Nate watched the battle unfold before him. In one hand he held a mana gathering array, recharging his mana gems. In the other, he balanced a metal bar as he channelled mana and his Conceptual Material skill, slowly adding the affinities of mana and release to the metal while raising it from Rare to Epic quality. On top of that, he maintained two runic arrays. The first obfuscating the mana he was using and the second concealing the metal bar. Given how much work was involved in crafting while delving the Dungeon he was thankful for all the times that Frick had sat around tiering up his materials. The Familiar had truly earned his title of Assistance from the original Dungeon reward that saw him gifted with the odd little spirit. Even now, Frick was assisting him, though Nate got the sense that this type was more preferable for the not-so-little goblin.
Frick had to be at least three metres long as the goblin-turned-merman swam around using his claws to rake flesh from the Carnidans they fought. His Familiar was using his powerful tail to propel himself around the underwater Dungeon, but Nate hadn’t been sure how the others would handle their own mobility. He shouldn’t have worried. Kiri of course used Soul Shift, vanishing in a spray of bubbles caused by water rushing in to occupy the space she had vacated, only to appear in an explosion of bubbles over one of the Carnidans, stabbing into its back and being dragged along behind it as she tried to eviscerate the beast that was three times her size.
Coralie had surrounded her ankles, arms and waist with what looked like bands of ice and if his senses were correct she was manipulating their positions, using the ice to drag herself where she wanted to go. He had to admit he was a little impressed by the display, as she was managing five different circlets of ice to control her position. It made him wonder if she had invested a little in her Intellect, as speed of thought and divided attention seemed to be the main abilities the stat improved, besides the obvious one of improved memory. As he watched, she launched multiple spears of ice through the water, two of which struck her target and cut furrows into the beasts, though they failed to do any lasting damage. Durability based monsters, he thought in distaste.
Turning his attention to Flash, he wasn’t sure whether to laugh in amusement or be gobsmacked with the impressive, if odd, performance. The man’s signature class of Edgedancer was on full display. Nate wasn’t sure if it was the best method for fighting underwater, but Flash somehow made it work. The dagger wielder had a dagger in each hand, as expected, but it was the two additional daggers strapped to the bottom of his feet that made him stand out. Nate knew how the Edgedancer’s signature skill worked, leaving echoes of a blade slashes in the air. However, what Nate had not known last time was that the sharpness of those echoes could be altered. With small flicks of his feet Flash was creating echoes that he could then push off of to reposition or move around the water.
The little flicks of his feet showed a high level of Skill and likely a solid investment into the Dexterity stat. Whatever it was, it was clearly working as out of the four combatants, from which Nate was currently excluding himself, Flash was the one doing the most damage to the Carnidans. Nate watched as the man baited another Carnidan into charging at him, jaws open ready to clamp down on him. Flash slashed twice in front of him, while rotating a foot slightly at the same time. Pushing off the echo he had formed beneath his foot he dodged the Carnidan’s charge at the last moment. The Carnidan, however, crashed through the other two blade echoes, losing a fin in the process as well as a half its lower jaw. Blood bloomed in the water even as the lost fin slowly sunk down to the ocean floor where colourful fish began nibbling at it.
Confident that he wasn’t needed, Nate settled in to continue with his crafting. He would need to take short breaks to refill his Mana Reserve from the mana gems so that Frick could continue to handle the battles for him, but that was a small cost for advancing his runecrafted defences.
The battle lasted another ten minutes before all of the Carnidans had been brought down. Nate sensed the two orbs that had been left behind and pointed them out for the team, before Frick dutifully collected them, delivering them to Kiri.
With the first engagement out of the way the team began searching for the first Dungeon Challenge. They were going to be down here for a few days and getting at least one challenge done on the first day was the plan if they didn’t want to drag out their Dungeon visit.
*************
Kiri growled in annoyance, bubbles floating out of her mouth and obscuring her vision for a moment. She hated, absolutely hated, not being able to be involved in a battle. Flash floated beside her, also unable to participate as she watched Coralie and Nate face the enemy before them. She had no identification Skill, something she intended to remedy, but it meant she didn’t know the name of the beast in front of them. The monster was immobile, looking like a gigantic wobbling jelly with a thousand arms. Like most of the creatures in this Dungeon, it glowed in the waters, shades of white and red rippled across its body with its white arms tipped in circles of orange and red. It was a beautiful sight; it was also a pain in the ass. She and Flash were far enough back that the acidic bursts released from the many arms of the beast did nothing to them but she had gotten a feel for how strong they were up close. Even with Soul Imbuement boosting her Constitution and Endurance it had started to eat away at her skin. Slow enough that she could have fought, but if the battle extended she was going to start running low on soul energy.
She had tried anyway but Coralie had used ice bindings to drag her away and she had finally relented, letting her girlfriend and her best friend handle the battle. Nate of course was casually floating around in his barrier, seemingly completely unconcerned about the acidic nature of the waters he drifted in. She wasn’t sure what he was doing, but it was clearly something as the monster was not as active as when they had first encountered it. Coralie on the other hand was very obvious. Her girlfriend was completely encased in ice which was apparently enough to protect her from the acidic releases. Her freezing domain was slowly chipping away at the many arms of the beautiful monstrosity, freezing them and letting them break off to drift down towards the ocean floor.
That ocean floor contained the warning of the dangers involved. Bones. Thousands of them littered the floor around the beast, all pearly white. Looking back up she watched as the monster launched another calculated attack against Nate. Over twenty of the drifting arms suddenly aimed at him, launching bones coated in sticky yellow acid. Her friend however simply vanished out of the way, appearing a few metres away and keeping up whatever he was doing. The arms that had attacked seemed to wither away and fall as she watched the monster slowly continue to deflate. She was guessing, but she suspected he was using his Life Drain rune on the monster.
The fight dragged on for almost thirty minutes before the monster finally succumbed. After some quick back and forth pointing it was agreed the first reward would go to Nate. She watched as an Orb appeared in his hand before vanishing into his spatial storage. They had been fighting on and off for over five hours as they explored the underwater wonderland and after using some super simple sign language agreed to return to a nearby cave they had seen to set up and take a rest. It had been after midday when they entered the Dungeon and while they could have pushed for another Challenge, they already had a pretty good idea where two of them were. In her opinion, finding them was more work than actually fighting the Challenge monsters. Even though the beast had likely been close to level sixty, it hadn’t managed to threaten them at all.
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Swimming into the cave she exhaled, spitting water onto the floor, before inhaling air instead of liquid for the first time in hours. The breath of fresh air made her sigh happily. The potions worked wonders, but they still required you to breathe in water which felt weird and uncomfortable.
“That wasn’t as fun as I was expecting,” she griped. “And I am still drenched!”
Even as the words left her mouth the water in her clothes was sloughing off her and back into the pool that marked the cave's entrance. She shot a thankful glance at Nate who dropped the runic array in front of him now that he had dried all three of them. She smirked as he still hadn’t gotten a drop of water on him.
“Thanks Nate,” said Coralie, a beaming smile on her face. Flash added his own thanks a moment later and Kiri had to admit the man seemed a little less sullen than usual.
“Food and make camp?” Kiri suggested.
When everyone agreed she started setting up the two person tent she had brought along for this trip. They had all agreed beforehand on the plan for resting. There was no real night or day in this watery place and as far as they knew, you could not swim to the surface. She was tempted to try, despite the explanation that the Dungeon Custodian had implemented some spatial manipulation to keep you from escaping its confines. It made sense she supposed, as Dungeons were supposedly spatially contained spaces, whatever that meant. Maybe Nate would know? Either way, since there was no night or day, and the light from the aquatic plant and animal life was constant, they could rest as little or as much as they wanted. They had all agreed to go for as little as possible.
They had no desire to be stuck down here in this watery wonderland for a week, no matter how good the view. That didn’t mean the caves were safe though. Some of the monsters, like the Carnidans they had fought, were capable of entering the caves. As such, they would do two on watch and two resting. It had been Coralie that had decided she and Kiri would rest together, which of course had left Kiri grinning from ear to ear. She just hoped Nate wouldn’t mind spending time on sentry with Flash. With a shrug she continued setting up the tent. A little privacy would go a long way after all, she thought with a smirk.
*************
Nate sat back from the pool's edge, continuing his crafting even as he used his farsight sphere of awareness to monitor the water below the pool’s surface. These caves were cleverly designed and he wondered if the Dungeon Custodian had done it intentionally or simply been given the Dungeon in its current state. He didn’t know much about how Dungeons were formed or designed or even the role of a Dungeon Custodian beyond populating a Dungeon with Challenges.
The cave they rested in had a number of small vents that, as far as Nate could tell, pumped air from tubes that led down to natural formations in the rock beneath the sandy depths. Clever method, he thought, for giving non-aquatic creatures, like themselves, resting spots within the Dungeon.
Flash sat a couple of metres away from him, daggers in hand and eyes glued to the cave's entry. He had been wondering if he should make small-talk with the man for the last twenty minutes. Out of all the Guildies, he had spoken the least with the Edgedancer. Obviously he spent a bit of time with Null and more with Britt. But he even exchanged more words with Ameera and Karim than he did with Flash at the University.
After another twenty minutes of Nate trying to decide whether to speak, it ended up being Flash that broke the silence.
“You and Kiri make a good team.”
“Thanks,” Nate replied, his tone unsure, before awkwardly adding, “you and Coralie seem to work together well. Have you been teamed up for a while?”
“Eight years,” Flash replied, eyes still watching the water.
“That’s basically forever. How did you end up on a team together?” he asked, trying to keep the conversation going, if only to avoid the awkwardness of another extended silence.
“Her Mother,” said Flash in a monotone.
The Edgedancer glanced at him and he must have seen the confusion Nate was experiencing on his face.
“Prefect Allais handpicked Coralie’s team. She even held tryouts. Though victory wasn’t the only thing she must have been assessing. I guess she wanted to build a support network around Coralie. I always thought that, since out of everyone I was the closest to keeping up with her, that we would, you know, end up together.”
Nate remained silent, just letting the man talk, or vent, whatever this was.
“Kiri entering the picture was a bit of a wake up call for me. I didn’t handle it well. Can see that now. So, sorry for that.”
“Is it me you should be apologising to?” suggested Nate carefully.
“No, you’re right. I’ll talk with Kiri after the Dungeon. Just figured since we were chatting, I would, you know, say sorry to you too.”
“It’s fine,” replied Nate. He didn’t really care that much about Flash’s issue, but it cost him nothing to extend that olive branch. That said, he was curious what was driving the change. “What brought this on? Just been thinking about it all?”
“Nah,” Flash replied and for the first time that Nate could recall the man had a small smile on his lips. “I mean, not completely. I guess I had been so focused on Coralie for so long that when she started seeing Kiri it kind of broke my brain for a bit. But it made me realise that it was never going to happen, you know? Changed my whole outlook. I’m still dealing with it, but I err…am seeing a girl at the University.”
Nate grinned knowingly, and trying to add some levity to the situation, took a leaf from Kiri’s book and waggled his eyebrows at Flash.
“Don’t start,” Flash replied with an amused snort, the smile on the man's face slowly growing.
Nate knew Frick would’ve made it even worse if he had been present, fortunately his Familiar was down in the vent to conceal the ongoing work on his Spatial Release affinity material along with a mana gathering array.
“She come from one of the merchant families?” he asked.
Flash went a little red in the face, blushing as he carefully kept his eyes on the water, “Noble actually. Daughter of a baron.”
“Does she have a name?”
“Celeste,” Flash replied with a smile, before adding after a moment, “Celeste Drocilio.”
“Nice name,” commented Nate. “She a nice woman? Haven’t had the best experiences so far with the nobility.”
“She’s not like them. Suppose if she was she probably wouldn’t be with me, would she?”
“Suppose not,” agreed Nate with a smile.
“You and Britt?” asked Flash, glancing at him.
“Friends,” he replied, smirking a moment later, “with benefits.”
Flash laughed quietly and the pair sunk back into silence, though this time it wasn’t awkward. The conversation had one key effect on Nate. He wouldn’t mind doing another Dungeon with Flash and Coralie if the Edgedancer was going to be a bit more mellow like this. That just left a question of if it was worth the slower advancement? Thinking back to the Skill Orb he had gotten, perhaps it would be better to do a Dungeon with just Kiri. Taking out the Skill Orb he looked at the notification again.
Skill Orb (Rare, Level 3)
Wood Shaping
He frowned at it in consternation. It wasn’t that he was unhappy with the Skill, in fact, it was the opposite. This was exactly the kind of Skill he was looking for to synergise with his Metal Shaping. However, he still didn’t understand how the Dungeon or Dungeon Curator knew what he was after. It was concerning to think that something might be reading his mind, even with his Soul Barrier protecting him. With a sigh he started making plans for when he returned to the Royal University. With him most likely graduating to the Advanced subject for Mana and Affinities, it was finally time for him to get some answers.