Silas and Parker. Just the first two guys they had met. They stood at one end of the tunnel, glancing from side to side every few moments to keep an eye out for monsters, and their entire team had come to meet them.
Ryan almost wanted to duck back out for that reason alone, but unlike the others, he was a friendly face in the crowd.
Kyle and Lea led the discussion and had their attention, but Parker perked up when he saw him past Jason, who stood slouched still taller than him, and Lisa who was … shorter?
She leaned against the wall, hands over her arms, but no, even standing straight she would likely be shorter than him now. Part of him had hoped that would never happen.
“Micah,” he tapped the guy on the shoulder and said in a low voice, “Mind keeping watch on the other tunnel and camp?”
“Huh? Oh, uhm …”
He glanced back to the discussion with a pained expression on his face, but looked up and gave a dejected sigh before trudging off. He was a bit of a control freak himself.
Ryan moved on. “Lisa, can you check on the food?”
“I can do that from here.” She raised half a hand from her bicep and wiggled her fingers as if to say, Magic.
He opened his mouth to give a counterargument—would she be fast enough to react if it boiled over?—but then sighed and asked, “Please?” instead.
She glanced at him and left.
Four against two. An asshat in the front, the closest thing to a professional supporting him—Lea worked summers at her family’s loot tent—and two friendly faces hanging back, almost like a promise if they could get past.
Better.
You, too? Micah said in the camp. You were supposed to loom in the back to show off our highest-level member.
Ryan almost shook his head. That would be you, idiot. Micah was level twelve in one Class, she thirteen because of her consolidation, but he was level seventeen in total. He’d taken ahead after the sports festival.
Ryan was nine, four, one. Fourteen. Hadn’t he accomplished anything since the last exam?
Like, you could have had your summons run by without lifting a finger?
I’m doing that one way or another.
Yeah, but so they can see!
It didn’t matter. It was too late to undo now.
Assuming he thought like Micah, none of it mattered anyway. How would the others know if Lisa was the one controlling the lizards? Why would they think Micah was above level four, going by appearances alone? He was giving them too much credit.
The rest of us aren’t like you two, he thought, we don’t have the benefit of Skills, or Paths, or a private education. We can see with nothing but our eyes alone.
His [Enhanced Senses] improved his eyesight, but that was for things like distance, dark adaption, and movement. It was subtle and didn’t help.
So looking with his eyes alone, Kyle was a cocky asshole. Not really attractive, especially with the way he kept himself and his stupid hair, but guessing by his posture, his lack of real injuries, and the enchanted axe at his side, he was skilled enough to pull his weight.
Lea was tall, broad-shouldered, and attractive. She acted like she was attractive, too, unlike Lisa, and wore nice clothes she kept clean, but which were always slightly disheveled because of how much she did in them. She was nice, charming, and confident, but also the type who could use that to get her way. Even with teachers, to get an extension on homework, to allow her a short break to eat before class because she just got out of gym, or to go to the restroom even though someone else had gone and that teacher usually forbid two people going at once.
Surrounded by unfriendly faces, she’d acted quiet, grumpy, and somewhat ashamed, but here, she shone.
And she’s a liar, he thought, who got caught by her friends and kicked out. Ryan could sympathize, but he also didn’t want anything to do with her. He liked and disliked her for all the wrong reasons.
Jason was a spindly, gentle giant covered with a sunburnt tan, scrapes, and callouses all over, which pegged him as an outdoorsman type and kindred spirit, though Ryan knew he only learned the bare minimum because he had to, not because he wanted to.
And he himself was someone Parker barely remembered from scout camp, but who was still a comrade from scout camp. There was some sort of brotherhood-type thing going on there which he hadn’t known about, but was grateful to Barry for having had dragged him into. The scouts were the reason he had [Pack Aura] today.
But Parker acted like they were friends even here, despite the fact that they hadn’t interacted much until the end. His friends and he had screwed up one too many times and Parker had conveniently broken his arm, giving the scout leaders an excuse to send them home.
Ryan didn’t know how to feel about that. Camp was one thing, but that was then and there, this was here and now, around his normal friends. Parker being here felt like he was being confronted with a lie …
So lie.
That was the other reason he had sent his friends away.
Ryan put on a broad smile, rested his spear over his shoulder, and placed one foot back against the wall as he looked on.
“Think of the challenge and what it will look like if we take this camp down together.” Parker glanced over and immediately tried to drag him into the conversation, waving a hand up as if he expected help, “C’mon, Ryan. Back me up here.”
He shrugged and tilted his head at his teammates. “They have a point.” He hadn’t paid enough attention to know what that point was, but there was bound to be at least one he could agree with.
His response elicited a groan.
“What it would look like,” Kyle said, “would be us doing all the work with none of the rewards like some kind of lackeys.”
“Not all of the work,” Silas said.
Kyle gave him a disgusted look. “Most of it. And what, just because you got here a few hours earlier than us?”
“It’s called conquerer’s right, idiot,” Parker said, already insulting him. “First come, first serve.”
“So ‘conquer’,” he said with a patronizing smile and spread his arms out, “but do it on your own time. Leave us out of it.” He could lean down to look him in the eye, being slightly taller than Parker, and it added to the grating effect.
Ryan gave him a wary look. If they did leave, there would be no third chance. Scale it down a little?
Lea rushed in to save them. “We do want to respect that—your claim, I mean,” she said and stepped forward, almost awkward with how she had to wedge her way between them. “I actually want to help you out. I’m a Bluth—”
She brushed her hair back as if to brush off the heat, casually revealing a band with an ornate, enchanted ring around her armor with the motion.
The others noticed, or maybe they just noticed the barest hint of a neckline, but their brows creased ever so slightly at the name drop. It was one most climbers should be familiar with.
“—so I was raised to be respectful of our customs. You kind of saved us back there, warning us of the camp and sharing your maps. Helping would be nice.”
Kyle’s driving them off and you’re giving them an argument to work with, Ryan wondered, so they stay?
“Yeah, see!” Parker pointed. “You owe us.”
Kyle scoffed.
Lea made a face. “But not that much. I mean, we still have our own exam to think of. We can’t ‘waste’ half a day helping you if it means we suffer for it. Loot, time allocated to tasks, behavior … That all goes into our grade. It would cost us points. It didn’t cost you anything to share the maps with us.”
“No, but they saved you a whole lot of trouble and got you points,” Parker said, “don’t you want to repay that?”
“We have.”
Lea nodded. “Mostly.”
“We gave you a whole bunch of shit—maps, recipes, tips to deal with the traps, and ammunition.”
Parker shook his head and ignored the smaller items, “Your maps weren’t nearly as valuable as ours.”
Ryan tried not to frown at the comment. Weren’t they?
“I still feel a little bad,” Lea said in a tone as if she agreed with him. “It was rushed, our exchange. Maybe there’s something else we could give you? Oh! How about the sign?” She turned to Ryan as if asking for confirmation.
He hesitated—she shouldn’t be looking to him, according to Micah; not that people should be looking to him at all—but shrugged since he had no other choice.
“Sign?” Parker asked.
“Yeah, the one we mentioned about showing our strength? The Kobolds probably wanted us to show off some of our Skills to report them back or something.”
He glanced at Ryan and smiled. “And you guys fell for that?”
“Almost?”
He snickered.
“They have really poor handwriting,” Lea explained. “But taking down this camp is your project, right? You’ll want to have all of the separate pieces so … Just a sec. Chandler?”
She turned and shouted back to the camp, another casual name drop they may or may not recognize. “Can you fetch the Kobold sign for us? Oh! And some paper?!”
There was no immediate response, but Lea turned back with a friendly smile.
“I could have gotten it?” Jason offered.
“It’s fine.”
“Look, we don’t really need some stup— uh, some sign,” Parker said, catching himself before he cursed when she was being so friendly. “If they made one, they’re bound to have made another. We can just get that one afterward.”
Lea seemed undeterred. “Just in case? And so we can feel like we helped. I’m not sure how else to balance the scales. Besides, there’s— Ah.”
Lisa walked in with a look … It wasn’t angry, a scowl, or even ‘dark’. It was a look that promised repercussions for mistakes made. He almost thought he saw a glimmer of something glow in her eye and pushed against the wall to get out of her way. She shoved the Kobold sign and paper at Lea and turned to leave.
“Pen?” Lea asked, either oblivious or acting.
Lisa left.
“Pen?” she called after her, then grumbled, “Dammit, Lisa—” She headed back to the camp and Ryan saw a flash of a true scowl on her face before she left them alone.
Annoyed Lisa isn’t playing along?
Jason looked after her like he could have done that as well, because he had nothing to do here other than stand around and smile, and Ryan kind of agreed. If she had a plan, she should stick it through, not run off because of a personal feud.
Besides, he was a little worried about her chasing after her when Lisa looked like that.
The moment she was gone, Parker said in a low voice, “The maps are nothing. And we really don’t need some stupid sign.”
“Yeah, you need us,” Kyle said. “Our strength.”
“We gave you something and you gave us nothing in return. This would be a great opportunity—”
Kyle snorted, only darkening his expression, and interrupted again, “It’s really not. A good opportunity for us.”
Rather than insult him, Parker opted to turn away. To him. “C’mon, Ryan, talk some sense into your team.”
And there went his chance to listen in on the camp.
He had no idea what to say. What even was Lea’s play? “That sign,” he said to think out loud. “We found it a few kilometers back …? Hours from here. It’s how far the Kobolds dug.”
The idea came together as he spoke.
“Yeah, all the more reason to take them down. They’re a threat to every climber on this floor and they’ll only get worse. You could help with that.”
He made it sound noble.
Ryan nodded. “But they only got that far and are only so much of a threat because they worked together. We found that sign near the abandoned mine we mentioned. This is two Guardian camps working as one and—”
He stopped himself from saying, They’re growing. That was information they’d gotten from them. No need to remind them of that.
Instead, he used the pause as if to draw a conclusion and tilted his head. “Did you even know that?”
Lea stepped back into the tunnel, still in one piece, and used the wooden sign as a board to brace the paper on as she wrote.
Parker shrugged. “Obviously. There had to get their numbers from somewhere. Their summoner recruited them.”
“We gave you confirmation.”
“And then some,” Kyle added.
“So what? We’re scouts. We could have tracked them to the mine in a few hours and scouted out the area. You know that.”
“True,” he admitted. “But we saved you those few hours. You would’ve had to tread carefully in unfamiliar terrain. Time, and trouble.”
We’re even, Ryan words’ said and he gave him a look to drive it home.
Parker looked back like he was beginning to suspect Ryan wasn’t on his side at all, which of course, he wasn’t, but Ryan couldn’t have that. So he leaned his head back a little and put on a lazy grin.
Gotcha! the new look said.
It got him a scowl.
When Lea walked up, he leaned closer to her with his shoulder squared as if he were backing her up and said, “I was just telling them about the abandoned mine.”
At least, he had her to escape some of the attention.
“Oh? Yeah, and we found a treasure chest there, too. Nothing as big as the hoard, of course, but I thought I should write down summaries on the items we found for completion’s sake?”
“We don’t really need descriptions of magic items, either,” Parker said, eyes glancing to their equipment and the obvious advantage they had on that front.
“Well, we don’t need to kill our way to a treasure hoard to get nothing,” Kyle snapped back.
“Besides, a good scout would be thorough,” Ryan edged him on as pay-back for his earlier comment.
Lea continued to smile as if she hadn’t heard any of that and said, “I can appraise items, by the way, so this is accurate,” while quickly finishing up the notes.
They looked mildly surprised. She hadn’t said how she could appraise items so with any luck, they would think she was above level ten or had even learned the spell. Her fancy wand and summoning crystal were both on display as she held the bundle out, adding to the idea.
There weren’t any sketches of the items, but Ryan could spot notes on descriptions with rough measurements. It was thorough.
Parker began to shake his head and say, “No—”
“Please,” she spoke over him with a smile, “I insist.” She poked it twice more in their direction until finally, Silas took it off her hand.
Like it or not, they had just agreed to balancing the scales a little further through that transaction.
Silas looked at the papers and apparently, Parker was more curious than stubborn, or maybe he just wanted an estimate on the loot he might find tomorrow—he leaned in to peek as well.
He didn’t look impressed, but not unhappy either. The items weren’t impressive, but the trail crackers and the more durable, fireless teapot were exactly the types of thing a scout might like.
Ryan had wondered himself if he should stake a claim on it. It might be useful during camp and using items could help some Classes level, so it might help with his? He needed to keep up with Micah and Lisa somehow. It would all crumble someday but never today and never tomorrow.
[Scout] seemed like the best Class for him. His others were too … fractured. Besides, it was the closest to [Ranger], a fireless teapot was the type of thing Lisa and Micah might like to not have to manage a campfire, and his parents could borrow it any other time, if he could manage lending it out in-between exams and breaks.
Five good reasons right there why he should.
And the same five good reasons why I shouldn’t. Every good deed expected another, after all. Forever.
“So you don’t want to take a shot at the camp?” Silas asked, surprising them all out of nowhere. “It’s a good opportunity?”
Lost in thought, Ryan let his expression slip for a moment. He had no idea what to say.
Kyle of all people seemed to react quicker than him. “We can just climb the sixth-floor first thing tomorrow morning. We’ll find as many opportunities as we want, there.”
Silas nodded, dejected, and Ryan wanted to glare at his teammate. Stop pushing them away.
But he wasn’t looking. “Honestly,” he went on in a boasting tone, ”you already gave us the maps. They’re all we need for our report if we won’t get any loot anyway, so we have no reason to fight the camp.”
And now he was rubbing salt in their wounds. Great.
“Yeah, that came to bite us in the ass,” Parker grumbled and stepped away from the notes, “see if I ever do it again.”
Ryan got what he was doing, but he had to tone it down. If the other two didn’t pick it back up, their team would have to ask and that would basically be them asking permission to help.
“Okay, so if you won’t help,” Silas said in a somewhat pleading tone, “could you at least pass through their camp when you leave tomorrow morning …?”
Parker gave his teammate a disgusted look. Because he’d given up or because he had asked?
Either way, Ryan did know he had to do something before they had time to think about the suggestion because it was perfect for them and would completely screw his own team over. The perfect blend of help, politeness, and effort on both sides.
He shifted and raised his voice to signal the other two—well, three counting Jason standing awkwardly off to the side—to shut up, and said in a conversational tone, “What are you guys doing after the camp anyway, Parker? Do you have a day left then, too?”
The best way to deal with good arguments was to bury them.
“We would have more time if you helped us out,” he said.
Ryan rolled his eyes and replied, “Smartass,” before adopting a more serious tone then. “But really, what do you expect?”
This was all preamble, trying to win ground in the argument for the pitch that had to inevitably happen—unless, of course, Silas tried to derail it again. It was time to skip past it all.
“Even ignoring our equipment and higher levels—” Ryan started.
Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.
Parker snorted. “As if I believe that.”
Okay, maybe something a little more hard-hitting then. “That kid you first met? Micah. He’s level seventeen.”
He frowned, then smiled. “Sure.”
Ryan’s expression didn’t change. His teammates gave them awkward looks with their shoulders up as if to reluctantly say, It’s true. Or in Kyle’s case, looked both smug and disgusted at the same time.
“He got his Class when he was eleven. He had a headstart.”
Parker and his friend still looked unbelieving, but Ryan didn’t care to convince. He moved on.
“The angry one? Lisa. She repeated the year. She’s a level thirteen [Summoner]. She has dozens of tiny summons roaming the area, keeping an eye out, and scouting tunnels for maps and treasure at the same time on her own. You might have seen some of them coming in?
We only put her on that because it was convenient. She’s also our hardest hitter and let’s just say, she can cast [Fireball] as a Skill.”
Silas frowned. “That’s unfair. Why does she get to repeat a year and take part in the same exam as us?”
“She is evaluated more harshly, I think,” Lea said.
Not really, Ryan knew. Or only to a minimal degree. Bias.
“So does the kid and we’re six,” Kyle snapped. “Why do you think we have to put so much effort into this exam, dumbass?”
“Yeah,” Ryan picked it back up, “we are six, and we’re more diverse and direct than you, so we would probably end up doing most of the heavy lifting. And you want us to walk away with nothing?”
He injected a bit of incredulity into his voice. Not as much as Kyle, but matching him in tone.
He hadn’t actually believed that at first. You always started with a ridiculous claim and worked your way down to what you really wanted, but they hadn’t budged at all and he was beginning to worry.
“So what do you want?” Silas asked though the answer should have been obvious.
“We want loot,” Kyle said.
“You have loot!” Parker raised his voice, waving a hand at the four of them who had not-so-subtly been showing off their items all this time.
Ryan only remembered … the one guy’s spellwood spear? He wasn’t great at seeing that sort of thing unless it was obvious, but the lack of that alone might have been indication enough.
So this was about envy?
“They have loot,” Kyle said, nodding at Lea and him, “because her family’s rich and he’s his parents’ perfect little poster boy—”
“Hey!” Ryan snapped before he even knew what he was doing. “Screw you.” Even for the sake of an argument, if he brought his parents into this, he would fuck him up, exam be damned.
Kyle hesitated, then rolled his eyes and corrected himself, “He’s a lucky bastard. But everything I own can fit into one closet or two duffels, depending on how tomorrow goes. I want loot.”
Ryan frowned. He made it out to sound like he might drop out if tomorrow went shit.
But Parker and Silas gave him, then all four of them, another look and on second glance, Kyle only really had his red axe, didn’t he? And Jason had a cloak and wand since his sword was sheathed.
Suddenly, only Lea and he were the assholes in their fancy gear. He couldn’t blame them. Ryan loved reading about magic items in stories, but whenever he thought of his own, he wanted to hurl them in the trash.
“Lea kind of saved our evaluation in that respect,” Jason spoke up from the back and he realized they were both insinuating she had outfitted them.
Ryan was lucky he’d just snapped at Kyle. He had an excuse to look unhappy about the idea.
He grumbled as he turned to them, but quickly lost the tone as he said, “Why don’t you think of it this way? We’re six, you’re five, so you’ll get more loot even if we split it up into half per tea—”
“Half?” Parker barked a laugh. “No. Besides, it would take much longer to divide the loot into half than it would for us to take down the camp on our own.”
Ryan shook his head.
Lea picked it up. “Work with us and we’ll be done before lunch. Promise.”
“Yeah, right. You don’t even believe that.”
“Sure, I do. It’s just a matter of … each team picking one magic item at a time,” she said, choosing his method.
“So you guys only want the magic items from the hoard then?” Silas asked. “None of the crystals or monsters—”
“No, we want half of everything the Kobolds own,” Kyle interrupted. “And of course, we’ll want crystals and monster parts.”
“Yeah, that would take until evening, I think.” He nodded to himself. “There were chunks of metal ores in the pile, too.”
As much as Ryan hated to admit it, they did have a point there. They had to find a way to turn this into a win-win for both of them.
If he chose the quickest option, maybe they could make up for the lost crystals and ingredients by charging west as soon as possible?
But every lost crystal was a lost coin and Micah needed ingredients. His parents talked about wanting to buy a house someday in Cairn and he still had no idea what kind of brother he was going to be. At the very least he wanted to give Hannah awesome birthday presents …
“So we catalog everything we can’t divide,” Lea was saying, “write equal receipts, and appraise and divide it after the exam.”
Parker looked justifiably disgusted.
“Okay,” Ryan spoke up, “half of anything of value in their hoard, including one of the two guardians’ crystals and any crystals or parts we pick up along the way. The rest is yours.”
He knew from various sources that some guardians’ crystals could be used as spell foci or ingredients. They were practically magic items on their own. And Micah already had plenty of ingredients from today. There was—likely—nothing in that camp he hadn’t found before. It would slow them down to carry too much when they wanted to find the Fields as soon as possible, where he could find new ingredients. Ryan would do his best to make up for the loss then.
His best still had to mean something for now.
Lea glared at him. Because he was rushing this along without them? Whatever. If he consulted them now, he would have to consult them for every other decision he made.
Parker hesitated for just a second before shaking his head. “Then you’ll just take your time and collect everything along the way.”
“We won’t. We’ll make a plan and stick to it without letting greed get in the way. And if you think we did, we can say the deal falls through.”
“What?” Lea asked.
“Hell, no,” Kyle spoke up. “Then they’ll just have us do all the work and say we took one too many crystals afterward. Fuck that.”
Silas glared, telling Ryan just what he thought of that accusation. They were on the same page.
“Okay,” Parker said, “so my point still stands.”
“No,” Ryan interrupted and repeated himself with a harder voice this time, “we’ll make a plan. We’ll stick to it. We’ll find a way to make this work. Scout’s honor.”
He walked forward and held an arm out for him to shake. It was the best deal either of them would find. He had just cut through the nonsense.
Parker clearly considered the offer for a moment, but let his shoulders sag and shook his head. “I can’t shake on that, Ryan. For one thing, we’re only here to invite you to talk. We can’t decide for our team.”
So that’s why they hadn’t made any concessions? It would’ve been fucking great to know about that from the start.
“For another thing, it’s too vague. What’s ‘anything of value’? What if we screw up so hard they manage to run off with part of the loot? Do both our teams run after them together, then? And how are we supposed to catalog a giant fucking pile of loot perfectly in a few hours? Without even considering that receipts can be lost or messed with?”
Heswarens? was his first thought. He shoved it aside and still didn’t lower his arm. “We cross that bridge when we get to it, but we need to know you won’t try to screw us over when we do and waste everyone’s time. And make us look like asses when we storm off or tattle on you.”
Lea tried to salvage the moment, “You have to give us something. Half of their hoard, in and out of their camp, as best as we can manage it.”
Parker looked like he wanted to shake his arm on it, if only to get this done with, but something kept him back.
“Just to clarify,” Silas said, “all you want is half of what the Kobolds still own and to be allowed to pick up crystals and corpses along the way?”
“Casually. As long as it doesn’t interfere with the plan we make.”
He nodded and turned to his ally. “That seems fair …? I mean, I know it’s more than ‘something’ but …”
Parker made a face. “Yeah, but … we have to try to screw them over a little, don’t we?”
He was seriously still joking? Ryan gave him an exhausted sigh and smiled. “Cut the crap?”
“What about your treasure chest?” Silas asked. “Or treasure chests in general?”
Jason spoke up with a frown, “You want us to add our loot to the hoard for picking?”
“Would you?”
Ryan was beginning to feel awkward with his arm held out like this. “I don’t see why we would,” he quickly said. “It was from a different camp, we found it hours ago, and it was left behind by the Kobolds. It’s ours. This is about the hoard and the items they’re carrying around. Of course, we would if it means you’ll finally shake my arm on this, but some of it is already used and there’s bound to be better stuff in there, so …”
Silas looked curious, but not eager to insist on it. Was there another reason he was asking? Curiosity, like Micah might?
If Micah were here, what would he say?
“As for treasure chests,” Ryan went on and quickly considered, “any ones with magic effects like Salamander wood count as separate magic items, but the regular ones are yours to take—”
Lea elbowed him in the side and hissed, “What are you doing?”
“What? It’s not like we can carry around as much as we want. Wood is heavy.”
And with any luck, they would fight Treants or find better chests in the Fields instead of the shitty mundane ones here.
“And valuable,” she countered.
“Okay, so we separate the valuables we get from tomorrow’s attack,” Silas said again in an odd tone, like he was making extra sure about his wording. “Exempting their personal crystals and fully-formed.”
A trap?
Kyle caught on, “No running off in the middle of the night to plunder them before the attack and you better not be attacking them right now.”
“No, no,” Silas said. “We’re making camp. I swear.”
“If there are too many mundane treasure chests for you to carry,” Lea said, “or if you leave any ‘junk’ behind like extra blowdarts or fire potion, we can have that.”
“Yeah, sure. If we don’t take it, why couldn’t you?”
Spite? Ryan thought but didn’t say it out loud. There was enough frustration without digging up ugly topics.
He looked around, arm still awkwardly in the air.
Silas nodded. “Fine?”
“Fine?”
Finally, Parker joined in and said as he reached out to shake his hand, “Fine.” With his other, he pulled an earth brown spike out from a side pouch: a single Piton of Stone Shaping.
The thought clicked. “Oh, go fuck yourself,” Ryan said.
“What?” He smiled and said, “We managed to snag it and a few other things off a digging team hours ago, just like your treasure chest. And since you don’t want to add yours …”
“Yeah, yeah.” He shook his arm hard enough it hopefully hurt, then shoved him away. “Just get your team over here.”
“Hey, no. We said we would invite you to the table—”
“Well, unlike you,” Ryan interrupted, “we already made camp. And we’re not abandoning it to see you assholes. So hurry.”
Parker laughed.
Whatever refreshing effect Micah had layered on the camp was undone by the five new bodies cramped in the tight space. And if he were to switch to [Hearth of Salamanders], Ryan mused, they wouldn’t have to worry about Kobolds at all. They’d all just die of heatstroke.
He reluctantly took his layers off again and sat near the jar that made a slight breeze. There was no need to keep his armor on around allies, even just for show.
… He still ran through the words ‘[Swathe of Flames]’ in his mind and kept his spear close.
Micah fussed like an elderly lady who had guests over once he’d noticed the change in temperature but gave up soon after, probably because he couldn’t do anything about it, or couldn’t do anything without drawing undue attention squeezing his way past people like that.
He already got enough glances from the other team as they no doubt wondered if he was actually that high-level or if Ryan had just pulled their leg, which, admittedly, he had a little. There was a big difference between being level seventeen in one Class and spread out over multiple ones.
But for the first time since he had met him, at least in this context, Ryan wondered if Micah might be sick. There were all sorts of diseases out there, with stories of kids who grew up quicker than they should or grew up different.
There were also rumors of noble children getting their Classes sooner, with different explanations as to why: experimental potions, magical diets, bloodlines, or reinforcement by their households, telling them how great their families were and how much better they were than other people, along with their private educations and training.
Ryan suspected it was a combination of the four and the fact that kids who got their Path sooner tended to get their Class not long after, if they earned it. It had been that way for him. Most nobles got their family’s Path.
Then there were stories of children getting their Classes sooner if they did so out of necessity, to support their families or rebuild lost homes after natural disasters or wars.
So how had Micah gotten his so early? He was neither poor, nor noble, nor had he regularly practiced alchemy in the weeks before, according to him. You didn’t just get a Class in a day.
How did people even get Classes in the first place?
He glanced at Jason across the cluster of bodies with a frown but shoved the thought aside for later. For now, he paid attention.
“You want to do what?” Adrian was asking. He also had a spear. It looked studier and rougher than his, marred in places as if it were dirty, but shaped to look embellished toward the ends with spirals like roots.
Lea said she thought he was some kind of a nature spellblade, but he hadn’t cast any spells Ryan had seen so it seemed like his spear was the only thing she could have based that on. If the design was obviously ‘nature’-based, it must have been made by someone experienced or come from the Tower itself. Both ways, it was better than his which had been made from a first-floor Kobold staff and by someone … someone who …
Connor had probably just made it to get rid of him. Ryan wished he could have said something sooner, if he had been bothering him so much, before he’d almost made a game out of finding him in empty classrooms and hallways all those times. He could have asked someone else to make it and the spear would have been his, today.
He brushed it aside, rolling it over the dirt, and pulled the javelin with the tip Lisa had given him closer.
“Glue,” Micah answered, enunciating each word as if to mock the guy, “the treasure chests—shut.”
“With the loot inside?”
They were talking about the issue of trust.
“The indivisible loot, like the ores and gemstones. We’re probably going to sell those, right?”
“Jhemshohns?!” Lisa snapped up with her mouth full, having just ripped a bit of jerky off like some kind of bird of prey.
Ryan tried not to smile at the image. He knew she didn’t like to be embarrassed in larger groups.
Some of the others reacted similarly, lowering packs of trail food, jerky, or bottles of soup or water to glance his way.
“Yeah, didn’t you notice them among the pile?”
She threw the jerky back and garbled, “I was a little distracted.”
Silas asked if he meant the chunks with the crystal veins, but the guy shook his head.
“No, there were rocks with actual crystals in them. Why else would they have two separate piles?”
“Why would they have gemstones at all?” Adrian asked. “They’re worthless to the Kobolds.”
“Yeah, but—” He fumbled for a second and groaned. “Fine. Whatever. Don’t believe me. You’ll see, tomorrow.”
Those listening took that at face value and turned back to their issue of hashing out a deal, deliberating on whether or not to divide the magic items at all if they had indivisible loot anyway, since they couldn’t know their value. But that would mean they’d have to meet up after the exam, which could be a hassle. The first option had a chance of getting something good.
Risk, reward.
Of course, not all of that was said directly.
Ryan leaned over to Micah and said in a low voice, “Gemstones. What are we talking here, quartzes, rubies … more …?”
He shrugged and gave a throaty, “Iunno.”
“Mm?”
“He might be right. I might be wrong.”
“Hm.”
Doubtful. The broad strokes of Micah’s intuition were usually right, even if he erred in the details.
It made sense, though. There were reports of the rare climber finding gemstones and ores in the walls of the right floors, enough so that some people had picked up the [Miner] Class again, which was rare in their city. They imported most of their metal or got it from melting down loot. Gems, too. They were imported from other cities, plucked from broken loot, or found in treasure chests. So if the Kobolds had been mining tunnels for the last few months …
Maybe they should be letting them build camps, until they grew large enough to be harvested like pumpkins. Free stuff. Free challenges for leveling teenagers.
And gems for jewelry were a good fallback option for his mom’s birthday present, or to sell so he could buy equipment without mental strings attached.
“So long as both options offer us half the treasure hoard,” Lea was saying, “your team could decide which option to choose tomorrow if that will move things along quicker.”
Ryan glanced at her. Who was deciding things without consulting their team, now?
But the scout troupe already conferred amongst themselves, then turned back and nodded. Yes, they would choose the option that gave them the final say.
“So let’s get to planning, then?”
Ryan pushed his other thoughts aside, leaned in, and drank another sip of his water, because this was the important bit, wasn’t it? And Micah had glanced at him the moment she said it.
His other teammates looked eager to help—Lea and Kyle who still seemed miffed by the way he’d handled things, Lisa who had been absent, and Jason … Well, he seemed happy enough.
“Did you already have something in mind?”
“Yeah,” Parker said, “you guys charge their camp to distract them while we sneak around, take out the key targets, and secure the rest.”
Ryan nodded. A distraction seemed like a good start, with how many members they had.
He waited, expecting more details, and so did the others until it was clear Parker wasn’t going to say anything else.
Kyle broke the silence, “That’s it?”
“Yeah. Attack them from both sides. Pincer move, you know?” He pointed his fingers together.
“It’s a shitty plan.”
“What? No, it isn’t.”
“It is a shitty plan,” Ryan agreed.
“Hey, fuck you.”
“But it’s a good start,” he admitted and started putting his thoughts in order on how to improve it.
“What about those pitons?” Micah asked.
Parker asked back, “What about them?”
“If you managed to snag one of them off the Kobolds, maybe we could do that with others? Like, you spy on their camp and wait until they run off with one, then intercept the runner.”
He smacked his forehead. “Why didn’t we think of that?! Gosh, we’re so stupid.”
Micah glared.
The [Witch] guy leaned closer and said, “There’s a time delay between what actually happens and what we see when I scry.”
“Oh?”
“It kind of makes it difficult to ambush them with its information. Not impossible. Just difficult.”
Huh. Good to know. They would have to share what they could do, sooner or later, or do it on a case-by-case basis.
“Picking off their pitons wouldn’t help us with the attack anyway,” Lea threw in, “if we want to do it quickly. They’re not relevant to their security, after all. Only their expansion.”
Micah drew back with a pouting face like he wanted to grumble something but kept quiet. He really wanted one of those, didn’t he?
Ryan sighed. It would have been great if he could have succeeded earlier instead of paralyzing himself, for his sake more than anyone else.
“Okay, so let’s work off of your plan,” he said. He had to make sure they would do this right so Micah could get one of those pitons. “The broad strokes are good: distracting them, securing the loot and camp, and attacking them from behind, especially since it means we can get around their traps.”
“No duh’,” Parker said. “We know that. We’re not—”
“But if we want to storm their camp,” Ryan spoke over him, “splitting into two teams won’t work in these narrow tunnels with all their traps.”
Silas shook his head. “The more we split up, the more traps we have to deal with. If we keep together, the ones in the front can clear the way for the ones in the back.”
“True, but not necessarily. If we stick together as six and there’s one trap that creates a bottleneck, it will be awkward to adjust. Clunky, you know? Too many people.”
He frowned. “Go on?”
Ryan hesitated, a little more used to push-back, and said, “If we split up into three groups, for example, we won’t have to deal with that problem, we can split up tasks better, and we might not have to deal with the problem you mentioned because not all traps are equal.”
Lea opened her mouth and leaned forward, waiting a second before she cut in, “And we might have to make a third group to watch over our stuff anyway, but go on?”
Ryan almost lost his train of thought, trying to figure out why. But it made sense to go in with as little luggage as possible and if they left it behind, the Kobolds might just steal it while they were raiding their camp.
“You’ve scouted out the area, right? I think you made notations on the maps for traps. Can you run us through the routes with the most traps that have to be manned?”
Silas tilted his head back a little in a nod, seeming to catch on. He put his bundle of food aside and twisted around to get some papers.
Micah threw an empty loot sack in the small center of their huddle and they all tugged on the edges to create a somewhat clean space to lay stuff on.
They paid attention, but it was mostly the other team who leaned over the pages and discussed which routes to take. The idea was clear: if they distracted the Kobolds, it was best to pull them where they could do a moderate amount of harm—not so little they gave up to chase after the others, but not so much it became a problem—while the others slipped by on routes where most of the traps had to be manned, rushing through the vacuum before the Kobolds could catch on, then take on the camp, secure and defend the hoard, or attack from behind.
There were a few problems, though: there were only so many ways into the camp, those were the paths the Kobolds wanted people to take, and they had the worse kinds of traps that were always manned, according to the others.
“Any chance of taking out their leaders?” the [Witch] guy asked, turning to them for help. Apparently, they had made the same connection as Ryan’s team had, but didn’t have the tools to find a solution?
Ryan looked to Lisa and Micah, because they were the ones best equipped to deal with that.
“I was gonna’ say,” Kyle said, “why not just have one person sneak in and take out their summoner or whatever?”
People started talking over one another, some with their mouths full or moving things around and it became hard to keep track.
“Do you guys have a blowpipe or something similar? Because if so, I might have a way to reach the Kobolds beyond the walls. It wouldn’t even require me to breathe the stuff in?”
Lisa frowned. “How do you mean?”
“We’re not going sending anyone someplace alone,” Adrian said.
“Why not?”
He almost laughed. “Because we’re not [Rogues].”
“I could prepare the poison gas in a container and we could funnel it into the walls with some makeshift wind spells?”
Lisa nodded. “Oh, that could work. If I had large enough access, I could take them out, too. Or use the hedgehog—”
“Spike,” Micah corrected her.
“How the f—” he started, broke off with a sigh, and said in a calmer voice, “I don’t see how that is something only a [Rogue] would do?”
“Spike,” she sighed, “to surprise a group of them.”
“Because it is. But that’s beside the point. We’re [Scouts]. We do things right and part of that is having each others' backs. We’re not sending someone in alone.”
“We’d probably have to dig a good access point, huh?” Micah was saying. “But that would take forever, if we even find a good point, and the only other good access point would probably be in their camp …”
“We need to surprise attack them to get to the place where we could surprise attack them,” Lisa summarized. “Maybe one of the people charging in could take the hedgehog— Spike with them and do it.”
“My hedgehog,” Lea said.
Lisa glared. Next to her, Kyle nodded with a slight frown, almost as if in contemplation.
Lea shrugged. “Just saying.”
Ryan was beginning to suspect that she wouldn’t put up with them disliking her this entire exam, which could mean more trouble with another fight.
Dammit. Just what they needed.
“Why do you assume you won’t be one of the people to run into the camp?” Micah was asking and the different conversations became too much.
Ryan raised his voice and tried to pull them back together. Of course, he had to be the one to do it. “Okay, we need to figure out who can do what, and we need to figure out who we need to do what before we can decide on anything else. Abilities and roles, just like forming a team for the exams. Let’s go.
Who has experience with wind spells to help Micah, even just crude control? Show of hands.”
Everyone on his team except Kyle and the [Witch] from the other team raised their hands.
Adrian looked around and laughed. “What are we, kids?”
“Show of hands,” Ryan complained.
He rolled his eyes and put his hand up.
Ryan went to fetch a piece of paper, but Micah spoke up, “I got it!” He somehow already had a page and pen in hand and took notes against his knee, glancing around the circle.
Thank you, Ryan thought. At least, something.
“Okay, who thinks they are best suited to causing a distraction and why? Hands up first, then one-by-one clockwise. Go.”
The hands shifted, fewer this time, and Micah took more notes.
They ate, drank, and relaxed while they planned. They didn’t do anything extraneous or have to kill too many monsters that wandered their way, but it would still be a long night, he knew.
Ryan stifled a sigh and asked the next question to get it over with.