“One of my team members died,” I said. “That’s all. We weren’t that close. I only knew her for a week and a half.”
“And from what I heard, you nearly died as well,” added Alyona.
“But I didn’t, and I’m alright now. I’ve recovered and I have no problems with going back into the Dungeon right now.”
Natalya narrowed her eyes and looked at me. “Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
She stared at me for a few seconds more, then shrugged. “Then so be it.”
“Even if you didn’t know her long, it hasn’t even been a full day,” said Alyona. “Going into a Dungeon with your mind in that state is dangerous.”
“I said I’m fine,” I snapped.
“It’s alright, dear,” said Natalya. “I’ll be with her the whole time. She won’t be able to die, even if she wants to.”
“It’s too soon,” said Alyona. “You can’t possibly have gotten over it already.”
“Alyona!” The half-elf stiffened. “Your commitment to your duties is admirable, but if my apprentice is having troubles, then I will be the one to help her through them.”
“I’m not having any troubles.”
“Then we have nothing to worry about.”
Alyona looked back and forth between us a few times, then sighed. “Alright, Grandma. I hope you know what you’re doing though. I’ve seen what happens when people don’t take time to deal with trauma.”
“And I’ve seen it a hundred times,” said Natalya. “Don’t worry, I know what I’m doing. Now, I’ll be needing a Dungeon pass for Lucy. I don’t want to make too much of a commotion.”
Alyona went to her desk and pulled a slightly crumpled sheet of paper from one of the drawers and handed it to me. The only words on it were “Let them in” in large print, and an illegible signature on the bottom.
“Anyone who can steal from me wouldn’t need something like this, and anyone dumb enough to forge it is gonna get what’s coming to them,” said Alyona, answering my unasked questions.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“Come, Lucy,” said Natalya. “It’s time to go. And ‘Yona, you should at the very least consider seeing your brother. He lives a dangerous life. If you keep putting it off, you might never see him again.”
Alyona ignored her and turned to me. “The funeral is on Sunday. Ten in the morning. You will be attending, yes?”
I shrugged. “Maybe.”
Natalya returned to invisibility as we left, and I descended the stairs alone, and lost in thought. Although my teacher had taken my side against Alyona’s assertions that I wasn’t ready yet, I couldn’t help but feel like she hadn’t really meant what she said, and had only said it to appease her granddaughter.
Not that Alyona was entirely wrong. It was years before I was able to admit it, but looking back, I was definitely not as “fine” as I claimed to be. But I am nothing if not resilient, so even if I wasn’t in the best mental state, it was not to the point where re-entering the Dungeon would cause problems.
I felt the gazes of the other adventurers on me as I returned, but this time, more ready for them, I was able to hold my head high, in spite of the stares. Their whispers quieted and their gazes faltered as I passed by. Gossipers are cowards by nature, and cannot continue their gossip when faced head-on.
When we made it out of the city, Natalya reappeared, floating lazily alongside me.
“What was her name?” she asked.
“What?”
“Your teammate who passed away.”
“Christine.”
“What was she like?”
“Why does it matter?”
“Why wouldn’t it?”
“I didn’t know her very well, and now she’s dead.”
“You entrusted your life to a stranger you didn’t know very well?”
“I didn’t entrust my life to anyone. We were just colleagues.”
“Anytime you go somewhere dangerous with a team, you are trusting them to help keep you alive.”
“That’s just part of the job. That’s what being an Adventurer is like.”
I expected her to keep pressing the issue, but she just shrugged and returned to her invisible state as we rounded a corner and the hill in which the Dungeon was set came into view. There were fewer Adventurers than the previous two times I had been there, but it was otherwise normal. Most of them weren’t even staring at me when I arrived. Most.
Mask stood near the entrance straight as an arrow and stiff as a board, ignoring their teammates to stare at me. From the moment I was visible until I crossed the threshold into the Dungeon, though I couldn’t see their face, I could feel their eyes trying to bore a hole through my head. Natalya noticed as well.
“Who was that in the mask?” she asked.
“I don’t know. As far as I know, nobody does.”
“Huh. Interesting.”
I didn’t recognize the significance of Natalya not being able to see through their disguise until long after that information would have been useful.
I hadn’t had the time to look after my last delving, for obvious reasons, but this time, I was able to notice that for the first time, the spiral staircase did not descend into the void, and instead ended in a stone hallway leading to a large stone door. I started toward it, but Natalya put her hand on my shoulder to stop me.
“We’re going in here.” She pointed to the fourth floor door.
“Why? I’ve already done that floor.”
“The fifth floor isn’t suitable for our purposes. I want to see how you handle the Dungeon, not just the boss fight.”
“I can’t do regular Dungeon raids solo,” I protested. “The monsters won’t attack me because I’m an Undead too.”
“They will as long as you enter with someone else.” She waved off my concern. “I will be with you, so you won’t have any troubles.”
“How do you know?”
“I may not look it, but I’m old enough to remember when there were Vampire adventurers too. Undead Dungeons are an oversight on the System’s part, but it is easy to get around it by simply entering in a party.”
Stolen novel; please report.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
Out of excuses, I relented, and allowed her to lead me on. Once inside, she stood up tall with her hands on her hips and took a deep breath in through her nose.
“Ah, the smell of undead. It’s been a few centuries, but I can’t say I’ve missed it.” She turned to face me. “I’ll be invisible while you work, but if I see an area that could use improvement, I’ll chime in. Any last questions before we begin?”
I shook my head.
“Then let’s begin! Bravo Six, going dark.”
She vanished as I took a step back in surprise. “What? Where did you hear that?”
“What?” asked the empty space in front of me. “Oh, that’s just something the Chronomancer says when he’s going scouting. I worked a Dungeon with him the other year and picked it up. Sounds kinda fun, doesn’t it?”
“Where did he hear it?”
“I dunno,” she said. “Probably whatever world he came over from. Oh wait, you’re an other-worlder too! Are you from the same world?”
“The Chronomancer is an other-worlder?”
“Yeah, he just suddenly appeared here twenty or so years ago. He doesn’t talk about his home world much, but he’s brought over a lot of interesting ideas. Have you ever heard of a kotatsu?”
I groaned audibly. I hadn’t even met the man, and I already knew he would be insufferable. Not that I had a problem with kotatsus, but I had a phase in high school that I’d prefer to forget, and I knew enough to know that any man who came to another world and brought a quote from an American video game and the idea of a kotatsu would be the kind of man who had never left that phase.
“What? Don’t like kotatsus?”
“No, it’s nothing,” I said. “Let’s go.”
I cast my own invisibility spell, frustratingly aware of how inferior it was to hers. When I moved, I could see my shimmering, transparent limbs as clear as day, and the basic sound dampening I used still wasn’t enough to fully cover my footsteps. She didn’t comment on it though, so for a little while, I thought she would be mostly quiet while I worked. That thought lasted about five more minutes.
The first room we came across had a half dozen of an odd cross between a bull and a scorpion. It had the general body shape of a bull, plus a scorpion tail, but rather than fur, it had a black carapace surrounding its body, and it had four beady, black eyes on either side of its head just below its horns.
None of them noticed me at first, and I slowed down while I contemplated.
“Why so cautious?” said Natalya’s voice from somewhere to my left.
“What are you doing?!” I hissed.
The bull-scorpions turned toward the sound of my voice as I froze, hoping my invisibility would hold.
“Surely you aren’t scared of these puny things, are you?” she asked.
“Shut up!” I said.
The monsters charged. I reacted quickly enough, creating a few pits in front of me, causing them to stumble, while I dropped my stealth and circled toward the center of the room. I fired a few stone bullets at the nearest one to slow it down and try to find some weaknesses in its armor. Most bounced off its carapace, but one hit one of its eyes, eliciting a bellow of rage and pain.
“Just kill them already!” called Natalya. “You’re wasting your time fighting like this.”
I ignored her and returned to my cautious approach, aiming small spells like stone bullets and wind blades at them while I danced around the room to avoid their charges. Like real bulls, they did not change direction well, and their tails weren’t that flexible either, so it was easy enough to avoid them. Or it would have been, if I didn’t have an elf shouting in my ears the whole time. I nearly got stung a few times when her comments distracted me.
“Oh, finally,” she said when I got the first bull. “Now hurry up. Use bigger spells. I know you have more mana than that.”
It was a full quarter of an hour before all of them were dead, and Natalya had turned visible and was observing my handiwork.
“So,” she started. “Why did you choose that approach? Why didn’t you just use bigger spells to take them out faster?”
"Why were you making so much noise?!"
"I wasn't. Only you could hear me."
"B-but-!" I sputtered. "Why didn't you tell me that?"
"Why did you need me to? If you had paid more attention, you would have noticed that they only reacted when you spoke, not when I did."
I did not have a retort for that."
"Now, why, even after your position was revealed, did you insist on using such a slow method of combat? Why not just use bigger spells?"
“My spells are still too low-level. I can’t reliably kill them that way and it uses a lot of mana.”
“You have a lot of mana,” she pointed out. “And there’s no better way to improve a skill than to use it in a high-stress situation. So, why did you insist on being so cautious and slow?”
“What’s wrong with caution?”
“Excessive caution will hinder you more than it will help. How long did that take you? Fifteen minutes? Twenty? You could have done it in fifteen or twenty seconds.”
“But my skills are too low level!”
“Alright, lesson number one!” she announced. “Ignore the System. It’s a pointless distraction. It’s a drastically oversimplified representation of actual skill. It can be useful to tell whether you have improved or not, but it is in no way a useful guide for improvement. So for now, ignore it. Your skill’s level doesn’t matter. Now, cast your most destructive spell.”
“What?”
“Your most destructive spell. The one that would have had the best chance of killing these things in a single hit. At your level, that would probably be [Fireball], or something along those lines. You know [Fireball], right?” I nodded. “Cast it at that far wall.”
I did as she instructed, and the flaming sphere crashed into the stone, bathing the wall in flames.
“Weak,” she said. “You can do better than that. Again, but put some more mana into it.”
I cast again.
“More.”
Again.
“Surely you can use more than that.”
Again. This time it came with a System notification.
[Fireball] has leve-
“Ignore the System! More!”
Again.
“Even more!”
I did not cast this time. “I’m out of mana.”
“Good,” she said, nodding. “Did you see how much stronger that last one was?”
I did. On the final one, the flames from the explosion covered the entire wall and started encroaching back toward us.
“Your efforts toward caution and efficiency are not bad, but you took it so far that it became neither cautious, nor efficient. That last one would have killed, or at least seriously injured all the chimerae in here, and it cost less mana than all your bullets. It also would have instantly incapacitated all of them, leaving you safe to move freely and finish them off, making it not only more efficient, but also safer than your method. You are a vampire. Your mana reserves are double what a human’s would be at your level. Use them.”
Even if that was the only thing she ever actually taught me, becoming her apprentice for all those years still would have been completely worth it. My greatest flaw is my tendency to tunnel vision on certain ideas and follow them to their extremes, while ignoring everything else around them, and many times it has led me to wasting huge amounts of time on frankly worthless pursuits. As much as I’d like to believe that I would have soon realized how inadequate my approach was, I wouldn’t be surprised if it took me a year or more.
“While it might not always be the ideal strategy,” she continued, “brute force always works, and if it doesn't, you aren’t using enough of it. If you’re in a pinch and can’t come up with a better strategy, or you’re short on time, forcing your way through is almost always better than trying to use finesse. Especially for you, with your mana reserves. You’ll surpass even mine within five years, and by then, you’ll be able to overpower just about anyone.
“Now, replenish your mana, and let us move on.”
The next room we entered had a dozen flaming gorillas. It was unfortunate, since I had just been practicing [Fireball], and I didn’t have any wide-range spells of other elements yet. I didn’t want to do the same thing I had in the previous room and spend forever chasing efficiency, and I also knew I had Natalya in case things went badly, so I decided to do some experimentation.
I stepped into the room fully visible, immediately drawing the attention and ire of its inhabitants. They charged with reckless abandon and no regard for teamwork or strategy, and the closest few leapt at me, flames trailing behind them as they flew through the air. I immediately created two earthen walls in a V shape in front of me, raising them as high and as quickly as I could. They were not sturdy, and cracked and broke when the apes smashed into them, but that was what I was aiming for. I pushed the debris out and down where it landed all over the reckless chimerae.
Before the dust had even started to clear, I heard a few System dings telling me that some of them had been instantly killed. While the others struggled to escape the rubble, I focused my attention on the two who had been the furthest away and had managed to escape my attack entirely. They learned nothing from their fellows and charged just as recklessly. I didn’t bother with strategy this time, instead creating two earthen spears right in their paths that they promptly impaled themselves on.
“Much better,” said Natalya once I had finished mopping up the last few kills. “I assume you opted for earth, because you didn’t have any suitable water or wind spells?” I nodded. “We will need to fix that, but you did well with what you had. Let’s move on.”
Under Natalya’s instruction, I grew more as a mage in those next few hours than I had in the months prior. If I hadn’t been fully convinced of the apprenticeship’s value before, I was by the time we reached the boss room. Unfortunately, that was not the end of the Dungeon, and, as I mentioned, I was not as “fine” as I said I was, and this manifested quite clearly in the boss fight.