Shaun started his next day with checking in on his pet projects. He started at the forge and even in the early hours of the morning there was activity within. He found Jane already at work and when she noticed him she immediately stopped what she was doing.
She provided him an update without any pleasantries, just how he liked it, and the overall feeling he got was that she was happy with the progress of production. Many of those working under her had grown considerably in their levels and ability and even a number of the younger students had received apprentice professions.
This also boosted production as for the most part students no longer attended any other profession related classes, although some had decided to join in on the rune classes as they hoped to be able to pick up the skill and eventually be able to incorporate that into the profession at some point.
He moved on after that and went to check on what was now the rune hall. There was more people there already working than in the forge, and a good number of them were actively working on actually engraving spells onto weapons. He didn’t interrupt them and just watched for a while, he would need to spend some time working on more runes for them, they were progressing much quicker than he had expected and soon would need more complex work if they were going to progress further.
When Jo spotted him watching she came over and gushed to him about the work they were doing and how they never would have been able to accomplish so much without him. When he asked her about her skill levels she proudly told him that she had reached level 20 in a number of her skills. He was impressed with how quickly she had grown, soon she would be ready to upgrade her profession and seeing as she was fully focused on rune’s he was curious as to what she might be offered.
When he was done, he waited outside of the dorm rooms, he pushed his echo throughout the building and could pinpoint where Eli was. Thankfully he was awake and moving around, it wouldn’t be long before they would be ready to leave.
While he waited, he came up with a plan on how he was going to run today. The first thing he needed to know was their classes, he would also check to see what professions they had if any. Next he needed to know what skills they had and their levels. Then he would go to a dungeon where he would push them to improve. If they were planning on entering the event then he fully expected them to be able to hold their own as much as possible.
When Eli and his team left the dorms they saw him waiting for them and immediately approached. “I wasn’t actually certain if you would show, figured you would get side tracked with something and forget.” Although he said it in a joking manner he picked up that it was a real fear of Eli’s.
“You may regret me showing up by the time today is over.” He watched the elves eyes go wide at that comment, even the human Joey looked spooked. “No time to waste, everything you tell me will be kept between us, but I need to know everyone classes, professions, skills and their levels.”
“Can we eat first? We haven’t had breakfast yet.” Shaun pulled out some jerky he had taken form the kitchens and handed some to everyone to chew on.
“Be better prepared next time. All of you should have a stock of food and water in your inventories, you never know how long you will be in a dungeon for or what situation you will find yourself in. Be prepared for anything.” It was something he had learnt long ago, life wasn’t easy and you didn’t always have the benefit of food being prepared for you every day.
Eli looked at his team and then looked back at him and nodded. “You’re right. We will better prepare moving forward. My class is the basic blade dancer class. Its at level 10 and I have 3 skills, Dual Blade at level 7, Dancers Grace at level 8, Critical Strike at level 4 and my new skill is Sweeping Strike at level 1. My profession is called Team Leader at level 6, and the skills are Team Boost at level 3, Stand Together at level 2 and Focal Point at level 4.”
Shaun could gather most of what his skills did by the name, his class skills were pretty straight forward but he would learn more when he saw them used. His profession was interesting, he guessed it was given as he led the kids and now was leading a team. It was a profession that would work in and out of combat which was good as well.
They went through the rest of the team, Grace was level 4 due to not having a profession, but her class was surprisingly a Mage. Her skills he was all familiar with, Mana Bolt, Meditation and Mana Shield. Joey was a level 6 Hoplite, which he had never heard of, but he pieced it together from the skills. He had skills relating to the shield and spear, two for each, Shield control, Shield bash, Spear Control and Empowered stab.
The two elves were complete opposites, one was a Rogue which really took him back to his early days and the other an archer. Both were level 6 and had professions, one was an apprentice alchemist and the other an apprentice herbologist.
The team as a whole was made up of 2 ranged, the mage and archer, and 3 close combat, only one also having defence. He could work with that. As they walked to the dungeon he formulated a plan for what he was going to do. From memory the F grade dungeon started out with monsters at level 12 and worked up to level 24. He didn’t know how this was usually done but he was going to see how they worked together and go from there. They should have no issues taking out a level 12 monster considering its 5 against one.
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When they arrived at the he had them all accept the prompt and into the Goblin dungeon they went. It was in a cave system and if memory served it would start out with one goblin, then three, then five. All the weakest variant, and only hitting about level 15 tops at the end.
“Eli, first goblin is yours. Show me what you can do.” They all looked at him confused.
“That’s not really how we do it, um, sir?” This was only the second time Joey had spoken to him and he was scared to call him out on doing the dungeon wrong.
“Everyone call me Shaun, no sirs or anything like that. And I don’t know how your usual trainers do it but at the moment I am your trainer, so you do as I say.” He looked at Eli. “Go.”
Eli gave him a nod, although he looked a little hesitant. What the hell did the trainers do with these kids? It is only one goblin for fucks sake. They all walked up as a group to the area with the first goblin and when it was in sight, he stopped everyone but Eli.
The goblin had no armour and only one basic crappy dagger. Eli looked back at him once more before controlling his nerves and moving towards the Goblin. Eli had 2 short swords in his hands and had on basic leather armour, he should have no problems with dealing with this goblin.
When Eli moved in close he did so quickly, going in for the attack straight away but wasn’t able to do more than a scratch. The goblin went to attack with its dagger but Eli was able to counter with his second sword and then follow up with another attack. This continued on for a while, Eli would use his Dancers Grace skill to move quickly and get in an attack, but for some reason didn’t use his strike skills at the same time. The goblin got lucky twice and managed to scratch Eli with its dagger, but at least Eli had the ability to ignore it for the most part. The rest of his team who were standing behind him only grew more and more stressed.
Eventually, after several minutes of this back and forth, Eli was able to land a critical strike and then took full advantage of that to follow up with another until the goblin was finally dead. Eli looked exhausted and was currently bleeding from his wounds, but at least he did it.
Eli stood over the body heaving for breath. “Are you going to loot it?” Shaun didn’t get why he hadn’t done it already.
“The trainer usually loots the bodies.” Eli said between breaths.
“I am not looting it, its your kill, your loot.” Their eyes went wide at this. Seriously, what are these trainers doing?
When Eli finished looting the body he walked back to Shaun looking tired but also incredibly proud of himself. “I earned a level in my class form that fight, also my skills went up too.”
Time for some tough love. “Why didn’t you use your strike kills while using you dancer skill?”
“They all use mana and we were taught to save mana until you know you can make it count. I am drained of mana now, my stamina is also really low. I lost some health too.” Shaun had to hold back a sigh.
“You should have been able to finish that fight sooner if you utilised all your skills at once, your stamina would be better than it is now and you would have probably saved on mana because the fight ended sooner. Does it usually take that long to kill one of these things?”
“That’s was the first time I have ever fought one of them by myself. Usually the trainer does a lot of damage first and then we get to fight it or we all fight at once.”
“Not anymore. You need to learn to fight by yourself, your class has you fighting on the front lines and you have to be able to take down monsters on your own, especially to protect your ranged attackers. You can’t all focus on one monster, especially when there will usually be in groups.” He waited for that to sink in for a moment. They all had a lot of learning to do. “Good job though, on your first solo kill. You don’t even need healing. Let’s move on.”
When they all walked to the next room they stopped just before the entrance. He turned back to the group and looked them all over. “Joey, your up next, then Patch and then Grace.”
“Wait! There are three goblins in there! You want us to fight them alone?” Joey was not taking this news well.
“I will contain 2 of them, then you will fight the last. Once you finish I will let one go and so on.” He didn’t wait for a reply and just walked into the room and using his air element he contained all three goblins and moved two of them to the side of the room. They tried to fight against him but given he was nearly 100 levels above them there was no hope. “Joey your up. Don’t die.” He pushed the boy forward and released the first goblin.
What followed was an embarrassing mess of a fight, if it wasn’t for the boys shield and being able to keep distance with the spear he would have failed miserably. After a minute of watching Shaun couldn’t take it anymore and started yelling out directions and advise.
Eventually Joey ended up winning the fight, barely. The moment he was done he practically collapsed to the ground. “Loot the body, get up and get behind me.” The boy struggled to do even that, but he pushed through his exhaustion. “Patch your up.” This is going to be a long day.
When they had all managed to kill a goblin once they left the dungeon and then re-entered, they did this over and over again for hours. They had all gained levels from the fights and they were slowly getting better. Their fear disappeared after the 4th time through and their confidence increased the more they fought. When each of them was able to kill a gobin in seconds rather than minutes he called it a day, at least in terms of fighting.
The kids were all tired but in good spirit, they had grown more today then they had in weeks of training. Still he wasn’t done. He walked them to the closest ritual, none of them complaining with having to walk after fighting all day. And when they reached the trees he guided them all through into the nature area.
“Each of you will spend the next hour sitting in here and meditating. No talking, no moving, just meditate and see if you feel anything. We will discuss after.” With that he left them and moved outside to do his own thing. Sitting on the ground he pulled out the death attuned natural treasure he had gotten in the tutorial and started using his elemental storge skill to take some of it and store it for future use. Soon, he would be ready to craft his new sword.