Grumbling, Victor swung his mace into yet another swarm of bats. The majority of the monsters shattered, their souls immediately adding to Victor’s spiritual reservoir — but two managed to make it out just barely singed.
A moment later, a glowing blue disc knocked one out of the air. As it rebounded, the luminous projectile began to fade — but not before colliding with the other monster, killing it instantly.
As the two boys continued forward, stepping over the scattered corpses, Victor whistled. “Nice shot.” He glanced over to his companion. Thomas was looking even worse — he was practically stumbling forward rather than walking.
“Thanks,” he wheezed. “I couldn’t aim like that without my focus though.”
Victor took a moment to scan his companion head to toe. While Thomas was clearly not much more prepared for delving than Victor was, he at least had boots, a utility belt, a small backpack, and an oiled leather vest.
Much better than Victor’s own sorry apparel.
Victor’s gaze lingered for a moment on the boy’s tight, fingerless gloves. Snapping his eyes away, Victor assessed the progress of the fire. It didn’t look too good — it seemed to be circling around in the same direction they were.
They would just have to hope that they could outrun it and that by the time they made a full circuit, the fire would have burned itself out in those areas.
“It’s the gloves, isn’t it?”
Thomas nodded. “Yeah. I have a ranger class — they let me conjure ammunition for ranged weapons, increase the power of my projectiles, and also help increase my dexterity.”
Victor frowned. “So why are you fighting unarmed? I mean, you have those little discs, but it didn’t seem like they were doing much to that spider.” He paused. “But you clearly did some serious damage before then.”
Thomas didn’t respond for a moment, and Victor assumed he was thinking over his answer — until he realized that the other boy was just trying to regain his breath. Glancing back towards the distant inferno, Victor paused. “We’re not gonna make it if you can’t keep up this pace.”
Thomas heaved a shuddering sigh. “I know.” He coughed. “If I can’t keep up, just leave me, okay?”
Victor shook his head. “No. We’re in a dungeon, right?”
Leaning against the nearest mushroom stalk, Thomas shut his eyes, taking deep breaths. Finally, he replied in a hoarse whisper. “So what?”
“I’m guessing most of your exhaustion is from overusing spells.”
“Yeah.” Thomas paused. “Where are you going with this?”
Victor grinned. “It’s not a normal fatigue then — it’s a magical one. You just need to recover arcane energy.”
Opening his eyes, Thomas met Victor’s gaze skeptically. “Okay, sure. But we don’t exactly have time for that. At least with the techniques I have, raising the arcana would take just as long, if not longer, than just taking a rest.” He paused. “Which brings us right back to the same problem.”
Victor’s grin grew wider. “Ah, but we’re in a dungeon, aren’t we? We can form a party.”
Thomas blinked. “Oh. Right.” He paused again, though he was clearly growing far more optimistic. “You have enough to share?”
Victor shrugged. “Only one way to find out.” Tapping his foot, he glanced back to the approaching flames. “Okay, so how do we do this?” Cupping his hands to his mouth, he shouted as loud as he could.
“Hey dungeon core! We wanna form a party! Can you help us out with that or something?”
Coughing, Victor cleared his throat again. Sparing a glance back to Thomas, he saw that the other boy was looking at him dumbfounded, as if he were a complete madman.
You have been invited to join a party!
Members: Victor (not joined), Thomas (not joined).
Thomas blinked, and Victor grinned. Sometimes, you just had to ask loudly when you needed help. “I accept,” the two boys said in unison.
You have joined a party with Thomas!
Nodding, Victor glanced back once more to the raging inferno drawing ever closer. We still have at least a couple of minutes. “Alright, so… I’m not sure how to do this. Tell me if you feel something, okay?”
Thomas tiredly nodded, and Victor called upon the well within his spirit. Pulling it up into his body, Victor allowed a small trickle to circulate within his own body — and then he pushed it outwards towards Thomas.
The energy resisted, not seeming to want to breach his skin — but then, it found a hole. There was a place where it could flow through a sort of tunnel that stretched out in a direction from his spirit that somehow didn’t seem to correspond to any physical direction in space.
It was an odd sensation indeed, so it wasn’t very difficult to focus and hone in on channeling it.
Thomas perked up. “I feel a little!” He nodded slowly. “Yeah, I’m definitely getting a small trickle from you. How much are you putting in?”
Satisfied that it was working, Victor didn’t answer. Instead, he separated about a fifth of his reservoir from the remainder, pulling it up and then squeezing it through the link all at once.
Victor cut off the flow, and Thomas staggered. Rising to his feet with clearly renewed Vigor, the other boy stared at Victor with his mouth agape. “What in Creation…”
Satisfied, Victor turned away from the approaching fire. He could feel the heat again, as gusts of air sporadically blew outwards. “Come on, let’s go.”
Sparing just a single glance back at Thomas to make sure that his companion was following, Victor hurried out into the darkness with greatly increased haste. They had lost quite a bit of ground, and he was determined to not only recover it, but to gain even more distance than they had originally.
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Catching up to Victor, Thomas joined him at his side. “How much arcane energy do you have?”
Focusing on the path ahead, Victor considered how to answer. “I gave you half,” he lied. He didn’t want the other boy to expect that he could always depend on Victor for fueling his spells. Even though Victor had been consuming every soul he harvested since rescuing Thomas, he was sitting at a net loss since he entered the area.
He really couldn’t become dependent on always having plenty of arcane energy available, and he couldn’t let anyone else become dependent on him for it either.
“Damn.” Thomas remained silent for a few more moments, and Victor kept his eyes on Scarlet and the path she illuminated up ahead. “You must have been super prepared,” Thomas continued. “How many delves have you done?”
“This is my first.”
“Fucking hell.”
Victor suppressed a groan. He really didn’t want people thinking he was more capable than he was — especially not in such a life or death situation as this.
----------------------------------------
Approximately an hour later, the two boys collapsed beside the hulking spider corpse. The fire was still raging elsewhere, but fortunately, Victor’s plan had worked. The fire was so big that the origin point had burned itself out by the time they made a full circuit.
The corpse made a good landmark in the rocky, ashen wasteland that they now found themselves in. The carapace was now blackened and charred, but Victor idly observed that the inside was mostly intact.
Coughing, he reached for his waterskin. The heat and the ash had sorely parched his throat, and the few sips of water he allowed himself did wonders for relieving his exhaustion. With a tired look, he held it out towards Thomas. Sitting up, the other boy took it gratefully.
“Just a couple sips,” Victor warned him.
Thomas nodded as he unscrewed the cap. After taking his own fill and handing the waterskin back, he wiped his hands on his oiled vest — accomplishing little more than smearing the dirt, sweat, and ash around.
“So.” The ranger pursed his lips. “What are you doing here? I mean, obviously you’ve made your Class work for you, but still…” he paused, gathering his thoughts.
Victor shrugged, speaking before Thomas could continue. “I’m kind of on the run. I needed a place to hide, and now that I have a Focus, I also have a way to get stronger.” He sighed. “Yeah, I know. When people like me try to delve, they don’t last long. But I really didn’t have much choice.”
Definitely not if he wanted to save the others.
“Did you steal it?”
Victor’s gaze snapped back to the present, landing on Thomas’s inquisitive expression.
“Your Focus, I mean. And that’s why you’re on the run?”
Sighing, Victor crossed his legs. “Yeah. Something like that.” He paused, shaking his head to himself. “What about you? Sure, you’ve got a combat Class at least — but you can’t tell me you’re supposed to be here either.”
Thomas chuckled. “Same deal, pretty much.”
Raising an eyebrow, Victor smirked. “Who did you steal it from?”
Thomas sighed as well, while reclining to rest on his back with his knees up. “Well, technically, I’m not the one who actually stole it.”
Victor perked up. “I hear a story here.”
Rolling his eyes, Thomas continued. “It’s really not all that interesting.” He paused. “So for a little background, my dad is a super successful chef. I mean, as far as chefs go. Even has an Uncommon Class for it. Anyway, he manages a lot of different restaurants and catering services — including at La Isla Bonita.”
“Is that how you got your job as a valet?” Victor interrupted.
“Yeah, exactly. Anyway, he also runs a free kitchen for the homeless, or just people who don’t have much.”
Victor perked up. “Wait, is it the one by the dockyard in the industrial district?”
“Yeah. He tried to set it up in a more convenient location — nearer the residential district, for instance — but the city planners wouldn’t let him.” Thomas laughed darkly. “They presented all these old regulations about business codes, but my dad said they just didn’t want homeless people convening in any vaguely public space.”
Victor rolled his eyes. “He’s one hundred percent right. Honestly, what always bugged me the most is how they can’t just openly say it.” He grinned. “Also, your dad’s soup is total ass.”
“Hey!” Thomas sat up indignantly. “That’s on purpose, actually. He could only supply so much at once, but he can’t stand to refuse to serve people — so he came up with that as a way of making sure people only drank what they needed to survive.”
Rolling his eyes again, Victor scoffed. “Well that’s one way to do it.”
“Anyway,” Thomas continued, “As I was saying, my dad likes to help people. He’ll even let people stay at one of our houses — he actually got in legal trouble once for allowing some criminals to hide out there.”
“But he never…” Thomas scrunched up his face. “He helps people, yeah, but he doesn’t stand up for anything. Like when the bureaucrats told him he needed to move the shelter, he just did it. He didn’t take them to court or anything, even though there was another restaurant right across the street.”
“When my mother cheated on him, he didn’t do anything. I was the one who had to bring it out into the open. And then he let her walk away with half our estate. Didn’t put up a fight at all.”
Victor continued to listen in silence as Thomas continued. “I love him. But — and I know this sounds terrible — I don’t really respect him anymore.” The young man sighed, running a hand through his sandy blonde hair. “He wanted me to work my way up in the casino. Become a manager. Even get close to Lord Grantly.”
Victor stilled, but Thomas didn’t seem to notice. “I always wanted to be a delver. My dad could pay for it. I’m already a student at the imperial academy — but he says he can’t lose me. Apparently, he’s been saving up a fund to buy me a focus — one that he says will guarantee me a good life as a businessman or civil servant.”
The boy shook his head. “I can’t throw my life away like that.” Sparing a glance over to Victor, he looked almost embarrassed. “If you’ve been to my dad’s kitchen shelter…” he gestured awkwardly. “I guess what I’m saying must seem pretty fucking ridiculous, and I wouldn’t blame you if you resent me.”
He sighed. “But it’s not what I want, and I can’t change myself.”
Sitting up, Victor fixed him with a stony gaze. “I don’t give a shit.”
Thomas blinked, flinching backwards.
“I don’t give a shit about your background or the fact that you want to throw it away.” Victor shook his head. “For most of my life, the vast majority of people treated me like crap — if they even noticed me at all.”
“But that’s just how people are. I want the best for them anyway.” Victor paused. “Besides, how does you throwing away your privilege change anything for me? Like I said, I don’t give a shit. That’s your choice, why should I judge you for it?”
Shaking his head again, Victor pursed his lips. “Look, you’re here now, and that’s what I care about.” Victor frowned. “Okay, maybe that wasn’t the best way to put it. I am interested in hearing this, and I think you should continue.”
Thomas nodded shakily. “Uh, thanks?” He furrowed his brow. “So anyway, I had been saving up on my own, and I found someone selling these gloves.”
Victor grinned. “Aha! Let me guess, you bought them, and then it turned out they were stolen.”
The blonde boy’s shoulders slumped. “Yeah… from the empire’s personal treasury…”
Victor blinked. “By Creation, you are totally fucked.”
Thomas snorted. “Thanks.” After a moment of silence, he tilted his head. “What about you? Who did you steal yours from?”
Victor opened his mouth, only for Thomas to light up, interrupting with sudden excitement. “Wait, no, don’t tell me. You… you stole it from La Isla Bonita, didn’t you?”
Victor nodded, and Thomas shook his head in wonder. “How in all Creation did you pull that one off?” He chuckled. “Yeah, you’re totally fucked too.”
“Thanks.”
The two boys shared a glance, and then Victor glanced away, his eyes landing on the steaming spider corpse. “Did you start your delve unarmed?”
Thomas shook his head. “No. I had a bow, and all kinds of alchemical throwing weapons.” He rolled his eyes. “Those ran out, of course, and I kind of uh…” he looked away. “Some foul, goopy black tentacled thing managed to snag by bow.”
“Probably an Ichor Dripper.” Victor looked back to the spider. “If we’re going to continue, I think we’ll need to get you a proper weapon.”
Thomas frowned. “How?”
Picking up the spider leg — he had stubbornly clung onto it for the whole journey — Victor grinned. He was hoping that the corpse still had some silk left in it…
“We make one.”