When the four of them finally made it to the area around the volcano, 5 days had passed. Which means they would only have 2 days or so to train here before they needed to head back. The dividing line between forest and hellscape was drastic, almost a perfect circle around the central large volcano, you are in a lush forest with massive trees, then take one step and its burnt ground and you can taste ash and sulfur in the air. Tara was not responding to messages, but Eli told them to stay still and he would come to them.
"What took you so long?" Eli asked, as he walked up to them with what looked like a beaten Tara riding piggyback, she was unconscious and missing her left arm and leg. "Never mind, one of you get out a tent and set it up just inside the forest here, she needs rest and a place to scream. Growing back bones stings a bit."
"What happened to her?" Bethany asked.
"Training," Tara said with a delirious smile on her face slipping between awake and not.
They all turned and looked at Eli even as Bethany and Audrey grabbed her from his back and were placing her in a tent.
"What?" Eli said, trying to make his mask look innocent.
While they all still looked shocked, Cory and Bethany asked what kind of training at almost the same time, for completely different reasons. Bethany thought that Tara had failed some kind of training, and if she could pass it, it would be a step up for her. Cory thought that the training had been too harsh and now that he was getting more comfortable in the group he wanted to scold Eli about it. Eli kept quiet while he checked on her and made sure she was comfortable.
"You did good Tara, you did really good, just rest now," He said while holding her hand.
"I was training her will," Eli said when he stepped out of the tent, "she did way better than I expected, it's not something I think any of you guys are ready for."
"Ok…." Audrey said with a long pause, "so what training are we going to get here? This place is horrible."
"Yes it is, and the monsters here are plentiful and strong. We got here about 30 hours ago and I'm already level 60 and Tara is almost 58. Now I don't think you are ready to face these monsters alone, so I will be helping." Eli explained.
"How did Tara get hurt?" Stevens asked, still mostly white in the face.
"Fighting monsters while I helped," he said with a casual tone and a smile in his voice.
"We can do two at a time, I'll leave my avatar here to help defend in case something attacks." He said, seemingly the only one in the group that is excited. "Who wants to go first?"
Surprisingly, even with all his messing with them that he wasn't torn up about Tara being this hurt, they all raised their hand. Audrey seemed particularly emphatic about it so he picked her and Cory to go first. They started walking away and Eli started lecturing on how to fight better together, setting each other up for hits and working together to find weaknesses. He was going to lead them into the bad and watch them screw up, lecture, then watch them screw up again. Rinse and repeat until they are too injured to continue, then swap them out for the other two.
During the first fight, at the first sign of trouble, Cory was looking to Eli to come to his rescue, but instead Audrey put herself at risk to save him. They were fighting a long necked long tailed dinosaur that would breath ash down and strike with its tail, using its elevated head to see what it was doing. Cory was getting whipped by the tail and Audrey had just stabbed into the base of its neck. Its head curled down and tried to bite what had stabbed it but nothing was there. Cory shook off the pain and fear and struck at its neck as well while it was distracted.
The two kept going like this until it fell and they both leveled. Cory had some minor injuries and Audrey had a large cut under her left eye, she touched it with her hand over and over. It looked like she was hurting herself so he focused and sensed what she was doing.
"Why are you doing that?" Eli asked her, with concern in his voice.
"I need this reminder," She said with a serious look on her face. "That I can win, I don't need to be scared."
"Well, if that is what you want," Eli said, absently wondering if she was turning feral somehow. "Cory, what did you learn?"
"That with a team, or even just a partner, it's important to stay focused because it's not just my life at risk, theirs is also"
"Good, now take a minute to catch your breath and let's head in further."
As they walked closer to the large volcano in the distance Eli noticed that it seemed further away than the last time he was here. Did the area increase after the monster horde event? Maybe an event revolving around this king monster would come after so many horde events? Nothing for him to worry about now, he was going to come back down here after the next one and go for the king anyway so it wasn't something he needed to worry about. So he led them deeper into finding the next monster.
The heat was picking up and both of them were struggling against it. The next monster was a massively larger version of the monster wyrm that Eli had fought before the dungeon and it wasn't something they were going to be able to fight. The heat it was capable of was just too much for them, their levels weren't very high and they didn't even have a body level increase yet. Eli hurt it and let them finish it off, Audrey ignored her sizzling flesh and dove in to get hits and long cuts, but Cory was not able to do that, he dashed in, got a hit and ran away to cool off. He really was getting concerned about her, he sent a message to Tara to have a talk with her and finished off the monster.
She was smoking and burned, her armor and hair melted, there was a wildness in her eyes and he knew something was up with her. One more quick monster and they would head back, he had to make sure they had some injuries and they had only been gone about two hours. They went in even deeper and found another dinosaur creature, this one was smaller and faster, just about their height and scurried around on four legs like a lizard. When he noticed the earth magic in its eyes, though it might be a basilisk and was about to warn them but stopped when Audrey spoke up.
"Don't look into its eyes, it will turn you to stone."
Maybe she wasn't as feral as he thought, she noticed it too and was quicker to warn Cody than he was. The monster was quick and got a couple hits in on Cody before Audrey got her hits in. The smaller size meant that her hits did more damage and since it wasn't particularly strong or resilient, she was able to do some good damage right at the beginning. However this monster wasn't just quick, it was smart and knew when it was being set up for a big hit so it stopped focusing on Cody and just paid him enough attention to keep him busy.
It was waiting for a counterstrike opportunity which had Eli worried. Would she notice in time? Hell, would he notice in time to save her? He sharpened his senses and focused hard. Audrey appeared right as she was going for its neck and it turned and bit down on her faster than Eli could react. He paused in shock and then noticed that she wasn't bitten in half, it had stopped biting down and at that moment Cory got a good hit to its neck catching its spine and it went limp. He immediately pulled its mouth open with his one working hand and she crawled out.
Eli walked up to her and saw her weapons, her daggers, in the roof of its mouth. These weren't her usual ones, they were a bit longer and biting down any further would have killed it. She had let it bite down on her, she was taking too many risks. There were so many safer ways to win that fight, but she chose the most aggressive one.
"How did we do?" Cody asked.
"You did good, working together, staying focused, not bad at all," He said to Cody. "Audrey, you took a serious risk with that move, yes it worked and was pretty smart, but it was reckless. What if the monster did not notice or care that your blades would kill it, it would have cut you in half."
"I'm alive, it's dead, what else is there?" She said, folding her arms in front of her.
"The next fight is what else, next time being that aggressive could get you killed. There were a hundred ways to win that fight without taking that big of a risk. What happens when a teammate dies trying to save you from a reckless move like that. If you want to die, do it on your own time," Eli said loudly and with anger in his voice.
"You're angry with me?" She shouted with tears in her eyes still sitting on the ground, arms crossed holding her stomach wounds from the monster's teeth. "I'm angry with you!"
"Tell me why or I refuse to believe you."
"You are a God! The power you have you don't even really know how to use yet. You should be more. More unapproachable, more perfect, more solitary. You don't need us, why are we even here?" her tears were growing with every word. "We don't deserve you, we are nothing… I am nothing."
Eli knelt next to her and put his hands on the front and back of her head and focused on his magic sense harder than he ever had before and her mind was like an open book to him. He felt revulsion at this act of invasive betrayal he was performing on her, she closed her eyes and went limp. He searched through her magic and her emotions as fast as he could and found something off. It was the rune for his will skill, she had seen its rudimentary form when she had helped him during the monster horde event. It looks like his soul had reached out against her trying to connect with him and in pushing back, had marked her mind.
It looked just like the endlessly bright sun at first, but he knew the rune was there just like it was when he got his skill from it. This is what was messing with her, it didn't match her soul's rune which he could sense while projecting himself magically into her soul. Her rune felt like it wanted to bend reality, but in subtle, meaningful, and tricky ways, whereas his rune felt like a planet crushing your chest. Her soul was fighting back against his rune and trying to keep itself whole, and on top of everything their connection wouldn't allow his rune to exist in her while it also connected them. There was a lot going wrong in her, but since the rune came from him and was still a tiny piece of him, he gathered it and pushed it back to himself. After that, her magic was as relaxed as her body.