and items. It's honestly the safest boss if we're all smart and knowledgeable… If we guess wrong though… I think he spawns a dungeon boss a whole dungeon tier above ours. We're prepared for tier four dungeon bosses but not tier five, the shift is too difficult so we should just leave.”

“No, I didn't realize until now but your actually smart aren't you Kline. With this groups spread out knowledge, we should be able to answer the questions. So how do we start it?”

“We just get close enough to him and he'll ask us a question. Or make us solve a puzzle or a riddle. Just DON'T ATTACK HIM! He's a vicious fighter and will kill us all if we attack him!”

“Easy enough, yea I don't get why he's in a warrior dungeon though. Maybe at some point the dungeon switched to a warrior or mage dungeon and the boss or dungeon hasn't changed yet… Well no use questioning it since we don't know.”

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We walk close enough to hear what the quiz master has to say. He looks up, he has no face… What the hell! It caught me off guard, this person is definitely not a human.

“Hehehe, so? What brought you here?”

I go to answer.

“Wel-”

Muffling my mouth with his hand. Kline cuts me off whispering. 

“That's our question…”

Shit! Without realizing it, I almost blurted out we were here to fight a boss…We would have definitely been put against a tier five boss at that point when I said it… WHAT IS THE ANSWER THEN… Are we here for loot and experience!? I have no idea how to answer this question… DAMMIT! Why couldn't it just be a normal boss I could beat to death. I'll have to leave it to Kline… Seeing as it's a question it could have multiple answers. Maybe mine was right? Kline cuts my thought process off.

“Our feet.”

A pile of money and items forms in from of him. What! It was something that stupid? Well, at least we won't have to fight anything. I move to pick up the items than the quiz master asks.

“If you wanted to cross a river with the only difference being temperature. What temperature would you want it to be to get across it the fastest?”

WHAT! Their is more than one question!? Crap, I have no idea. Would it be faster to swim through hot water or cold water? I don't know again! This is the worst dungeon for me… I'll have to rely on Kline. I look over at him and it looks like he might already know the answer. After a few moments of waiting Kline finally speaks.

“Below freezing so you could skate across the river.”

...Wow I'm bad at this. It's so obvious after I heard the answer. More items and gold form in front of him again… Is he going to ask another question? I wait a few moments before I move towards the items again. He waits until I do to ask the next one.

“Final question! If you don't know the answer, what is the only right answer?”

Dammit, he waited for me to move again to ask the last question! Whats the answer though? Is it a trick like the other questions? This time I look over at Kline and it looks like he doesn't know this one! Shit, he was so prepared for the other ones… It is ten minutes of silence, no one has answered. No one knows the answer! We're going to be forced to fight the tier five boss at this rate… I make eye contact so they know what I'm thinking. If I don't know the answer the only thing we can do is fight the boss. I still have to answer

“I don't know.”

The quiz master disappears… Where's the boss at? From the smoke a ring drops where the quiz master was. The pile of items and money had gotten bigger again… Wait what!? That was the answer? How would we have guessed that? Well no matter I guess. At least we finished the dungeon. I inspect the ring that dropped, it was a rare ring with the effect of mana regen...

Heavy knight level 11 to 12

Archer level 66 to 70 

Scout level 88 to 90 

Chemist level 50 to 55 

Warrior level 68 to 71 

Guardian level 61 to 66 

Blue mage level 52 to 57 

Beast tamer level 80 to 82 

Level 90 Scout passive skill gained Lightning Reflexes- A portion of your movement speed is applied to your dodge 

We leave the dungeon. We spent a surprising amount of time in the boss room for doing no fighting. Some of the enemies are respawning and since the entire group doesn't have quick escape. We can't just teleport to the beginning. Still, for our first tier four dungeon, things could have gone worse. We still have plenty of time to get stronger until the year is up. I just hope everyone else is getting stronger too. With Kline passing this first challenge, maybe I'll make a trip back to the fortress. Him having another class would help go a long ways for clearing dungeons.

(Gobber stats when Kite asked) (strength- 1250) (dexterity- 630) (intelligence- 250) (stamina- 1500) (total = 3630) 

(Gobber stats now) (strength- 1400) (dexterity- 700) (intelligence- 270) (stamina- 1700) (total = 4070)