The dungeon was smoking. Half of it came from the remains of Jane's first Ent. The other half came from everything my Magic Missiles had hit.
"Good shit, Tero! Didn't know you had that in you," Zach said.
"Yo."
Merlin caught his shoulder and shook his head.
Zach looked between us. "What?"
"Just give him a minute."
"I, um…"
Sheral's arms were still around me.
"Tero," she finally said. "Don't do that again."
"I… I won't."
She stayed there for another moment.
"…Okay."
Then she let go and stood. "Let's get these eggs and leave."
Jane unwound the roots around the clutch. Zach cleared away the remaining ice, and she crouched beside the eggs, checking them before trying her inventory again.
This time they disappeared.
She hadn't been able to do that during the fight. Now the system accepted them as an item.
That probably meant we'd done what we were supposed to.
I hoped it did, anyway.
Sheral knelt long enough to finish working on my leg. I watched the torn fabric while she healed what was underneath it. Neither of us said much.
Once I could walk properly, we checked the rest of the dungeon on our way out.
It felt weirdly empty. There were rooms we hadn't even seen, all prepared for fights that had apparently come looking for us instead.
Jane found rare herbs growing around a shallow pool. In another room, a magical focus sat among a collection of pale threads. From the way the mana moved through it, I was pretty sure it had been meant to strengthen the spiders.
Whether we could make it strengthen anything else was a problem for later.
Even one of the looms turned out to be an item.
An actual piece of tailoring equipment. A fucking big one, too.
I put it away before I could find a reason it wouldn't fit. Once we had a proper home, I could set it up somewhere the whole guild could use it.
The First Daughter's Heartspool was smaller, and now it was fastened beneath my guild insignia.
Beyond the exit, we found another shared rest area. This one looked like the basement of the mage tower: thick stone pillars, empty shelves, and stairs disappearing into darkness above us.
Nobody else was there yet.
Probably because we'd fought the entire fucking dungeon at once, but being first still felt a little good.
Ill always take the chance to show off.
We settled near an old hearth. Once the fire caught, Merlin came over.
"Hey, man. Can I pull you aside for a sec?"
"Yah. Of course."
He led me past one of the pillars, far enough that we could speak quietly without everyone listening.
For a moment, he just looked at me.
"So. What happened in there?"
"…Soul stealing."
His expression tightened.
"Consuming them, I guess. It's something I've worried about protecting against for a long time. But the spell itself is actually pretty simple."
Merlin lifted a hand, started to say something, then lowered it again.
"I'm not religious, right? But consuming souls? I don't know, man. That ain't right."
"Yah… I don't know. But I know Sheral doesn't want me doing it."
"What do you mean, you don't know? It's clearly demonic."
"Well, maybe if I'd done it to a human. Or the Daughter, before she changed. But those mobs weren't…"
I glanced back toward the doorway.
"We can see the difference. They're close, yah, but they're like an AI."
Merlin rubbed his jaw.
"A few weeks into all this, people started raping the female NPCs, right?"
I looked at him.
"What did you tell me you did to those guys?"
"…That's different, man."
"Is it? If they're just AI?"
I opened my mouth, then stopped.
Having a massive Intelligence stat helped me work through a lot of thoughts at once. It didn't tell me which ones were right.
"The problem was the people," I said eventually. "The fact that they wanted to do it. That kind of deviancy. And what happens if everyone just accepts it."
Merlin waited.
"It sets a bad precedent."
"Okay. That's something." He leaned against the pillar. "But I think you're finding an explanation you can use. I don't think that's the one you believed when you told me about it."
"…Maybe."
"And I get what you mean about NPCs. I've spent time with the beastmen too. They can't see that difference like we can. Humans are the ones who get to look at something and go, 'That one's real.'"
He glanced toward Jane, sitting near the fire.
"I just don't know how much that should change what we do to them."
"We kill mobs all the time."
"Yah. We do."
He didn't have an immediate answer for that either.
For some reason, that made the conversation harder.
"I'll think about it," I said. "We probably need a ruling for the guild sooner or later. Maybe put it to a vote."
"I'm asking you, Tero."
"I know."
"Do you?"
I looked down at my staff, turning the wolfhide grip in my hand.
"I told her I wouldn't do it again."
Merlin followed my gaze, then looked back at my face.
"Just consider that everything about this setup world screams that demons are evil. We haven't exactly met a bunch of misunderstood ones. When something demonic feels that good…"
He shook his head.
"Just don't, man."
"DARE?"
"Yah. Just say no."
We both laughed a little.
It helped enough that we could walk back together. It didn't make the conversation feel finished.
Mara's team came through while we were returning to the fire.
She counted the others as they emerged, then waved Finn toward an empty stretch of floor before he could sit in the way of the entrance.
"Epic?" I asked.
"Epic. Everybody's here."
"Good."
She looked at the soot on my robe. "You?"
"Legendary."
"I meant everybody."
"Oh. Yah. We're all here."
"Good."
Blake lowered himself onto a stool near the fire, holding his cup between his palms before anyone had filled it.
Mara and Dorian had both settled on Epic before going in. Nessa was the only one who had chosen Elite.
I was pretty sure her main concern had been saving resources for the raid.
Which was going to be Legendary.
I hadn't actually said that out loud yet, but it was something I knew I had to insist on.
As far as I could tell, there weren't that many raids around. The bigger guilds didn't seem to love them, either. Preparing twenty people took a lot, and crafted equipment could get really fucking good if you had the time and materials.
Our own gear was good. We'd made twenty matching sets that suited our levels in two weeks. That was a massive amount of work.
But the Legendary drops we'd seen could do things none of us knew how to craft.
I wanted more of that.
I also wanted us to be one of the guilds people talked about when they discussed who was doing well.
Dorian's group arrived while I was thinking about it. Nessa's followed later, carrying enough folded silk to make me question how much storage they had left.
This time, I stayed by the fire.
Once everyone had somewhere to sit, Mara dragged her stool closer. Dorian joined her, and Nessa set her cup on the floor beside a roll of parchment.
Merlin stayed next to me. Blake didn't move, but he turned enough to listen.
"Everyone through," Dorian said. "That's a good start."
"Anyone need repairs?" I asked.
"Finn does," Mara said. "He says it's cosmetic."
"Is it?"
"I can see his sock through his boot."
"Probably worth checking, then."
"I thought so."
Dorian glanced back at his team. "Vera needs a proper rest. She says she can keep going, but she's said that three times since we sat down."
"We're not going straight in," I said.
Nessa looked up. "How long do we have?"
"I haven't decided."
"Then don't decide until Sera and Orin have checked what they can prepare here. If we can carry it through assembled, that changes things."
"You saved most of your materials?"
"Some. We used what we needed."
She unrolled the parchment across her knees.
"We also took apart one of their feeding stations."
Mara stared at her. "You dismantled the furniture?"
"It was useful furniture."
"I took a loom," I said.
Nessa immediately turned toward me. "Intact?"
"Yah."
"Show me after."
"Can we finish sitting down first?" Merlin asked.
"That's why I said after."
Dorian smiled and shifted his cup away from her parchment.
"What difficulty are you thinking?" he asked me.
"Legendary."
Mara leaned back.
"Right."
The way she said it made me want to start explaining before anyone actually objected.
"We've spent two weeks preparing for this. We have twenty mages, proper gear, the new drops…"
"We had twenty mages yesterday," she said. "Then three groups decided they wanted an easier dungeon."
"This is what we were saving for."
Nessa tapped a finger against her parchment.
"Saving resources helps. We still need to know what we're spending them on."
"Blake?" I asked.
He looked at me over his cup.
"Can you get anything about the raid?"
"I can try."
"And?"
"I haven't tried yet."
Mara snorted.
I could feel my face warming. "Okay. When you've rested, then."
"Ask me something specific," he said. "You'll get more use out of it."
"Whether we survive seems pretty specific."
He set the cup down.
"Who goes in? When? With what preparation?"
"…Fair."
I hated how every time I asked him for anything it ended like that.
"I want to know about retreat," Dorian said. "Whether the entrance stays open once the fight begins."
Nessa nodded. "And whether we can see enough from outside to plan the first position."
"Who's calling it?" Mara asked.
"The fight?"
"The retreat."
"Me, I guess."
Merlin shifted beside me.
"You can get busy, man."
I looked at him. He held my gaze for a moment, then glanced toward the other groups.
Mara rested her elbows on her knees.
"If I tell you my side's breaking, I need you to hear it the first time. I can't argue while I'm keeping something off Ilyra."
"I'd hear you."
"Good. Then we should agree on what we do when it happens."
Dorian spoke before I could answer.
"I'm willing to attempt Legendary. I want my group to hear the plan before I tell you they are."
"Yah. Okay."
That wasn't a no. I found myself holding onto that.
Nessa turned her parchment toward us. "Keep the five-person groups together at first. We know our own calls. Let the leaders move people between groups when there's an actual reason."
"And leave lanes," Merlin said. "I can pull somebody out fast. I'd rather not drag them through three other people and a wall of fire."
"That happened?" Mara asked.
"Not all three at once."
She looked at me.
"We're working on it," I said.
Blake's mouth twitched. He reached toward the pot, and Mara lifted it before he had to stand.
"Food first," she said. "Then you can tell us which terrible decisions look promising."
"That might take a second bowl."
"You can have one if you use normal words."
He held out his cup. "Please."
Even I laughed at that.
We kept talking. Repairs, spell ranges, who could hold a barrier while someone else moved. Nessa wrote down what she needed to check. Dorian went back to ask his people what they had left, and Mara made Finn take his boot off.
Nobody had agreed to go in yet.
I still wanted Legendary. More than I wanted to admit after that conversation.
[
[Stats][Magic][Inventory][Skills][Help]
Name: Tero
Guild: The High Order
Rank: High Magister
Level: 49
Class: Adventurer 20, Leyline Strategist 20, Leygate Magister 9
Strength: 10+4
Body: 10+50
Agility: 10+8
Dexterity: 10+8
Intelligence: 139+180
Willpower: 38+74
Charisma: 24
Stat points: 0
]