Back in their small apartment Clara and Arath went straight to sleep too tired to do anything. Their clothes were tattered, they were both bruised and had many small cuts on them. The fight had made them use all the remaining strength and had put great burden on their bodies. Additionally healing, which uses the injured person's strength, exhausted Arath so much that he found it hard to just walk. The man fell asleep the same moment his head touched his sleeping bag while Clara lied on the bed contemplating and recalling every detail of the fight. She wasn't very proud of herself, quite the contrary, just thinking about not being able to handle even basic enemies while Arath faced two intermediate elementalists on his own made her blood boil. One would rarely come across this level of magicians and the fact that so many of them decided to join hands to attack Council's officials and try to convince some heroes to follow them didn't assure her of her safety. The New Underground was a scary organisation that gained most of their funds from slavery and Clara was one of the victims of their schemes. The girl hadn't had have many opportunites to talk with anyone there but she very vividly remembered a conversation with a certain plumpy guard that non-stop complained about how loud her co-prisoners were crying. That was not a good memory and the feelings that arose in her heart at the moment she recalled it didn't leave her until she finally fell asleep with no more tears to cry.

The next few days passed rather calmy, Arath focused on absorbing magical energy in his body. To his surprise for some reason the process now seemed to be much easier and he awakened his frontal lobe in no time. The process was far from easy though, it was said that brain and all other vital organs are the hardest to awaken but bring the most benefits. In order to connect a new muscle, brain or bone one had to connect all cells and create a pathway for the magical energy to flow freely and reach every corner of it. The thing that resembled this proccess the most is tying and untying hundreds of knots at the same time, the task was very tedious and required a lot of patience together with a high level of concentration making it very demanding for an elementalist.

'Alright, now that I have awakened one part of the brain I should be a little bit stronger. I will have to test it out, together with this weird feeling I had just before the big guy hit me.' Arath planned. 'I will give my body some time to rest and next week we will go to dungeon to train and gain experience from real life-or-death situations.

Clara improved her combat skills fairly quickly, her proficiency in spearmanship increased with every day and by the time they set off to the dungeon she learned how to activate her powers with just a thought. Although she still had problems with adjusting the power behind her attacks, her footwork improved by leaps and every single move became deadly. She trained like a madman, no matter how tired she was, she always insisted on a sparring session whenever Arath took a break from cultivating.

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Every evening the two visited Anga to see how she was doing and they would spend two long hours on talking about her customers and sharing news. With every day spent in the shop under Ruby's care the girl seemed to gain on weigth and look more like a normal child. The signs of inhuman living standards and hard work slowly waned giving place to a healthy smile and occasional laughter. Anga and Clementine got closer with time and it didn't take them long to become good friends despite the age gap. They played together and sleeped in one small room so obviously they had no choice but to argue sometimes, but as they were both good-natured and forgave quickly the relation grew steadily.

Once one week's time has passed Arath went shopping for all necessary items, which left him penniless, and together with Clara set off to The Tower. The gate was 7 meters tall and over 5 meters wide allowing even the biggest creatures to pass through. Many vendors lined up just before the entrance and lured passerby inside their tents filled with mostly useless gadgets. Even though the items were scam in ninety percent of the cases, Arath noticed some really rare and expensive artifacts for the price of a few meals so his broke soul hurted when he had to live them be.

"Are you sure you want to go in already? The healer recommended at least a month of rest. What if something happens inside?" Clara sounded concerned.

"As much as I would love to sit on my ass for another week or two we have no time. The competition is fierce and the heroes will enter tomorrow. Once they do that most of loot that could be ours will end up in their hands." Arath explained. "We have no money and you have no experience, these are not things we can just ignore. Besides there will be many other scouts and money-thirsty adventurers, we should be relatively safe."

"What kind of creatures will we encounter there?"

"Nothing too extreme, it is said that the first floor isn't very demanding and it is rare for someone to die there." Arath tried to remember what he had read in the book he got from Ruby. "Blestols are the most common. In contrary to the ones we know from the floor these in the dungeon don't need to be provoked to attack. Remember that: all creatures in the Tower are always hostile no matter what they look like. On floors outside the Tower it is more normal - some are hostile, some not."

"Something else besides blestols?" Clara renewed her question.

"Black bats, blind ghouls and cave spiders. That's the most common ones. If we see something we can't recognise we don't try to remember it's name, just run as fast as we can, understood?"

"Alright, got it."

With that they entered the Tower leaving the rotting First City behind.