Already half the way to the stairs, on the search for meat, Sera was interrupted by her sister.
"By the way, where is Nia?" Sarah asked, not finding their guide after looking a bit closer around their room.
"Oh, she is currently hunting. Since you were occupied, we decided to take turns farming." Her sister explained.
"Good idea... Though doesn't that mean that you should stay here?" The scientist noted.
Thinking about it for a moment Sera came to the same conclusion and she got sad. Now being unable to hunt, since she would have to wait for the other girl to come back first. "... Right."
Seeing her sister like that, Sarah looked over her temporary laboratory. Aside from the recently used spell circles, which would quickly melt once she extracted the souls and her items, nothing of value would be left behind. The limited results in her experiments also showed that she would need to rethink her approach, so maybe some kind of distraction would be good. "Fine, fine. I can accompany you. Though again don't expect too much."
"Yeah!"
Coming to a compromise, Sarah quickly picked up her equipment and the two left the more or less safe room at the end of the first floor.
----------------------------------------
Meanwhile Nia was exploring the dungeon alone.
It wasn't something she would normally do as an assassin with a low health attribute, though for some reason the enemies were more focused on the far distant twins than on the imminent danger, giving her plenty of openings to strike. Furthermore, fighting without her party members in a detrimental environment increased her experience gain, making kills even more worthwhile.
The girl would have liked to get some numeric value, though unfortunately Eas wasn't as generous in that regard as the games from other worlds. So she would have to estimate the advantage of this hunting tactic compared to the more normal one. Safety was a concern, but the increased leveling speed was tempting.
The question, why the twins, or more likely Sarah, attracted the beasts from the dungeon, passed through Nia's mind more than once, however without them trying to explain it she wouldn't dig for answers. Everyone had their secrets. And knowing oddities even without the reasons behind them could turn into advantages, be it now or later, when their contract had expired. Just a little less than twenty-five cycles or one hundred years remaining.
Lurking in the corner of a room with dissipating corpses, the assassin looked through the classes she could gain while she was waiting for her next victims.
Scout, Messenger, Seeker, Thief and a lot more of the rather common and weapon related choices greeted her. Entries she had seen often enough, though among them new ones had appeared. It had been just a hunch, but apparently the time she spent with the two summoned girls was enough to unlock new paths for her.
[Dimensional Guide]
[A class for those helping visitors from a distant world beyond their obligations. A class for those unrelated to the summoning, yet still wishing to help the stranded. Be it due to one's own conviction or in the hopes of advantages. Agility and perception class. Focused on guiding the lost regardless of location.]
[Infiltrator]
[Joining a group, their true allegiance lies with another one or no one at all. While outwards they appear like a normal member, they are just waiting for the right moment to further their own agenda. Striking against their apparent companions, collecting intelligence or something else entirely. They are patient masters of deception. Mental class. Focused on blending in; further specializations depend on other classes, goals and actions.]
The second class was just rude, though Nia could see why it had appeared. It was a bit weird that it appeared for her and not most others who just use their pre-level-100-parties for easier leveling, but maybe she was just missing something...
However there was no need to think too much about it, as she had no intention to take that class. For one it could have some overlap with her assassin class, but even more so it wasn't what she was searching for. She had no intention to waste her time on classes with very limited usefulness to her.
Much more interesting was however her first new option. She had to admit that the specialized elemental guide class still wasn't perfect, yet with dimensional affinity being a possible evolution for spatial affinity it was close. Also the attributes would synergize with her other classes and she could see some useful skills coming out of it.
And even if not, removing, fusing or evolving the class in the future once she had her spatial affinity was another option. Getting the boost to the otherwise hard to achieve element would be worth it. Relying completely on the affinity advancement quest was a possibility, but she had read about what could happen in cases where one was unsuited for an element and hadn't made preparations...
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
[Bath in liquid metal without protective items. Brew and consume lethal poison. Feel and understand the flow of time.]
The first two could easily kill one, if they didn't have a good healer and depending on the constraints. The latter could prevent further advancements until one died of old age, if one was unlucky. A disgraceful fate, but it happened in the low level regions where people couldn't access the fountain of youth.
Hearing the sound of rock hitting rock, Nia quickly added the new class to her status and readied herself to welcome a group of obsidian golems. The only possible source of that sound, unless Sera did something idiotic again.
[You gained the Dimensional Guide class.]
The foes entered her room, though the assassin didn't spring into action. Instead she assessed the situation and waited for the right moment. Two level 20 golems, one level 23 elemental. Depending on how her first strike went, there was a certain possibility that she could eliminate the group without the use of tactical retreats.
As usual the creatures didn't look for anything suspicious and simply walked to the exit, ready to track down the weird mage of Nia's party for whatever reason.
Then the moment they were about to leave the chamber, the shadow clad girl silently jumped out her corner. Two of her daggers were already on their way to the human shaped flame and she readied two more to engage the remaining golems.
She would have liked to engage them from a distance, yet their defenses were a bit too much for thrown daggers and she would be relying on her luck.
Unsurprisingly the metal could easily penetrate the flame-body of the elemental and, with it still having normal vitals, a headless elemental was a dead elemental.
Using the moment the enemies were distracted by their dying group member, Nia ambushed the leading golem from the side. One blade was then quickly stabbed into the eye and the other into the slightly open mouth of the wolf-like being. It should have been enough to attack only one of the spots to damage their vulnerable core, but she liked to be sure and not waste good opportunities.
[You killed a Fire Elemental Lv 23.]
[You killed a Obsidian Golem Lv 20.]
Two messages confirmed her kills.
Before the remaining golem could even think of attacking, she used her magic to cover the room in a dark fog and moved away from her last location. Only moments later the sound of obsidian hitting the ground could be heard. Most likely the golem attempting to attack her.
The darkness did also affect the girl, though she was more than willing to sacrifice her vision, a sense she could replace to some extent with her faith affinity, when it would cut off the golem, a being normally only created with a sense of sight, from the rest of the world.
With her target being in close proximity, she could even triangulate the exact distance and use this knowledge to easily evade any of its attacks. Going on the offensive would normally be an option, however with the very limited weak points of her opponent she had to wait for an opportunity.
"Watching" the wolf-like golem trying to maul the darkness around it, strategically made noises helped in keeping the being interested in the fight, Nia counted the remaining seconds of her spell. The moment their sight would return she planned to attack.
Three. She threw another dagger into the distance, and behind the obsidian construct.
Two. It turned around and she started to get silently closer to the location the golem would jump to.
One. Renewing the veil of darkness around her-self, she strengthened the grip on her weapons. The golem jumped, trying to catch whatever had caused the sound.
Zero. The darkness around them quickly dissolved. Nia was standing only a few meters away from her target. Not waiting for it to notice her, she quickly closed the distance. In its last moments the obsidian golem seemed to have noticed that something about the approaching darkness was wrong. However before it could try to attack, a blade entered its eye.
[You killed a Obsidian Golem Lv 20.]
[Your Elemental Mage class has reached Lv 20.]
[Your Darkness affinity has reached Lv 25.]
[You have reached Lv 19.]
The fight was over, or maybe assassination was more fitting. No level up for her assassin class unfortunately, but she got one there a couple of encounters ago, so even with the increased experience gain it would take a few more kills to increase it again.
Checking the time, Nia decided to return to her team and switch with Sera again. Defending someone wasn't her strong point, however, since they had already depleted the enemies in the upper floors of the dungeon to some extent, it was unlikely that many would reach her and Sarah was a decent bait.