“Yeah, but I have to run behind you it’ll still slow us down. Dwarves aren’t long distance runners!”

If she wasn’t a dwarf, I would’ve asked if she wanted me to carry her, but they’d rather be tired then get help from someone.

“The paths will be free of ant bodies now though; you can just use your ground moving spell.”

She hit him again.

“Ow! You don’t have to do that.”

“I could pass out from mana exhaustion or just be completely useless whenever we get there.”

“But at that point, the rest of us can handle the final few people. If we run the whole way at your pace, we won’t even make it there in time to get to do anything. Dodger will make fun of us for not even getting there before it’s over.”

If Mezu got there before any of us, he’d finish it all on his own.

“If I’m about to get tired I’m stopping though. No way am I letting Dodger see me passed out and you carrying me.”

“She’d only tease you for a bit. Paeris would stop her.”

“Doesn’t mean I want deal with it at all, so if I say wait, just wait.”

“Okay, okay.”

I still didn’t know what he meant when he said it was his turn to shine. I looked at the two of them confused.

“Should we …. Or just tell him to follow?” Lefty asked Dot in egalthi.

I missed the middle few words. It seemed that I understood most of it but not every word. Where would I have learned it though?

“Just telling him to follow us should be enough, unless he asks, I don’t see why we’d need to.”

This was strange, but if I knew egalthi, and now that I knew I knew it, maybe my info page would update. That’d be good for Alcoroth, but I hadn’t seen him since yesterday.

“Alright, so just follow Lefty. Tracking is his specialty,” Dot said switching back to dwarvish.

I nodded.

Dot muttered a spell that sounded like it was in dwarvish, but I didn’t recognize the words. When she was done, she raised up a bit and I saw that the ground was now in a small mound under her feet.

“Alright, I’m set.”

Lefty nodded and he started running. I kept behind him at a small distance and saw Dot was keeping pace with us but wasn’t running. It was more like the mound of earth she stood on was rolling her along at our pace.

At a certain point though, Lefty picked up the pace and we were now running down at a decent speed. It’d been a while since I’d done any running, but it was nice. If these floors weren’t so entertaining and tiring, I probably would’ve missed the daily quests a bit.

We didn’t run into any ants, or any ant corpses. It seemed like either we had killed all the ones in our side of things, or the rest had run off to other parts and were killed. When we got to any forks Lefty quickly decided the right one, and we hadn’t run into a dead end yet.

At a certain point though I started to hear thuds and shouts.

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“We’re getting closer to them,” Lefty called out.

“You can hear them already? Good, I’m not out of mana just yet I’ll be able to get there.”

The tunnel we were running down headed downwards steeply and we came out in a large room right as an ant slammed into the wall beside our tunnel.

“Oh look! You guys made it!”

Dodger was beaming covered in the green ant blood.

Dot burst into laughter, “You’re covered in the stuff, you look hilarious!”

“You guys look like you had it easy in comparison, you’ve hardly got anything on you.”

“Dodger focus! Fluffy’s going to kill the Queen before you even get there if you don’t!”

I looked to where I heard Sailhin’s voice and saw her pulling her spear out of the head of an ant that was standing upright. It collapsed when she had pulled out of it completely.

“Ugh! Fluffy!” Dodger shouted running towards him “Let me have fun too!”

It was quite the distance away, but I saw Mezu fighting a large fat, mostly immobile queen.

“It’s not like she’d even been fun to fight, why does she look so mad?” Paeris said in elvish.

He wasn’t next to us, so I looked around and saw him drawing his bow quite a distance away from us. There was a bang that made me flinch and I realized that my ears weren’t covered. I put my aura back just enough for me to hear things just around me.

I must have cleared it out to hear better while we were running, probably on instinct to hear the ants from a distance. My proficiency with aura was annoyingly inconsistent. It’d be easier if things just happened as I thought about it and not have to consider the specifics so much.

“Alright, I’m done for now. Have fun you guys.”

Dot sat down and leaned against the wall away from the ant’s body. I jogged towards the fight though. There were a few more ant guards standing, but they ran towards the queen.

Brick caught up to one, while Dodger and Sailhin got the remaining two. I stopped running seeing that it was just the Queen now, and I didn’t want to take any of Mezu’s fun away.

I looked for Paeris, I’d have to feed Mezu quickly and hopefully he could help me clean up.

He was only few yards ahead of me and went over to him as the banner appeared announcing the completion of the Ant Guards requirement.

“Uh Paeris, do you have water spells?”

“Why?” He asked, firing off another spell.

Then he looked at me, “Oh, yeah I can wash you off real quick, but why’re you asking?”

“Oh, well Mezu’s going to be really hungry after all this so I should be ready for him.”

He looked at me scrunching his face up a bit and putting his flattened hands together.

“You mean to tell me… that you wash yourself off before feeding him?”

“Yeah, when I can. But since he hates bugs so much, I really need to clean off.”

“How much do you have to feed him today?”

“Well, since I’m thinking he probably took out most of the ants and is probably going to do the most damage to the Queen, probably both of my arms would be good. But the problem is, I can only cut my arm off if I have an arm, so I’ll probably cut part of my leg off instead…. Wait then I’d need something to walk with….”

I thought about it for a bit and then remembered my sword, it had a good enough height to it that I could probably use it as a cane.

I pulled it out casually and then saw Paeris’s face. He was just staring at me. His face was confusing me, so I tilted my head.

“What? My sword can work as a cane.”

He shook his and pressed his fingers into his temples looking downwards.

“Paeris it’s only been two floors you need to get used to it,” he muttered to himself in elvish.

“Soooo can you wash me off?”

He nodded and held his bow like a staff, and I was quickly doused in water a couple times.

“Take your bandages out so I can wrap them quickly.”

“Oh, thanks.”

I unwrapped one from my arm since it stayed on while we fought. I looked for the other one though, I left my bag in the house.

“I’ve only got one of them at the moment.”

“Alright, I’ll use my own then.”

I nodded and when he turned his head away to look for it, I cut at my armpit. I attempted to catch my arm before it fell on the ground, but it didn’t manage it. Paeris did his best to avoid looking at it while he took my bandage to wrap my shoulder up.

I then sat on the ground and tried to decide on a good spot to cut for my leg. The congratulations ding came, and I just cut quickly above my knee. Well as quickly as I could. Cutting through my leg was much harder than my arm. I had to saw at it a bit.

I took the leg piece and put it next to my arm, a bit behind me.

“Paeris, I moved it.”

He turned around and cleaned my wound before he wrapped it up with his bandage. When he was done Mezu came bounding over to me.

“Hey buddy” I said but he went straight to my leg and started eating.

Luckily for Paeris he ate both of them quickly. When he ate quickly, his mouth opened rather large, so I was glad Paeris wasn’t looking.

“Alright, let’s head back,” Sailhin said when she came over.

A door opened and I was helped up. I was about to use my sword as a crutch but Dodger supported me.

“Fluffy’s a really good fighter, you better spar with me when you’re healed to make up for him taking the queen from me.”

I laughed, “Yeah sure.”