With that, there was no further talk of chantless magic that morning. It wasn’t as though Adama and Take didn’t trust or like Aiz. Tim had no problem in principle telling her about the technique, but he was unwilling to talk about it until he was able to make it anything more than a neat party trick. Take, respecting his privacy on the matter, followed his lead. Maybe one day Tim would teach her how to do it himself, the moment he got the knack of it personally.
But beyond that, the rest of their practice that morning went swimmingly. They all took turns having one-on-one duels with one another, each person learning from watching the others as well as improving from their own fights. Adama sharpened his skills more and more against the skill monster that was Takemikazuchi and the stat monster Aiz Wallenstein. He couldn’t handle her at full power like Take could, but he still grew better and better at handling more and more of her abilities.
Pushing against that were Aiz’s own improvements as a swordswoman. Even as Adama improved as a swordsman, she stayed near his level as she improved by leaps and bounds as well. She was more comfortable fighting with people now than ever before and was almost an entirely different woman from the person who first confronted Adama on the ramparts all those months ago. Training with Take only accelerated that.
They were all so caught up in the fervor of a good training session that the hours flowed by like water. It was Take who first noticed the later hour and suggested that they end things then. Both Tim and Aiz blanched a little as they realized how late they were in attending to their duties in their Familias. Both adventurers scrambled off to go meet their waiting comrades, while the war god made a leisurely pace back to his Familia’s home.
Adama received questioning and curious looks from Lilli and the members of Takemikazuchi Familia when he showed up late to their predetermined spot in front of Babel that morning. None chose to question their leader too closely however, and they all wordlessly set off at a brisk pace to the Dungeon’s entrance. As they made their way down to the 12th floor, however, the businesslike hush that had fallen over the party took a much more nervous and anticipatory turn. When they found a suitable room and cleared out its inhabitants, a small pack of 4 imps, Tim called out in a loud and clear voice:
“Same routine as last time. Lilli can organize your formation and drop the bait. Call my name if you need help.”
And with this, he dropped down into a meditative position and began practicing Takemikazuchi’s visualization technique. He wasn’t planning on doing any chantless magic in front of his new students, but practicing moving his Mind through his imaginary stone veins could be helpful in getting used to the technique. It took focus, which meant that he wouldn’t be able to watch over the party as closely, so he was leaving it to Lilli to tell him when they needed intervention. He found that he could trust her judgement more and more, especially since she had truly started to leave her cynical criminal past behind her.
He was both happy and a little surprised when he managed to go for an extended period of meditation with no interruption. The party had grown better and better at following Lilli’s instructions, just as she grew more skilled as a commander. The warriors almost looked like new people after yesterday’s baptism by fire, and they battled against the Orc horde with a tenacity forged in the fire of experienced. Chigusa’s hands didn’t shake as much, and her targets were selected faster and more efficiently. Mikoto’s instincts for guerilla warfare were only growing and Ouka’s longevity as a vanguard had also shot up. It would take much more than a single day to turn them into truly fierce combatants, but they clearly had a great deal of potential for improvement.
Potential was still potential, however, and they eventually found themselves on the brink of being overwhelmed again. They merely lasted longer than usual before Mikoto made an uncharacteristic mistake and was sent flying after a misstep forced her to take the full force of an Orc’s club on her katana. Lilli screamed for Tim’s help as the mob turned its full attention on Ouka.
“Mr. Tim, please help!”
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Moving from a sitting position to a standing one, Tim drew his sword in one fluid motion and sent a Rippling Sword straight into the neck of the leading Orc that was about to take Ouka’s head off. He didn’t even open his eyes until after the attack had been released but when he did, he realized a something with a start:
“I didn’t chant anything, did I?”
The Orc’s head, notably, was still half attached to its body. It would have been totally decapitated, and then some, had the magic been at full power. He had acted purely on instinct and used his recently acquired technique unintentionally. He covered up his mistake by launching another half dozen full-power slashes in the direction of the remaining enemies. In due time, the monsters were reduced to bloody chunks in the white grass or fleeing figures in the distance and Adama sheathed his sword and slipped back into meditation. His students knew what to do from here.
After that, he kept his eyes open and on the fighting for the remainder of the day, only sinking into meditation when the monsters were being harvested. It was safer for the fledgling warriors when he watched them anyways, and he preferred to avoid any further slipups. There wasn’t any serious problem with the young warriors knowing about chantless magic, exactly. But if they knew, they would undoubtably bother him for further explanations, which he had no intention of giving them. You didn’t teach a Lowgold the nuances of soulfire usage for a reason. They had to learn to walk before they should even think about running, and none of them even had any magic yet.
But besides that little slipup, the day went swimmingly. The younger warriors grew more and more capable at dealing with the horde each battle, and they performed admirably even as they grew more and more tired. Still, everyone had their limits, and eventually Tim was forced to call things when a final battle left both Ouka and Asuka seriously injured within the first two minutes of combat. Despite their party’s exhaustion, Adama did not take pity when it came to the return journey, as he did last time. He decided that, today, Takemikazuchi Familia would do all the fighting on their way out of the Dungeon as well, with Lilli in command. Tim still planned to step in if things looked too bad, of course, but he intended to make them fight their way out of the Dungeon or get hurt trying.
This new stance earned him a few mutters of “Oni”, a reference to a demon or ogre in their culture, as Take would later explain to him. Over the course of the next few months, Tim would earn himself the nickname of “Oni-Sensei”, invoked with both affection and fear, sometimes both at the same time. But whether he was loved or hated, “Oni-Sensei” was insisting that this team fight their way upward even while dead tired. So, they did.
It was touch-and-go for a little while. Particularly worrisome was a duel with a trio of particularly vicious Silverbacks that they ran into before exiting the 11th floor. By the time they reached the 4th floor, Ouka’s arms were so tired he struggled to swing his axe. But they reached Babel’s lobby without Adama intervening once, before promptly collapsing into a tired heap on the lobby floor. It was Lilli who went to the exchange with their spoils as the lavender clad fighters sat and recovered. Tim spent his time studying the quest board as they took care of that. After Lilli came back from the exchange, he dismissed the young fledglings for the day. He walked Lilli home, ate a pleasant dinner with both her and Hestia, grabbed a few extra potions, and made his way back towards Babel once again.
The fact of the matter was, Tim wasn’t making much money. He was giving 40% of the day’s proceeds to Takemikazuchi Familia. Lilli had agreed to only take a cut of 20%, since her job was mostly just yelling commands at this point, but that still left Adama with a measly 40% of the spoils from Level 1 monsters. It was still a respectable sum, and he was in no danger of missing any home payments, but it was still drastically below his earning potential. The first of his sword payments loomed large, less than a year away, and he needed to pay down the home and start saving for that payment ASAP. He had only agreed to play babysitter every other day, with yesterday being their trial run, but that would still limit his savings, not to mention his growth. Fortunately, he had a plan to solve all these problems.
He visited the quest board again and did something that would have shocked and/or appalled any onlooker. He snatched a half dozen pieces of paper right from the board and dashed right into the Dungeon. Best to start small for now.
He had mostly ignored quests when he was Level 1, as they didn’t typically pay all that well. The one's that did were often snatched up by opportunistic parties, individuals who often watched and waited for the right quests to post. He couldn’t be bothered to try to outfox those people or stoop to those kinds of tactics. But things were different as a Level 2. The majority of adventurers languished at Level 1, so competition for the best quests was fierce and tedious. Not to mention, the types of materials you could gather were only of relatively minor value at that level. That logic flipped for the more elite adventurers. There were never enough strong adventurers to go around, and demand for the more valuable materials they could gather was insatiable. There were always a couple of good quests still hanging around, asking for Level 2 adventurers or better, even at the end of the day.
Normally, a given party would take a single quest, fulfill it quickly, then return it. More elite parties might try for two at once. If the Guild caught people taking quests and not completing them, those people would risk sanction. Anyone caught taking three or more at a time would usually draw suspicion and ire.
But there was no one around to see him at this late hour, and as he sprinted down the corridors of the Dungeon’s upper floors, Adama was already planning out how he would handle his tasks.