Elijah grimaced as awareness returned. Years of training took over and he rolled over, forcing his eyes to open. Daggers instinctively leapt to his hands as he rose, squinting around the dark room through half-lidded eyes.
“Where’s the frog?”
“Dead,” Avery said. “It’s safe. Relatively speaking.”
“I’m okay too,” David said, waving to him from where he was propped up against the wall. “That frog hit hard. You okay?”
“I’ve been better,” Elijah replied, but he was already shaking the strike off. It was far from the worst head injury he’d gotten, and injuries seemed to heal faster in this world than they had in the previous. “What happened after it went down?”
“The room basically shut down,” David replied. “We’ve just been sitting around for a few minutes to recover.”
All of the flowers around the cavern had stopped producing light and closed their petals, making the room much dimmer.
“And to plan,” Beck snapped irritably. “None of you worked as a team.”
“I wonder whose fault that is,” Elijah said. “I think we’d be better off with David as a leader. At least he doesn’t try to attack his own allies with vines.”
“That’s rich, coming from the guy that stopped my restraining spell from grabbing the boss,” Beck said, crossing her arms. “I did nothing wrong.”
Avery’s eye twitched. To Elijah, that spoke volumes. He was pretty sure the other assassin was a strong push away from putting a dagger through Beck’s throat herself.
“I suppose you’ve got a point,” Elijah said, letting out a sigh. “You're the best strategist in this party, after all.”
Avery’s other eye twitched.
“Which is why you should all listen to me. I’m the highest level and the smartest person here,” Beck said, nodding. “I’m glad you finally understand. If it weren’t for me, that frog would have killed us. Now that I’m level eight, that’s even more true.”
Elijah started. They had killed a monster more than twice his level. That must have gotten him at least a fair amount of experience. He pulled his true status screen up with a thought, showing only himself.
Elijah (Dove) Fleet
Human [Level 7]
Class: Spellblade [MODIFIED]
Strength: 14 +1
Agility: 17 +2
Endurance: 13 +1
Intelligence: 10
Wisdom: 17
Stolen novel; please report.
Charisma: 19
Luck:3
ABILITIES
Shadow Step [MODIFIED]
The user can step into a shadow, teleporting to a nearby shadow within a range determined by the user’s Mananite levels.
* This ability was modified by [REDACTED] based on the user’s experiences. It was originally Flash Step.
Spellblade: Bind
The user performs a simple binding ritual with a weapon of their choice by focusing on it for one minute. Upon completion, they can then cast Spellblade abilities through it.
Spellblade: Infuse (Lvl 1)
The user infuses their weapon with an element.
Currently unlocked elements: Fire
Two levels. That wasn’t bad - or at least, he was pretty sure it wasn’t. Beck was only a level up on them now. Elijah was slightly disappointed to see he hadn’t gotten any new abilities, but it would have been ludicrous if he got them every level or two. The screen would get clogged way too fast.
He glanced at Avery, who inclined her head slightly. Judging by the slight upturn of her lips, Elijah was pretty sure she’d gotten something nicer than he had from killing the boss.
“Did we get anything useful from the stupid thing? Some items or something? I was told there would be loot in the dungeon,” Elijah said.
“What loot do you think a frog was carrying around?” Beck asked, cocking an eyebrow. “Unless you want its body.”
“Mm. Will it sell for much?”
“It’s a magical creature,” Beck replied. “It’s worth some money for sure, but good luck getting it out of here. Normally I’d try to cut something off it to sell, but this is just a frog.”
“What about its core? The other monsters we killed evaporated, but the frog is still here,” Elijah said, nudging the monster’s body with a toe.
“It’s a boss. They don’t evaporate,” Beck said, shaking her head. “That means you can take it as a reward, but I can’t be bothered getting myself dirty for a worthless core. It’ll probably only be worth a few gold.”
Elijah shrugged, flipping his daggers out and approaching the monster. “Money is money. No point wasting.”
He used his blades to work the monster’s flesh apart, ignoring the blood and slime that got all over his hands. He dug for a little over a minute before his daggers clinked against something solid.
Elijah dismissed one of the blades to his other hand and reached in, plucking a palm-sized core from the frog’s chest. He shook the blood and viscera off it without flinching. The orb was deep green, with faint energy pulsing within it.
“Looks expensive. Last core I got didn’t pulse like this,” Elijah said. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught Beck staring at it. “Do you know what this is?”
“No,” Beck replied with a careless shrug. She glanced away. “It’s just some worthless core. I wouldn’t care too much about it.”
Elijah’s eyes narrowed. There’d been a second of hesitation before she answered, and her eyes had lingered on the core for longer than they should have if it was really worthless.
“Sounds good,” Elijah said cheerfully as he tucked the orb into his pack. He’d be keeping an eye on Beck - not that he wasn’t planning to already. “So what now, oh fearless leader? Have we finished mapping out the area?”
“Not even close to it,” Beck replied with a snort. “We’re maybe a fourth of the way in, if that. There’s still a lot of ground we need to cover. We’ve just been waiting for everyone to wake up.”
“I’m awake,” David said helpfully. “Are we going to set up camp here, then? Or should we push to the next room first? We’ve been in the dungeon a little while and we’re all slightly injured.”
“It would be best if we camped here,” Beck said, nodding. “This is a boss room, so we shouldn’t get too much trouble from monsters here. They’ll stay in their own areas to avoid dealing with the boss, and they shouldn’t know it's dead yet. We can all sleep without worrying about setting up a watch.”
Elijah and Avery exchanged a glance.
“Works for us, I guess,” Elijah said.
“Me as well,” David added, rubbing the back of his head. “I’m still a little beat up. Those flowers look like they could make decent beds if we pile them up too.”
The others nodded in agreement, and they all set about preparing beds to rest in.