Nora frantically threw lightning blast after lightning blast at the rats that were attacking Orson and Charn. Beside her, Wayna did the same, using poison blast instead.
Orson and Charn fought side by side in the narrow tunnel, blocking and parrying the vicious, and often venomous, bites that rained down on them.
From behind her, she could hear Bob.
"Strike, parry, block, strike!" he bellowed.
"This is just a small taste of what a tide is like; an endless flow of monsters higher level than you are!"
"If they make it past you, your friends are dead!"
"Nora, Wayna, you need to make sure and focus on the same monster; Focused fire brings them down more quickly, which is one less monster your friends in front of you have to worry about!" Bob finished his tirade.
Nora grimaced at that comment.
Bob had needed to both shield and heal them during their first hour before they'd started to develop a rhythm of working together.
She was incredibly grateful that he'd had all of them purchase armor. If she had just used her crystals to take level five and a path, then come down to a Dungeon...
She blasted another rat with Wayna. They'd fallen into a pattern of alternating between the rat to the furthest right and then the rat to the furthest left.
The fifth floor of the Dungeon was harrowing - a narrow earthen tunnel, an endless swarm of venomous rats, and no light. Bob had provided them with a lamp that sat atop a tripod, but he'd warn them that they'd need to purchase one of their own and then scolded them for forgetting rule four.
She kept casting, in sync with Wayna, as Bob started another reiteration of the rules.
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Ellen sputtered as she struggled to her feet in the fetid muck, trying not to heave as she spat out the foul-tasting water.
She was grateful that Bob had taken them to a shop named Nikki's where he'd had them all purchase suits of leather armor. There had already been several close calls where one of those stone's cursed frogs had caught her with a tongue.
She wasn't entirely sure what his plan was. They hadn't taken their first level yet, and he was shepherding them on the third floor of the Dungeon. He had them working as a group; those with staves striking from behind the two had chosen short spears and shields.
The swamp was treacherous, hidden branches and uneven ground threatened to trip you at every turn, and although they had the front two taking sweeping steps and using the butts of their spears, still there were ample opportunities to trip and fall into the disgusting muck.
"You think this smells bad?" Bob roared from behind the group, "it's nothing compared to the freshly spilled entrails of your loved ones!"
"Keep moving!" Bob shouted, "Have you forgotten your ABK's already?"
"Always Be Killing!" Bob yelled, "If you aren't killing a monster, you're giving a monster a chance to kill you, or worse, someone you love!"
"You want to be Big Damn Heroes; you have to step up!" Bob screamed as a pair of frogs surfaced and lunged to attack.
"The one cold truth in this hard world is that nothing worth having comes in easy, which means you need to PUT IN THE WORK!"
Ellen gritted her teeth and swung her staff down at the frog that had flanked them on the left.
She could do without the bellowing.
The others in the group were at an impressionable enough age that they were embracing the gospel of dungeon delving, according to Bob.
Karl and Kris, a pair of brothers who had chosen to wield spear and shield, were especially zealous. They were poor, the fifth and sixth sons of a tanner, and they'd come to be shepherded with a certain grim resolve, knowing that there was no place for them back home, and the casualty rate for commoners turned adventurer without a family shepherd was three in ten.
Bob had fed them, provided them with weapons until they could buy their own, and most remarkably asked for nothing in return.
That had been especially surprising to Ellen, who was well aware of the charges for delving into the Dungeon in Harbordeep.
It had been astounding to the others. Bob had fed them, armed them, and then healed and protected them as he taught them not only how to survive but how to thrive.
Without any fees, they were amassing crystals at a prodigious rate. They each had enough to take their first level, but Bob had warned them not to, stating that he wanted to go over their path options with them first.
She slipped on what might have been a clump of dead leaves but caught herself with her staff as she shook her head in frustration.
Her previous shepherding experiences had given her plenty of time to reflect on whomever she was tasked to investigate, but Bob was pushing them hard.
"There is no higher calling than to be an Adventurer!" Bob bellowed, "Adventurers are the levee on which the tide breaks! Families sleep soundly in their beds because rough Adventurers stand ready to do great violence on their behalf!"
"You won't have a comfortable life as an Adventurer! The shadows of the dead will be your constant companions, Adventurers less prepared or simply less lucky. You'll find you can't relate to the common man or woman because they don't know what you know!"
"That death is always a heartbeat away! One mistake, letting your guard down just one moment is all it takes, and then you're dead!" Bob was roaring at them, which attracted more frogs.
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"Your death only matters in that you've now allowed the monsters to get past you and caused the deaths of civilians! Children who were counting you on to protect them, torn to pieces! If you can't find another motivation, then rely on that one! CONSTANT VIGILANCE!" Bob yelled.
"What is the first rule?" Bob demanded.
Ellen furrowed her brow and frustration and started chanting Bob's damned rules back to him.
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It was like they'd taken a hippopotamus, a hyena, and a snake of some sort and thrown them into a blender. The resulting monster had the heads of a hippopotamus (yes, heads, there were two of them), the odd sloping gait of a hyena, and the scaley hide of a snake.
It was also surrounded by an aura of flames and spat blasts of fire from both of its mouths.
Oh, and to top it all off, it was the size of a cocker spaniel.
Bob watched as his raptor pack finished off another Hipenake, as he'd decided to call them, and turned his attention towards the environment again.
The thirtieth floor of the Dungeon was all red clay and sandstone, with small windswept trees, Cottonwood, Juniper, and Sage.
It reminded Bob of some of the photographs he'd seen of the high desert in Utah.
It was hot, but not oppressively so, although it was awfully dry. His canteen was certainly being put to good use.
Bob stood under his pavilion and kept summoning out his swarm of UtahRaptors, and considered just how devastating Eddi had to be at this point. The kid had to have the same enchantments that he had, if not better, so Eddi would have eight endless swarms out, each one with eight summons, so sixty-four self-replenishing level twenty-three Tyrannosaurs, as well as a barrage of fifteen level twenty-six ones.
Bob was occupying and clearing six mana pools at once; Eddi could easily triple that.
Bailli could likely double his kill speed as well, although Eddi would surpass her easily.
He shook his head. He was clearing monsters quickly and easily and gathering both mana crystals and Conjuration Affinity Crystals.
He had no reason to complain. The Hipenake's reformed quickly, and he was averaging six of them every three seconds.
Thidwell had been correct that their coalescence rate wasn't fantastic, but thanks to the sheer numbers, Bob was doing quite well. Packing up his pavilion and heading towards the Gateway, he contemplated that this was likely how Bailli and Eddi had pushed past the tier seven threshold for their spells.
He'd killed over twenty-eight thousand monsters in four hours, and with the five level difference, each one had been worth thirty-two experience. Just shy of nine hundred thousand experience, all of it going to his Summoning School and Summon Mana-Infused Creature spell.
One more four-hour session, and he'd push through the tier seven threshold. Then it was smooth sailing until his UtahRaptor reached sixty-four.
The four hundred mana crystals were a little disappointing, and the pair of Conjuration Affinity Crystals were a testament to how much killing Bailli had been doing to pull twenty of them.
As he pressed the token against the Gateway, he considered that she had likely been pulling either an hour or, at the most, two-hour sessions. She was much more cautious about mana density than Bob was.
Bob emerged from the event horizon of the Gateway in the mausoleum and handed Clyde twenty mana crystals before walking out and gating directly towards murmuring falls.
It had been a long day, and tomorrow wasn't looking to be any easier.
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"Good Morning!" Bob addressed his gathered freshers in the corner of the tavern.
"I know some of you have already seen these, however as groups two and three are going to begin advancing in levels, I feel it's important to make sure all of you are aware of your options," Bob stated as he walked through the crowd, dropping off his pamphlets at each table before returning to his original position.
"In these pamphlets, you will find important information regarding a resource that can be gathered by delving the Dungeon," he began before pulling out a swirling Summoning Affinity Crystal.
"These Affinity Crystals," Bob continued, "allow for a significant bonus to a single school or an even greater bonus to a single spell," Bob raised his voice over the murmurs of his freshers, "and they are required for certain powerful paths."
"I'll give you a chance to read over the pamphlets and talk amongst your selves. Please keep in mind that there have been Affinity Crystals for Plant, Animal, and all of the Elemental schools found in other Dungeons, and there are likely many other paths that take advantage of them. We only know about a few of the paths that can utilize them, but those provide powerful bonuses." Bob went on, raising his voice to carry over the whispers, before walking over to a table on the far side of the tavern and pouring Monroe onto the tabletop.
"How many of them do you think will take the paths in the pamphlet?" Bailli asked as she slumped down into a chair next to him.
"I'd say almost all of them," Bob replied with a shrug.
Bailli nodded and turned to face him fully, her lips bowed in a brilliant smile.
"I have been chosen," she intoned in an overly serious tone of voice as she reverently lifted her hands from her lap, revealing an adorable white kitten with brilliant blue eyes and dark grey fur on the tips of its ears, tail, and feet.
"Behold," she said, "I present the Divine Feline Overlord, Icing Death!"
Bob looked at the tiny, adorable kitten, who was now on her back playing with Bailli's thumb.
"Icing Death?" He asked.
Bailli sighed and carefully moved the kitten into a fully upright position as she said, "Erick wanted to name her, and he was distracting me," she blushed and hurried on, "and he's terrible at naming things."
Bailli carefully lowered Icing Death onto the table, where the kitten promptly fell over.
Monroe inspected the tiny intruder who had entered his domain before lowering his head and giving her an experimental sniff.
Icing Death looked up at Monroe, flopped onto her back, and batted at his whiskers.
Monroe let out a chuff, and with one massive paw, nudged the kitten to her feet.
He carefully guided her to a position near to the center of the table, and then through a series of chuffs and nudges, managed to have her sitting with her tail curled around her side, front paws crossed, looking prim and proper, a queen surveying her subjects.
Monroe returned to his own indolent pose.
"Well, at least they seem to get along," Bob said as he tried not to laugh at the tiny kitten emulating the massive Maine-Coone.
"Of course they do," Bailli said as she cooed at Icing Death, "they both recognize that we need their benevolent guidance, isn't that right, Icy?"
At that moment, Theo arrived, took one look at the table, and shook his head.
"So it begins," he murmured as he looked between Bob and Bailli.
"Big breakfasts all around?" He asked.
"Sounds good to me," Bob replied, "big day today, need the calories."
Bailli nodded her agreement, and Theo hurried off.
"So," Bob said, "any idea what Theo meant when he said, so it begins?"
"Well," Bailli began, "You never asked us to be discreet, and Eddi is excitable, so he's been spreading the Gospel of the Divine Feline Overlord to anyone who will listen," she explained.
"While I think I'm the first one, I know Eddi has taken the familiar spell and is just looking for the right match," she continued, "and the general consensus is that a spell caster who has a free skill should take the familiar skill, and once the Affinity Crystals are freely available, level up their familiars with that path."
Bob nodded, "That makes sense," he stated.
Bailli's smile widened as she went on, "The thing is, a lot of people have been smitten by his imperial majesty," she nodded towards Monroe, who appeared to be attempting to correct Icing Death's posture, "So almost everyone has been waiting for the first litter of kittens this spring."
Bailli laughed lightly, "I might be the first, but before long, everyone is going to have their own personal Feline Overlord."
Bob reached out and rubbed Monroe's chin, then his ruff, causing the big cat to slump into a pool of purring kitty, the rumble of which rolled across the tavern.
Charn, Orson, Kris, Karl, Terrance, and Davvi approached the table. Orson spoke for the group as he bluntly asked, "If there aren't any Affinity Stones for Melee, do you have any advice for what path we should take?"
Bob smiled at the determined kids and replied, "Yes, as a matter of fact, I do."