The Dungeon, Fifteenth FloorIlya LindsayShe hadn’t really known whether to believe the rumours at first. Elric Carne was a strange Adventurer from the day they’d met him, but when word started to spread about him being spotted on floors far beyond what he should have been capable of reaching, she’d had her doubts. Who wouldn’t? To an Adventurer, growing stronger was a culmination of all of their efforts; their very lifestyle and reason for being all rolled into one. So to be told that someone who had once roughly been on your level had left you in the dust was always going to be a bitter pill to swallow. Which is why she ignored those rumours with indifferent grace befitting her family… right up until the level up notice was issued. Elric almost certainly didn’t intend for it to be taken any kind of way, but to every level one listening to that announcement it came down like an absolute condemnation. It told each and every one of them that they weren’t good enough, that they hadn’t tried hard enough.It set a new bar that they all had to aspire towards; a bar none of them could live up to. Ais’ record had already seemed unbeatable, but to have a new goal to do the same in under a tenth of that time?It was impossible.Ilya tried to not let it affect her. Used her own wounded pride as kindling to push herself harder, focused even harder on growing stronger, on living up to her family’s name. And then her only friend left the Familia.They… may not have talked as much as Judith would have perhaps liked, but Ilya was appreciative of their friendship all the same. It was rare that she found someone as willing to genuinely try in their field, and a part of Ilya had pictured their small rivalry lasting into the future. So for her to leave just like that… in a way, it hurt.The rumours that followed hadn’t been flattering, people joking about ‘that orphan who flamed out of the Familia in shame’, as if they hadn’t been jealous of her progress only days prior. But before long those rumours shifted, claiming that her friend had joined up with another Familia, that she’d been spotted with the same man who’d shown up every level one in Orario.Resentment festered, jealousy grew out of control, and Ilya suddenly found herself standing before three of her so-called ‘peers’ ganging up on her friend who left their Familia. Her decision to side with that friend wasn’t a difficult one to make, though one that was tested when that level three crawled out of the woodwork. Higher level Adventurers give off an indescribable pressure, when they turn truly aggressive it can feel like the very air itself is closing in on you. It was like her father’s angriest moments, only where her father would try to hold himself back even then, this man was directly trying to pressure her. And as much as she didn’t want to admit it -even in the recesses of her own mind- had this occurred in isolation, she might have backed down at that moment. But it didn’t. The man was made into a joke by the Captain of Judith’s Familia even before that moment, and that mockery made things… not easy, but easier.What followed was something she was still trying to wrap her head around, from the strange way the man who’d once ran the Dungeon with them handled things, to the reveal that he knew the Sword Princess on a personal level. So she’d followed them after that out of curiosity, wanting to see how someone who’d been a peer of hers a month ago wound up able to make a joke of someone that strong, why he knew the executives of their Familia, and maybe even find out why Judith left. …What she hadn’t been expecting to find out was that Elric had become a sword master like her father in that short span of time, and that he was possibly insane.Oh and that Judith had surpassed her in the week since she’d left the Familia. Perhaps not in skill, but in terms of stats?It was no longer a contest.It was why she was doing her best to observe things even now, to try and understand just how everything had gotten to this point. And to be honest, she wasn’t having the best of times with it.The explosions didn’t help.Fights on the Fifteenth floor were fast and dangerous, well beyond anything she probably should be handling, much less trying to actively hunt down. The majority of monsters surprisingly weren’t the issue, mainly because Elric or his friend -another powerful level two who introduced herself as the Captain of the Skadi Familia- would eviscerate said majority the second they got into range. Crystal Mantises, Dungeon Worms, Lamia Mormoses… even Ligerfangs and Minotaurs fell apart under this arrangement, long before they could even bother herself or Judith. The problem was the ones they left, the Hellhounds.The pair of level twos would leave them alone until the monsters ran out of magic, allowing them to unleash scorching blasts of fire on the group for Elric’s mad training. She’d lost count of the amount of times the pair of them had suddenly dragged her out of the way of one of those blasts. With everything moving so fast and with so many monsters, it was hard to even begin to understand the battlefield situation at times. One moment you were fine and then you’d turn and see a monster with a gaping maw of fire, only for the world to blur and find yourself in a completely different area as the area behind you burned.The worst part wasn’t even the near-death experiences themselves, it was how casually everyone regarded it afterwards. The pair of level twos clearly saw nothing wrong with how hard she and Judith were pushing themselves to keep up and even her friend seemed to be regarding this with some level of familiarity. Like she was used to this kind of training.Ilya didn’t know what to make of any of it, but it did make her appreciate the moments where they would stop to talk a whole lot more.“Are you sure you can’t give me another hint?” Elric spoke up after his latest ‘failure’, swiping his strange black rapier to the side to dispel the flames lingering on the blade and finish off the last Hellhound. Despite dubbing such attempts as failures himself, she could physically see the progress he’d made in the scant few hours he’d been introduced to the art. His sheer talent and persistence were honestly a little terrifying.The Captain of the Skadi Familia just shook her head. “There are no tricks to this sword, it is merely the product of training, of honing your mind so you may clearly picture that which you are cutting.” She closed her eyes, pantomiming holding a sword as she spoke. “Picture it -understand it- and then slay it both within your mind and without, all within a single breath.”“And that’s easy?” He smiled.“Easier than your own instructions.” The foxgirl looked at him flatly, her ears even flattening as she gripped her imaginary sword tighter. A sentiment Ilya couldn’t help but nod along with despite her exhaustion. His explanations on the topic of the ‘Sky Sword’ had been…Frustrating.Both in that he was just openly talking about this, and in how vague he’d been.“It’s not really an easy thing to explain.” His smile turned weary. “It’s like explaining intent, aura. It’s always going to sound like nonsense until you just… do it y’know? All I can do is point you in the right direction.” He went on, still casually touching on subjects that were kept hushed in even noble Adventurer families.“…My family’s writings said much the same.” Miyabi sighed in defeat, as Judith perked up from where she’d been regaining her breath and evidently listening in.“Intent? I think you mentioned that while we were training?” She asked.He nodded. “Yeah, it’s the same thing Ais called ‘presence’ back during the Athena hunt.”“The thing that lets you guys see through walls?” Judith asked, bizarrely enough.Elric’s mouth opened as if to contradict, before nodding in not quite agreement. “It’s not really… that, but close enough.” “Didn’t you say you’d teach me that later?” Her friend tried eagerly, not even seeming to realise she was asking for information that every Familia and house hoarded almost religiously.“Pretty sure I didn’t.”“You did!” “It’s not something that can be taught, so I’m almost certain I wouldn’t say that.” “Oh yeah right.” Judith grumbled sarcastically, before turning to the other level two present. “Captain Hoshimi, back me up here!” “I’m afraid he’s correct in saying that it’s not something that can be taught.” The Captain denied. “Intent, as he calls it, is the awakening of one’s sixth sense. How it comes about and in what form is entirely dependent on the individual.”“You mean like it works differently for different people?” “Indeed, to use myself as an example, I perceive the auras of others as sound.” Captain Hoshimi explained, even gesturing at her ears as she freely gave away information that Ilya had been told was immensely personal and private. “I also seem to have more range than your Captain.” She continued with a challenging smile directed at Elric.“Sound?” She hummed. “To me, each aura has a specific tone to it, and a rhythm that changes with stronger feelings.”“Feelings like?” Judith frowned.“Murderous intent generally.” Elric answered with his own smile as his fellow Captain nodded.“Indeed, the desire of others to kill you is both the most apparent feeling we can sense and the one that most causes people to awaken this sense in the first place.” The foxgirl went on. “Though I should stress that this isn’t something you should force.”Judith ruminated on that for a beat, before ultimately turning to her Captain and Ilya had to swallow back a reprimand as her friend casually asked something that directly intruded upon that privacy. “What about you Captain? What does your aura… thing feel like?” “Fire.” He answered without care, before Judith glared at him enough to make him laugh. “Fine, fine. It’s a mix for me, touch and sight, I can ‘feel’ and ‘see’ the flames of other people’s will.”“That sounds all kinds of weird…” She trailed off, looking like she was trying to picture his explanation. Ilya too tried, despite feeling immensely out of place in this conversation.“It’s about what you’d expect really, normal people are like candles, a bit hard to perceive in the background of Orario.” Elric explained. “An Adventurer’s flame on the other hand scales with their strength; that guy before was like a bonfire for example.” “And the Sword Princess?” “An Inferno, but one tightly wrapped around herself, like a twister.”“So you can feel people’s strength through this kind of thing?” She whistled. “Can you do anything else with it?” “Depends, strong intent I can read easily; the desire to kill, to harm, to protect, anything like that is second nature.” He commented. “Going deeper is a bit of a problem.” “Deeper?”He hummed. “Yeah, feeling what someone intends to do in combat for example.” Ilya froze at those words, as did Judith.“Y-You can read fucking minds?” Her friend uttered in shock.“I… have never heard of someone being able to do that.” Captain Hoshimi chimed in, simply looking intrigued as if he hadn’t just admitted to something insane. He made a so-so gesture. “It’s more about intention than anything deeper. Plus it takes a lot of focus and understanding the person I’m doing it to, to a rather unhealthy degree. It’s how I took out Athena’s fuck-up in all that smoke.”“Shit…” Judith trailed off looking stumped, not that Ilya could blame her. “How did you even realise you could do that?”“I’m really good at killing things.” He joked with a completely straight face.“Oh fuck off.” Judith grumbled as he burst out laughing. “…Should you even be telling us this?” “It’s fine, it’s not really something you can counter, nor do I even rely on it anyway.” “How do you not rely on something like that?”“Well, like I said, you wind up developing an unhealthy degree of understanding of someone you’ve presumably deemed worthy of killing. It’s not really pleasant.” He shook his head. “Well that and I only worked it out while I was fighting the Vice-Captain.” “You… worked out how to read minds while fighting that guy?” Judith uttered with the disbelief Ilya was feeling.“Yeah. Honestly, the best time to work out shit like that is in the middle of a fight.” He and his fellow Captain nodded sagely at that.To even her own surprise Ilya let out a bark of laughter at that.This entire situation was just… At the very least, she felt like she understood how her friend had improved so much in such a short time. If Elric had been subjecting her to his methods and mentoring her personally, then a lot of elements were starting to fall into place.Which meant that if she wanted to keep up, then she needed at least similar training, or to try and join her friend’s new Familia.
-The sixteenth floor was a bit different to the floors before it. Where the thirteenth abandoned the mists and sheer openness of the three floors above it, this floor completely abandoned the dark, cavernous appearance entirely in favour of lighter tones and strange, rectangular geometry. It was like someone took a man-made marble quarry and dumped it in the Dungeon, with all the nooks and crannies a monster could want to hide out sight.Typically that would mean any party braving this floor would have to deal with near constant life or death ambushes. But well, between my own and Miyabi’s senses, we didn’t face any real problems. If anything I found the floor more pleasant than those above, if only due to its aesthetics. Which made it a great area to stop and rest.“Ugh…” Judith groaned from her spot face first on the floor, as I handed Miyabi her melon. It was in pieces before I could blink, before being devoured with an almost mechanical precision that left me actually blinking.I handed her another one out of morbid curiosity, but her resulting joy was actually really cute.“…I know I can’t keep up with any of the monsters on this floor, I can accept that, it’s fine.” Red moaned, her tone making it clear how ‘fine’ it really was. She’d responded to being outmatched by monsters above floor eleven in much the same way I normally do: by trying to kill them anyway. “I’ve accepted that, I have…! So why is my biggest problem just keeping up with you?” She rolled her head over to glare at me.Admittedly, I hadn’t really factored the pair of level ones into my somewhat changed priorities after realising that there was something new to learn about the sword. The results were readily apparent in how the pair of them had collapsed immediately after this break was called. I had driven them a little too hard and that exhaustion had mounted over time.Hell, even the stoic Ilya looked absolutely dazed.I’d offered Judith a stamina potion of course, but she seems to have convinced herself to avoid them unless absolutely needed.“Sounds like a you issue.” I chuckled.“It’s a you issue! You don’t know the meaning of rest!” She sniped back angrily. “Why are you even trying so hard with this fire sword thing anyway?”Now that, that was just blasphemy.“It’s useful.” I said, perhaps a touch defensively. “Plus it could open the gates to cutting all kinds of things… like ghosts.”“Ugh… didn’t you already say you’d be fine against ghosts?”“With magic.” I scoffed with theatrical distaste, before flashing her a grin. “Why would you use magic when you can cut them instead?” “That’s so fucking stupid.” She groaned.“As if you don’t want to as well.” I nodded knowingly.“I don’t!” She protested, before -after a long moment of silence- thunked her head back down onto the floor. “…Okay, I do, but fuck you it’s still stupid.”In spite of her grumbling, she’d started smiling.“While a swordsman requires a reason to draw their blade on another, they need no reason to improve.” Miyabi spoke up, reluctantly pulling away from the melon she was carefully taking her time with to do so.I hummed in agreement, pulling out some of the Jagamarukuns Hestia had made for me, before handing them out. We all had our own food prepared, but I suppose this was my way of apologising. I did go a little overboard after all… That said we were totally continuing once we got back on the road.-By the time we returned to the convoy at the end of the seventeenth floor, Judith and Ilya looked absolutely dead on their feet, while I was beaming happily. I hadn’t succeeded -not yet- but I was very close.Unfortunately my good spirits didn’t really mean much to the pair of them as they all but collapsed on the outskirts of the makeshift camp the Loki Familia was setting up. And after a brief bout of nonverbal communication, Miyabi offered to stay with them as I wandered into the camp proper to get an update on things.
It didn’t even take ten seconds in their camp before a rushed-looking Riveria intercepted me. “You’re here, good. We’ve had a few more injuries, can you lend a hand?” She was surprisingly blunt while on an expedition, though I suppose having this much organisational work dumped on you would do that. Either way she was easier to deal with than Finn, or at least she was on the two occasions where she’d personally assigned me patients.Mostly she sent someone else to assign me to fairly cut and dry cases. Walk up, inspect, administer potion in the best way you have available. Ignore your instincts when they suggest suppositories are the best method available.Y’know, basic stuff.“Sure, anything else?” I smiled agreeably. I didn’t mind healing, it was a great way to make a good impression and it was what I’d been signed onto the expedition for on paper anyway. I was also getting extra for every potion, so hey, more money.“One level two poisoned by a Lamia, but can you handle that?” I whistled dryly at that, the Lamia had pretty nasty poison, or at least that was what I read. I didn’t think anyone was slow enough to actually get bitten by one of those things. Normally the biggest worry while fighting one was the ridiculously long tail.“Should be able to, where’s the patients?” She blinked at that, but ultimately nodded. Riveria was in charge of the healing apparatus of the Expedition, so she almost certainly maintained a mental short list of all the healing assets she had to use as efficiently as possible. My ability to handle poisons hadn’t come up, so that nod was likely her adding it to her checklist. “Left side.” She ushered our group over to the side of the convoy most shielded by the environment and the carts themselves, effectively putting the entirety of the Loki Familia in the way of any monster looking for an easy snack. “Are we the last to arrive?” I asked, mostly just to make conversation as I grabbed one of my packs off the cart, just where we’d left them.The High Elf scoffed. “We still have a few more ranging groups dragging their heels, low levels wanting to get the most out of this floor before we move on.” “Any expected problems?”“None, unless they go missing.” A steely look entered her green eyes at that. “We need to wait for your attempt on the Goliath anyway, so no issues with timing. If anything, we’re ahead of schedule.”I couldn’t really keep the grin of my face at that, something she definitely took note of, but didn’t comment. I couldn’t help it, I was excited as fuck.“Strange that.” I commented once I got my grin under control.“The effect of your potions was greater than expected actually.” She corrected me with a smile. “The lack of the normal recovery time that naturally comes with potions has allowed us to push ahead by quite a margin. If this keeps up, we may be able to stay on the deeper floors for perhaps an extra day.”“Lucky you.” I commented as I entered their medical ‘tent’, before my eyes were immediately drawn not to a patient, but where someone was blaring malicious intent in my direction. Orange hair, blue eyes, pink clothes, physically weak but she looked like a mage. I blinked, not recognising her in the slightest despite her clear animosity for me.“Who?” I asked Riveria, who was… glaring the rogue Elf into submission. Now, normally I’d be all for this situation, especially against a decent mage simply because I hadn’t fought one of those before. But to be perfectly honest, something about this was striking me as just way too troublesome and I tried to trust my gut where I could.The Elf scampered off under the glare of the Vice-Captain, but not before throwing one last petulant stare my way.Yup.“Sorry about that, she’s… my apprentice.” The High Elf looked genuinely pained to admit that, as she rubbed the bridge of her nose. “I don’t know what’s gotten into her. I’ll try to talk to her.”“Not a problem, shall we?” I said professionally. I had a feeling that Elf was going to pull something and it would be something I couldn’t just beat her up to solve. Not helped by the fact that she was Riveria’s apprentice and presumably decently high up on the Loki totem pole.Riveria dipped her head in appreciation for me ignoring the issue and guided me through the patients. For the most part, they were fairly minor injuries by this world’s standards and ones that could certainly be handled by people other than me -including Riveria’s own healing magic- but that was likely the point. My potions scaled against endurance, so as we went lower and the levels of those getting injured climbed, they would lose their use case.The Vice-Captain was trying to use available assets as wisely as possible, even if that meant leaving the injured for a short while. Not that I minded of course.The worst was the poisoning case. They’d clearly already tried to fight it off with magic, but the poison was seemingly quite stubborn and more importantly, near to his heart. Fortunately though my response to poison was still the same as when I’d rescued the catgirls on the tenth floor; the one size fits all poison cureall. It was pure, concentrated bullshit and I loved it for that.A small dose administered to the shoulder bite wound as I and Riveria held the man down to keep him from thrashing was all it took. The man’s darkened veins visibly lightened before the startled High Elf’s eyes.As stated, pure bullshit.The only real issue was just how good these things were. A cheap cure all on par with an elixir -at least for poisons- may be tempting enough that the Loki Familia might risk trying something again. Which meant that I had to stack the deck low under Riveria’s questioning; ‘admitting’ that my antidotes could only be used on certain poisonous creatures in the low to mid floors.It was kind of my MO at this point, incredible potions that only affected the things I had experience with personally. Which probably made it easier for Riveria to accept. Either way, that left me free to meet up with the rest of my group and lay my eyes on the prize waiting at the front of the convoy. The last corridor of the seventeenth floor, and the place where Goliath politely waits for you to walk past just so that he can jump out of the giant crystal wall on the left.I could barely bring myself to wait.