In a way it was the best and the worst way to practice my skills. Worst, because I mostly couldn't actually attack much without tipping my hand. However, I got really invested in using telekinesis and stealth to get as close to Brock as I possibly could without him noticing. I mostly just made faces at him, and spit on something he was eating. I considered farting at him, but I figured that a bit too much hubris; if I screwed up I'd be literally caught with my pants down.

A couple times, Louise spotted me, and I just gave her a wave and didn't do anything. The big hole in Brock's obvious conspiracy theory that I was there to kill them was that... well, I could have at any time if I wanted. Especially with the status inflicting splash potions I had, if I wanted them dead, they'd be dead. But no, I wasn't interested in murder, not least because this was a world where any and every priestess had the ability to discern lies.

That ability had certainly made politics interesting, from a certain point of view, but I was not into that stuff. People with power still got away with bad stuff.

Anyway, one way or another, the three of us all more or less had what we wanted, in a weird way, right? Brock wanted to go through the dungeon as a pair with Louise; I wanted to go alone; Louise clearly didn't want to be trapped alone with Brock. And in a sense, that's exactly what was going on.

Since mobility was one of my major skill focuses, I did some scouting ahead and behind, and when they settled down to rest (Louise needed to recover mana more than Brock needed to recover stamina) I went a little further. That did give me a few excuses to fight further away and sneak back, and since Louise was still technically in my party she got a share of the experience for those fights as well, which was fine by me. It was hard not to see Louise as an underpowered party member, not when I had never seen her fight--honestly, I'd never seen any priestess fight--and her level and equipment were fairly chintzy, too close to standard issue for my tastes.

Anyway, long story short, I did find the exit well before they did, and gave Louise hints whenever she spotted me. It didn't help, since Brock seemed to assume she was just guessing, and he would always put his own guesses over hers. After all, his dick was huge.

Side note, caught him peeing. Predictably, not true. Felt like laughing, didn't, gained a level in stealth. Worth it.

Anyway, the first floor of the labyrinth took entirely too long, but they got through on their own safely. As soon as we three collectively went down to the second floor, I scouted ahead, looking for trouble. Pearland Dungeon's five-level biome structure was predictable: first was an introduction, then a complicated variant, then a scary mess, then a scarier mess with a boss at the end, then a town. Assuming Armand Bayou was the same, there would be several new monsters and possibly some traps. As the first biome of the dungeon, I assumed it wouldn't be too bad.

So in addition to the zombie pygmy dire boars, there were three major additions that I scouted: skeletal albino pygmy dire boars (How could a skeleton not be albino? Was it a skeleton from an albino?), dire boar heartworm clusters (a mess of parasite worms that just strolled around the dungeon in a boar's heart, ew), pygmy pigman necromancers (which were small humanoid pig creatures that stood on their hind legs and were seriously gothed up), and helicopter wraith pygmy dire sows.

I saved that one for last because they were the only real headache for me, personally.

Like okay, nobody wants to fight against a mass of flesh-eating worms in a wandering pig heart, that's gross, and the necromancer gave coordination and intelligence to undead pigs in its vicinity, but the wraiths, being ethereal, could see me, including through walls, and could choose to attack me from the other side of a wall while I was clinging to it. I was away from Louise and Brock when the first of those attacked me, and it's not like I couldn't handle attacking it what with the magic auras for my weapons, but it gave me all kinds of fits whenever I thought about clinging to a wall. At any moment, a pig head just might shoot out of the wall, bite into my hand or foot, disrupt my stealth, and squeal like a... well, like a feral hog mixed with a wraith.

The helicopter part of the name, I would later learn, meant 'helicopter parent' in addition to literally, for no gods-damned obvious reason, having a helicopter blade sticking out of their back. Wraith sows would pick other pigs to protect and just kind of permanently attach themselves to it, doing whatever they had to do to protect them. That wasn't terribly obvious to me because... well, I don't know why, but they seemed to mostly attack me on sight. Maybe it was a side effect of [ Aura of Suffering ] which, according to the aura description, gave monsters (among others) the impression that associating with me would cause trouble... but, they seemed to do the same when I didn't have the aura on, even in defense mode, so... perhaps not.

Meanwhile, the whole mess of new monsters was kind of a problem for Brock. He didn't care much about the squicky heart monsters, being the insensitive tanky character, but when he encoutered one skeletal boar with a pigman necromancer, it completely threw off his game. No longer could he kite and exploit the boar's charging tactics; he had to have a more or less straight up fight, which he was no good at. It was beyond fortunate that Louise, being a priestess, could hurt the undead with an aura of radiant light, and could buff his attacks against the undead, because otherwise I would have had to step in and once more be forced to bask in Brock's presence.

As it was, I scouted around and kept the monsters in the area less numerous. The major problem for me was the wraiths, since physical damage was null for them, but I also had to take out the necromancers with some frequency. Still, with all my auras and buffs... it wasn't too bad.

Eventually after another three hours in the dungeon, still on floor two, Brock and Louise encountered another party of five. I felt relieved to know that Louise would not be in any danger, although Brock took the time to regale the group with horror stories of me and the awful things that I had (not) done. In his embellished version of the tale, I was stalking him and Louise specifically to steal her away and then kill him and for some reason also eat his bones.

While they were sitting around eating and Brock was talking, I unstealthed somewhere behind him and just sat there eating rations as though nothing was wrong. When someone from the other group noticed me, I waved. Brock didn't notice their alarmed looks and kept talking. It was... special.

Since Brock was so involved in talking, though, Louise did get up and come over and sit with me for a little bit, which made all the people listening to Brock's story look at him in a different light.

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"Thanks," said Louise quietly, as she handed me a bit of hot food that they'd cooked over an impromptu campfire. "I know you've been looking out for us."

I just nodded. I had not quite made level 31 yet, since I was not hunting actively and was splitting what I did get with Louise; in contrast, Louise had, since she also got a share from Brock's fights. Brock, being ahead of us in level, would not get a whole lot out of level 32-36 scrub monsters, even if he was no good at fighting them. At best, he could expect skill levels... if he ever got good at performing those skills.

"Do you need any healing or anything?" Louise looked me in the eye as we sat there, and I had to fight not to get lost in her eyes. She seemed genuinely concerned, even scared for my safety, which was... adorable, it was very sweet, but misplaced. I was far, far more concerned with her own safety than mine.

"I'm fine." I felt silly, grinning back at her when she was so scared for me. "My skill levels and equipment are far above Brock's. Some of his misses and zero-damage hits are mechanical, you know. If he was actually using his sword correctly he'd do a lot better."

"I thought he looked a little funny," admitted Louise with a kind of naive self-certainty. "I'll talk with him about it."

I laughed quietly and patted her on the shoulder. "I wish you luck," I said. "I'll keep an eye on you until you can get out of here, but you really need to--"

And that's when Brock finally turned around.

"YOU!"

"Whoop!" I couldn't help laughing as Brock stumbled to his feet and tried to charge me. I flew up in ways that were completely unnatural for anyone non-magical, and stealthed as soon as I was out of his obvious line of sight. Brock, still seeming to believe I was going to appear and backstab him, stood there tensely and then occasionally turned around and swung his sword decisively, if still like an axe, at the thin air behind him. Whenever that predictably failed to sever my head or even shed a drop of blood, he would retract his sword and wiggle it impatiently, as though he was thinking, 'okay, okay, but next time I'll get him'.

I noticed three of the five in the other party had eyes on me. They didn't bother to point me out to Brock. The other two were talking quietly to each other. I gave them a smile and a wave. I didn't bother to manifest a weapon or anything.

"Do you want an escort to the town?" asked the beefy halberd-wielding woman in charge of the other party. Without knowing much else about her, I liked her; she had practical armor, seemed comfortable with her weapon, a little stubborn. I hoped she made it out.

"What? No!" Brock seemed to take offense at that. "I can handle--"

"YES, please." Louise, for once, spoke up, with exasperation in her kind, soft little voice. "We really shouldn't be here without a better party."

"I can handle it!" Brock snapped. "I'm level 58! I've been in this dungeon six times now! I can beat these things!"

"Brock..."

"You can come with us," promised the halberdier, with the two other front-liners in her party exchanging glances and smirks behind her. "I promise we'll keep you both safe from the boogyman."

"No, you don't understand," snapped Brock. "He's a murderer. He's the Butcher of Pearland Dungeon. He killed, like ten people!"

I would have given him credit if he'd at least gotten the number right, like he did before, but giving me a weird name and inflating the number to make me seem scary only made him look stupid. I saw a couple faces blank when he dropped the name Pearland, but when he got the details wrong, they kind of stopped believing him.

"Well, then, you really need someone to watch your back, don't you?" I liked the condescending tone the halberdier managed to put into her voice. "Don't worry. We'll be fine."

And they would be; I'd make sure of it.

Travel was a lot smoother after that. Brock complained a lot at first, but once the others got used to his fighting style, they put him in a place where his tanky instincts were actually a credit to the team. I was confident enough in their formation that I quickly went my own way to grind, meeting them again at the exit hole after only about an hour.

Even I was glad for the support on floor 3. I would have survived it solo, but it would have been a nightmare.

The major change on 3 was that helicopter wraith dire sows would carry a whole extra group of mobs from a neighboring part of the maze through the walls and deposit them in your combat. Additionally, the labyrinth changed its layout on occasion, a fact that Brock knew but had spend zero time preparing for, unlike the group of five. They had a paper map with notes on it that told them not only which way to go but where the rotating wall sections were, which was important since you had to go into a dead-end and wait for the layout to flip-flop before you could get to the exit.

I, uh, didn't know that and got separated from them. But... first things first. The helicopter wraith sows were something that this party, now seven strong plus me, lived in fucking fear of. They preferred to have a front and a back line, with the priestess, a mage, and an archer on the back line. The wraiths, what with going through walls and everything, just screwed that the hell up. I was a little ways away when I heard Louise scream, and charged in to find their back line being assaulted by two heartworm clusters and an albino skeleton. Their front liners were trying to disengage, but it took them a moment.

And then the wraith came back with another load.

That was the first instance of me actually going out of my way to join a fight with them, and I think my major contribution was the Aura of Discord, which I put on the Executioner's Sword and smashed into the wraith. Although it was nowhere near enough to kill the thing, somehow it didn't join in the rest of the battle when it most likely ought to have. If that was the [ Strife ] debuff in action, making it less likely to help its teammates, it was well worth being put on final boss loot.

That, and I used telekinesis to pull the heartworm baddies away. They were seriously creepy and both Louise and the mage were squicked out to have them too close. With some distance, they could focus better, and things went a little faster after that. I did contribute to the kills, but the party was big enough that they were never really in danger, not unless the Wraith brought another load in, and I doubted they would.

Brock may or may not have noticed me, but he didn't get uppity about it. It might be related to him being kiiiind of left alone in the middle of four undead pig monsters of various sorts, one an elemental frost variant albino skeletal pygmy dire boar. So he was a little pissed at them when the battle finished and was not so much thinking about me.

Anyway, the fights I did have alone were tough, if much smaller than they would have been if I were properly alone. Mostly, any fight with the pygmy pigman necromancers and more than two minions was a little frustrating, because the enemy's tactics got a lot better. They would shield their leader (until affected by Strife, at least) and aim for a counterattack, were difficult to kite or separate, and took every opportunity to land little glancing blows on me. There was, fortunately, no infection, no nasty debuff from their bites or hoof stomps, but if there had been one, I might have been in a bad way.

I was getting sloppy. I was out of my solo diver mindset. I didn't like it.

It was during one of those sloppy punchouts that I lost track of the party. As soon as I started looking around and realized I couldn't find them, I thought to myself oh, the layout switched, and based on a loose mental map from looking at their paper map, I went to where I figured they had gone.

And when the layout switched, bam, dead end.

I did figure it out on my own, but only after like half an hour of freaking out. The layout swapped about every ten minutes, and I spent a good deal of time searching around to make sure I hadn't missed anything (including a giant pile of human corpses), but when I put two and two together, I realized that the layout change for the dead end had to give you access to a new area when it shut you off from the start of the maze. It was an unnerving bit of time as I sat there waiting in a dead end, but it worked out.

After that, it wasn't far to the exit. I didn't see Louise or the others, but there were signs they'd camped out by the exit before going in, so I followed.

And hoped that the boss floor would be forgiving.