The pattern held.

The first wave hit them again the next day, at twelve thirty, and the last one at ten thirty at night.

So it was for the third day, and the fourth… And five entire days passed, forming a week of seven days.

Then, another week slowly dragged by.

The corridor, the pattern, the arrows. It was all an endless same.

One thing that did change was that the Pressure grew increasingly worse. Heavier, hotter and more painful. However, they too changed in response.

Nar now woke up only two minutes after the Pressure hit, and he was sure that he was able to endure it for longer before passing out.

This was the same for the others. As for the three that had suffered the worst under it, they too were making progress. They now woke up within the Pressure zone, and were even able to walk by themselves out of it. Even Viy, who suffered the most, was slowly, day by day, getting stronger to the Pressure.

Another thing that did change as well, was that Mul’s behavior got worse, something Nar hadn’t believed to be possible.

Right now, as they waited for the final wave of the day, Nar was on the verge of punching him.

Mul had just suggested that Jul should go scout ahead, see if maybe they were walking in some sort of endless trap.

“Why don’t you go and check?” Tuk exploded, while Nar held himself back.

“I’m not a scout! I’m a fighter, and she isn’t! She has to do her part!” Mul retorted.

“She is doing her part, you idiot!”

Mul stomped towards the trugger, whose eyes blazed with barely contained anger.

“Call me id…”

“Enough!” Kur shouted. “Enough!”

“But…”

“Enough! We don’t have time for this!”

They waited in a sullen silence, no one, not even his own sister, wanting to look at Mul.

The seconds ticked by.

Nar vaguely wondered about that expression. It was part of the time tracking knowledge that he had received from the data package, but there had been no explanation to it, nor to the word “ticked”. Yet, he somehow understood its meaning.

The seconds continued to tick by, and then, it was past the time.

“Where is it?” Tuk asked.

They eyed one another in confusion.

The pattern had been the same for two weeks. Why had it changed now?

“Everyone, get up,” Kur said. “In formation!”

They quickly rearranged themselves.

Gad stood at the front. She was much stronger now, and more stable than the last time. She now held both shield and mace at the ready. And Viy, who had been passed out for their first fight, now stood behind Gad, to her left, in the position that Nar had taken before, with her spear pointed at the darkness ahead.

The others stayed where they were, and that left Nar at the very back, the furthest from any possible action, and the gains he so desperately needed.

“Do you think it will come?” Cen whispered.

“No idea,” Kur said. “But just in case…”

They waited in silence.

Nar’s heartbeat was fast, and his hand was sweaty around the sword's smooth, soft grip.

“I hear it!” Jul shouted. “It’s a guardian!”

She pointed forward.

“Gad, get ready!” Kur shouted. “DPS, wait for the aggro!”

Kur had refined their strategy earlier on. Getting better and stronger as the days passed, he was able to stay awake for longer periods of time, and to think and strategize.

Gad would get the aggro on the enemy first, using her taunt skill, [Warrior’s Presence]. Only when she gave the all clear, would the DPS start dishing out the damage.

Her taunt and aggro management, which was critical to her role as a tank, was yet another stark reminder to Nar that he was only half a tank.

At least for now, was what he told himself. He was sure he would get his own such critical tanking skills at some point.

For now, though, he was relegated to the back. He understood the importance of covering the party’s back from ambush, but he couldn’t help but feel like he was missing in on the action.

The guardian burst from the darkness and into the yellow light. It came in as a fast moving, rolling ball of limbs, just like the first one had.

Gad stepped forward, looking indestructible in her strength and shield.

The guardian smashed against the heavy shield, and Gad was pushed back, skidding across the floor. But she held, and her mace rang loud and clear against the guardian’s body.

“Now!” she shouted.

“Melee, get in there!” Kur shouted.

Nar had a great view of the fight from behind, and he watched how Gad, Mul and Viy fulfilled their roles. Maybe by watching them, he could get better himself.

Gad was a stalwart wall against the chaos of flailing limbs. The guardian pushed and attacked, seeking a way through, or, to at least force her back towards the center of the party, but their tank wasn’t having none of it. Her shield caught most everything that was thrown at her, and whatever it didn’t, she either caught on her mace, or it didn’t seem to faze her.

Mul, at Gad’s right, fought brutally, as expected of a brawler. The shortcomings from his stature were evident, but as he gained attributes, Nar doubted that his height would hinder him for much longer. As it was, Mul punched the guardian with such ferocity and strength, that Nar, standing all the way at the back, found himself wincing.

Say what he may about Mul’s attitude, the guy was a good fighter.

Then, there was Viy.

Her spear was a blur in her hands, thrusting, stabbing, twirling. It gave her a much longer reach than Mul, and in fact, Nar himself, and she could bring to bear all of her DPS and attributes without being as worried of being in the guardian’s radius of attack.

Watching the two of them fight, it quickly became apparent to Nar that his own DPS was lackluster in comparison.

He had ended that last fight, yes, but he hadn’t finished it. It was obvious that the pure DPS, especially Mul’s skill at the end, had played a much greater role than he had, in whittling down the guardian’s HP. He had simply dealt the lucky killing blow.

And that was a sobering realization.

“Ranged!” Kur shouted. “Quick!”

Cen and Tuk got to it.

They had to be precise in following Kur’s and Gad’s cues. At least that was their understanding of aggro.

Unfortunately, Gad’s taunt skill had a recharge period, a cooldown, just like his [Strong Defense] skill had. Hers required 3 minutes instead of 30. She couldn’t simply spam it like Nar’s other skill [Strong Attack], and just keep the enemy’s aggro on her.

Her [Warrior’s Stand] was the same, having a full 30-minute cooldown, just like Nar’s [Strong Defense]. Perhaps that was due to both skills requiring more stamina, or maybe, there was something else at play there that none of them yet understood.

Whatever the case, the DPS needed to fall back when Gad started to lose aggro, and hold off fighting entirely to ensure the guardian didn’t target their much squishier selves instead.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“Stop!” Gad shouted.

Viy and Mul stepped back, away from the guardian.

However, several of Tuk’s rings and Cen’s puffs of air, as she had started calling them, still impacted against the guardian.

Nar seemed to see it happening in slow motion.

The guardian curled around Gad, its limbs moving so fast that Nar didn’t even understand how it had managed to do it.

It crushed Viy against the wall, moving her out of the way as though she was merely an afterthought, and burst forward, into the defenseless center of the party.

It headed straight for Cen.

Before even realizing what he was doing, Nar was on the move.

He had no shield with him, and he knew he couldn’t stop the thing with his body and HP either. That left him only one option. Attack, and hope the guardian stopped its charge to defend itself.

His sword came down on the guardian, just as its limbs were about to reach Cen. The caster had fallen backwards with an expression of absolute terror, looking up as multi-bladed death came down on her.

The guardian, however, perhaps noticing the danger, shifted at the last moment, limbs twisting to intercept Nar’s sword.

He knew that he didn’t do any damage, but he didn’t have time to lament it.

He had the aggro now, and the guardian came at him with a fury he could barely keep up with.

Blade. Limb. Blade. Limb. Limb. Blade. Limb. Blade. Blade.

The stabs and blows were merciless and relentless.

He felt the pain. Felt the cuts. Somehow, he avoided getting stabbed.

Then, the guardian leaped off from him, and ran straight back into Gad’s shield.

“Quick!” she shouted.

“Nar, go!” Kur shouted.

Instead, gasping, Nar stared at Viy’s limp form on the floor. Blood trickled down her temple, and her spear was discarded at her side, not too far from her outstretched fingers.

Is she dead? He thought, his eyes wide.

Had they suffered their first loss?

One thing was to think about it. To say you were prepared for it. Another completely different thing was to see it happen before your very eyes.

“Nar!” Kur shouted again.

Nar realized that Kur had kept talking, and that he had missed all of it.

Around him and above his head, Tuk’s rings and Cen’s air puffs found their way towards the guardian, avoiding anyone in their way.

Nar forced himself to move forward, and to pry his eyes off of Viy as he ran past her.

He saw Mul unleash his skill into the guardian’s underbelly, and with Viy down, Nar thought that was a great idea.

He didn’t stop to ask Kur. Seeing how Mul was doing it, maybe Kur had already ordered it.

[Strong Attack]!

It wouldn’t do much, but maybe it would be enough. Besides, he realized he had forgotten his [Strong Defense] skill again, even as this had been the perfect time to actually use it.

Get it together, Nar! Or it will be you on the floor next time! he berated himself, as his skill connected across the top of the guardian, doing little to no apparent damage.

The DPS threw everything they had at the guardian.

Finally, one of Mul’s punches got through. The guardian was flung against the wall, and it crumpled, unmoving, with a massive, circular dent surrounded by cracks visible on its side.

DING!

You have defeated one Guardian Worker 1. 147 experience points have been awarded.

You have leveled up!

You have gained:

Strength 10 -> 11

Stamina 10 -> 12

Speed 6 -> 7

Aura 23 -> 25

“What the fuck?” Nar breathed, heaving in the sudden end of the fight.

“Nar, you okay?”

He pushed the window away and was met with Gad’s undaunted stare.

Her breath was mostly under control, and from what he could tell, she didn’t even look hurt. Maybe her [Constitution] was so much higher than his, that such damage was nothing to her, and cuts and scrapes healed even in the midst of battle.

“I… Yes,” he said.

He had just gained [Aura] again. Again! How was that happening? How?

“Good! That was a quick reaction!” Gad said, and her attention shifted to something behind him.

Nar turned around, following her eyes.

Kur and Tuk were kneeling next to Viy’s prone body.

Nar felt as though a dark, bottomless pit had just opened under him, and he approached them slowly.

“How is she?” Gad asked, her voice somehow still calm and in control.

“Breathing. I think she just got knocked out,” Kur said, pointing at a quickly darkening bruise on the side of her face, where a trickle of blood still ran down from.

“Will she be okay?” Tuk asked.

“I think so. Her HP should restore her, but we’ll have to wait and see. For now, let’s just lay her down in a better way.”

Tuk nodded and got up. “I’ll grab my spare clothes. We could put them under her head!”

The word “pillow” entered his mind, but Nar was too shocked by what had happened to even realize how strange it was for the workers to have no knowledge of such a thing.

“Thank you!” Kur shouted after him. “Cen, are you okay?”

The two lengos siblings were a few feet away.

“I-I’m fine,” Cen said. Her complexion was a much lighter shade of gray, and her eyes were still open very wide, staring at the downed guardian.

Mul caught them staring, and nodded at Nar.

“Thank you,” he said.

Then he focused back on his sister. Nar stared at his back, dumbfounded, and wondering if he had imagined it.

“I heard it too,” Tuk whispered, as he rejoined them. “I think. Maybe this is all just a nightmare and we’ll wake up soon and hungry… And under the Pressure.”

He bent down, leaving Nar stunned still, and fluffed the bundle of clothes in his hands into a makeshift pillow.

“There. Try that.”

Kur and Gad gently lowered Viy to the floor, placing her head on the pillow. Meanwhile, Jul stared at both ends of the corridor with a concentrated expression, to make sure that nothing else was coming for them.

“I think we just need to let her heal,” Gad said. “And sleep will make it faster.”

Kur nodded, rubbing his chin.

“Yeah. Thank the Crystal it didn’t actually try to kill her.”

“It was completely focused on Cen,” Tuk said. “Like it didn’t even see the rest of us. And by the way, nice save, Nar! You moved so fast, man! It was like you just came out of nowhere!”

“Yes, well done, Nar,” Kur said, smiling at him. “Like I predicted, it’s good to have a hybrid class in the party. Though I hope we won’t be needing saves like that all the time.”

“I’m sorry. I was too slow to stop it,” Gad said, hanging her head.

Kur raised his hands. “No! No! No! That’s not what I meant! I just meant that we need to be more careful with our aggro management.”

Gad watched him for a moment, then nodded.

“I should have called it earlier, to give time for the ranged to stop. I can see… And I know the countdown, in my head,” she said.

“Oh! That’s amazing! But it's not your fault. It's no one’s fault. This is all new to us. We’ll learn and we’ll get better,” Kur said.

Gad opened her mouth, then closed it right away. Whatever she had been about to say, she thought better of it.

“We will!” Tuk said instead. “And look at that! Another guardian down and more gains for us! Whoop-whoop!”

Jul shushed him aggressively. Everyone stared at her. It was the loudest sound she had made in their two weeks together.

“S-Sorry!” she stammered, finding herself under their combined stares. “Just be-be quiet!”

“Sorry!” Tuk whispered, though the bright smile on his lips rendered his apology almost moot.

“What do we do now?” Gad asked.

“We’ll stay here and let her heal,” Kur decided, and glanced at Cen. “She’s also not in a state to go anywhere. Let’s rest here for the night, and see what happens.”

He patted Nar’s leg. “I want you to sleep the whole night today. You’ve done plenty. I can’t imagine how much HP and stamina that took out of you. That everything, us included, have been taking from you. So please, just rest tonight, ok?”

Nar hesitated. A whole night’s worth of sleep?

He hadn't had that since they had left the cubeplant. He was always on the watch rotation, due to his higher stamina and resistance to the Pressure. All the others had been rotated in and out at that stage, excepting for Viy who continued to require full nights of sleep.

It had been one of the sore points that had stuck to him as unfair. However, he had not raised any protests, for he knew it wasn’t really unfair.

He had quickly learned that Kur was, so far, and to the best of his abilities and circumstances permitting it, a fair and level-headed leader. Perhaps he even genuinely cared for the party, rather than just seeing them as tools for his Climb. Like Nar did.

It was one of the things that made Nar start to wonder if perhaps he was in the wrong for not considering them as nothing more than a means to an end…

Tuk gave him a thumbs up and Gad nodded at him.

“Go rest,” Gad said. “We’ll watch.”

“Uhm… Thank you.”

He walked past Jul, who surprised him yet again, by offering him a shy nod.

He sat at the back of the party, but despite being tired, sleep didn’t come to him easily.

The adrenaline of the fight was slowly leaving him, but guilt gnawed at him. He wasn’t even sure why.

He had done everything in his power to help. He had even risked his own life to save Cen’s. However, his dad’s words kept ringing around his mind. To trust each other. To care for each other…

But a part of him wondered if he had only saved Cen for his own selfish reasons. Was it for gains, seeing his chance to join the fight? Or was it to keep her alive so that she could continue helping him Climb? Somehow, he doubted he had done it for the true fulfillment of a tank’s role and duty.

He wanted to refute those doubts, however. He had moved before he had even realized what he was doing. That was a good thing, right?

Yet, it was hard to put his doubts to rest.

On the other hand, he had gained [Aura] yet again.

25 points now.

Another 15 and he would lose his first modifier to that useless, broken attribute.

It felt like a sick joke from the Crystal, to have that thing following him out of the cubeplant. He could only hope that the Crystal didn’t take the joke too far. It was worrying to see the number grow, especially since he didn’t even know what was causing it, or what he could to stop it once and for all.

He wasn’t using any [Aura], so the mystery only deepened.

In fact, without a receptor and a machine, he wasn’t even sure how [Aura] could be used at all. And if it could, then what for?

Using it felt just slightly better than being under the Pressure. It cut him up from the inside, traveling through his veins in tiny, jagged pieces that he pushed from the center of his chest and through his body, expelling it through his hands and feet, and into the ever-hungry machine encasing him.

He passed out on a daily basis, and bleeding from his nose, eyes and ears was a common occurrence to him and all the other Unclean. So common that Nar had used his dad’s clothes for the last couple of months, to ensure that his stayed stain free for his Climb.

The Clean did not bleed like they did, and it would've been a dead giveaway of what he was if he showed up in his usual red stained clothes.

No, he did not care for his [Aura], not even if there might ever be a use for it, which he doubted.

It was part of their punishment. It was their curse to use aura to power their machines instead of the Crystal’s blessed aether. And there would be no place for it in his path.

He was earning his forgiveness. He was earning his [Aether] and his magic.

Perhaps, it was all just a fluke… Or no! Wait!

Perhaps it was all a test from the Crystal Almighty, to see if he endured in his path? To see if he, an Unclean, could repent his years of blasphemy. To see if his faith could be restored, and his heart turned back to devotion.

Yes, that has to be it! If I stay strong, then I’m sure it will all be wiped clean! Like my sin!

Yes. He just had to endure.

His other attribute gains, [Strength], [Stamina] and [Speed], were all very good and useful, and he was more than happy to gain them.

Yes. Perhaps things weren’t as bad as he thought.

The Crystal had told him to earn his path, after all. Not told him that it was impossible. And he would, heart, mind, body and soul, do everything to prove to the Crystal that he was worthy of it.

He would endure everything and anything.

Nar closed his eyes and joined his hands in the blessing of the Crystal.

Then he did something he hadn’t done in a long, long time.

He offered the Crystal a Prayer of Devotion.

Oh, Holy Crystal, Who dwellest at the Heart of the Nexus,

Blessed be Thy Radiance…