Dungeon Tour Guide ch. 53 (Patreon)

This one fought me. Please leave feedback if you've got any! I appreciate you for reading.

“I’m glad we were able to get that resolved without too many issues,” I said, dusting myself off. “Well.”

Troy pulled himself to his feet, wincing as the last few scrapes he had started to mend, courtesy of my [Healing Stream]. “Sorry. I should’ve reacted.”

I shook my head. “You had very little time to do so. Besides, in my experience, party members are very bad at instantly switching gears and attacking their close friends.”

“That was scary, holy shit,” Rose said, having extricated herself from my grasp. “I never want to go through something like that again.”

With my dungeon senses, I saw her approaching me, and I let her. The [Bard] wrapped her arms around me, resting her cheek on my shoulder. Given the fact that I could actually see it coming, I managed to avoid being startled, but I couldn’t help it when my cheeks started warming.

That bad, huh? “You alright?”

“That was terrifying,” Rose said. “Do you know what it’s like not having full control over your body? What it’s like when there’s a huge part of you telling you that yes, killing the people you l—like the most in the world is the right choice? I’ve had enough of a battle against my own mind. I never thought that I’d have to deal with anything like that again.”

The last words were quieter, a mutter under her breath that I was fairly sure she hadn’t intended me to hear. I didn’t ask.

Instead, I turned awkwardly and patted her head, unsure of how else to respond. “It’s okay. You’re alright now.”

The [Bard] on my shoulder closed her eyes, taking a deep breath. I saw the microadjustments she made, the way her shoulders stiffened before she forcibly relaxed them, and then Rose pushed herself off me and stood up straight.

“Yep, I am,” Rose said, the energy in her voice flooding back in a single instant. “Thanks, Lucas. I’m glad it only lasted for a few moments.”

If it was this bad for you, no wonder the [Astral Monk] suffered so much afterwards. She’d been under the influence for several minutes, not just a few seconds, right?

Well, that wasn’t the highest priority. It concerned me a little that Rose had ricocheted between deeply emotional and perfectly cheery so fast, but I could do my best at being an armchair therapist after we survived the week.

The recently-jailbroken artifact was going to be key to that. There was another set of security protocols on it, but those felt different—that was less the Kingsguard’s [Security Seal] and more something inherent to the artifact.

“This artifact boosts level gain,” I said. “That’s probably important, right?”

“It does?” Troy said. “Now that you say that, I can see where that would’ve been applying…”

“To my identification spell, it looks like it needs to be active to use most effectively,” I said. “Probably requires mana being funneled into it.”

Actually, come to think of it, hadn’t Minus One been leveling faster than their peers around them? Up until now, I’d largely attributed that to them being up against harder enemies than usual, but with this artifact being in their possession…

“Can I formally requisition this for the practice rooms?” I asked. “If what I’m seeing is right, then it could be a massive boon to—“

“Sure,” Rose agreed, staring her mother down. “I’m fine with that. It’ll help increase our chances, right?”

“It will,” I said. “It’s yours?”

“I technically own it,” Rose said. “Ryan, Troy, are you two good with that?”

“Yes,” Ryan said. “Saving the lives of the people around us above all else.”

“If you two are alright with it, so am I,” Troy said. “No strong opinions.”

“I cannot tell you what to do with it,” Iris said, ignoring the rest of us to address her daughter. “It is your choice.”

“Iris, I just thought about this,” I said, trying to break through the almost-tangible tension in the air. “What’s your role going to be when the Kingsguard attack?”

“What do you mean by that?” she asked. “Are you intending to ask if I’ll fight?”

“Yes,” I said. “Aren’t you a non-combatant class?

“My class is primarily non-combative,” Iris said, her expression unchanging even as her voice grew chillier. “But make no mistake, dungeonbound, that does not mean I cannot turn the tides of battle. On the day they strike, I will be here and everywhere.”

On that note, she turned and left.

“Goddess, mom loves her dramatic statements,” Rose complained. “She’ll probably be coordinating a large-scale response or something.”

“Yeah, that’s about what I expected.” I highly doubed that the [Tactician] skills would actually be useful in ground-level party combat, but if there were going to be actual army versus army battles, she would probably have more of a say in things.

“It is what it is,” Rose said. “For now, we have other things to focus on. Being stronger, for one.”

“Can we try this artifact out?” Ryan asked.

“Yeah, let’s,” I said.

_______________________________

“[Mephit]s,” Troy called. “I’m going for them.”

“Got it!” Ryan called back, disengaging with the two earth constructs that he and Troy had been double-teaming.

The [Apprentice Mage] fired his attack, chaining the [Thunderspark]s with even more intensity than before. The little imps never stood a chance.

Rose sang a [Song of Displacement], her voice just a little lower and scratchier than it had been before—a side effect of the control and the broken song she’d had during it, probably—and an earth construct flew to tank the death-detonations.

“Level up!” Troy announced.

“Level up here as well,” Rose said.

As I watched, I considered the pace that they were improving. Just twenty-four hours or so ago, they’d struggled to clear this room. Yes, now they were no longer being taken off guard by [Displacer Snake]s or [Mephit]s, but just a couple runs of the place had been enough for them to adapt to the new configuration and new monsters.

Now, if they could fit that adaptation into the span of a single fight, we’d truly have something going.

“Just constructs left,” Ryan said. “Let me have them? You both got levels already, right?”

“I’ll [Song of Strength] you,” Rose said. She seemed more down than usual, even if she did start increasing her energy with bursts of uncanny cheeriness from time to time. “Ready?”

“Go.”

The [Knight] had gained enough experience from fighting these monsters to finish the last two without any problem, dancing around them and slicing and stabbing until it was done.

“Level up as well,” Ryan said, pumping a fist. “That’s all of us to five, right?”

I glanced at the artifact in my hands. The sphere was glowing ever so slightly, and I wasn’t sure whether that was because it was producing light or because the mana signature from it was intense enough that I was seeing things.

Whoever had made this artifact had succeeded. I wasn’t sure how much it had actually done, but I knew for a fact that they hadn’t been on the verge of leveling up as they’d entered the first room.

“Pick up some new skills and some new toys,” I said. “I know you’ll probably be tempted to pick spells that, like, kill [Fake Hydra]s or earth constructs specifically, but make sure that whatever you choose is applicable to use against humans and monsters both. If experience has told us anything…”

“It’s that the Kingsguard will bring both,” Troy finished. “Yeah. I’ll pick some control spells. I noticed that doing that was a fair bit more effective than direct damage, especially when we were against people that were higher level than us.”

“Good idea,” I said.

“I’m going to try to improve my speed some more,” Ryan said. “That seems to be what I’m doing best. Be fast, block a hit or two, and hit hard. I’ll need to talk to the order about strengthening this sword some. The [Adamantium Strike] is good, but I got some options with my new level that I think necessitate some changes.”

“I got a new song,” Rose said, quieter than usual. “I need to increase my repertoire anyway. I’ll go practice it.”

“A more offensive one?”

“I’m not sure yet. I’ll need to experiment.”

Well, that’s vague.

“How did you feel? Was the artifact helping?” I asked. It was a bit of an obvious question, since even I’d been feeling the effects, but I wanted to confirm that it wasn’t just a me thing. After all, it was possible that the artifact’s range was just the person who held it.

“Yeah,” Rose said, still uncharacteristically quiet. “I could feel it. Every kill that I played a part in was feeding me more mana.”

“It felt like I just took a relaxing bath and a nice nap,” Ryan said. “When I was fighting, at least.”

“I felt that too,” Troy said. “Every spell felt like I was casting cleanly, every success amplified.”

“That’s about in line with what it should be,” I said.

Experience points weren’t explicitly a thing in this place, but there was clearly some equivalent to it. At a guess, this was just juicing us up, doing the equivalent of replacing a saline IV drip with liquid heroin.

Okay, I’d had better analogies.

Still, it was pretty obvious that they were gaining power at a pretty significantly improved rate. There was danger in that—they’d described it as feeling good, and being particularly inclined towards violence was not optimal for people who were, by all accounts, part of high society. Add that to the fact that M-1 was far more serious than usual. During this run, their usual casual joking manner had been almost completely gone.

Maybe I should’ve waited a little longer for Rose to recover before we ran this.

“Well,” I said, trying not to let the worry show on my face, “room two, I suppose.”

____________________________

“There’s not much to be done,” I said, healing the party once more. “You made very few mistakes. We just need to run this again later. Go get some rest.”

It’d been a coordinated attack that had done them in. As a group of [Mephit]s had died, an ECDV had teleported close into the party, taking the corpses away with it. At the same time, the one surviving [Fake Hydra] had targeted Rose. She’d dodged at the last second, enough to take a glancing hit instead of a lethal one, but the loss of the [Song of Strength] had meant that Ryan’s [Adamantium Strike] hadn’t been enough to smash the ECDV. He’d gone down with it, and with Troy nearly out of mana, I’d brought an end to the exercise.

“No,” Rose said, shaking her head. “We go again.”

“Troy’s still recovering his mana,” I said. “Ryan’s almost healed, but I’m sure that—“

“I’m ready,” Troy said. “Give me five minutes.”

“I’m fine,” Ryan groaned, his organs still in the process of mending themselves back into functionality. “Once the healing is done.”

“Are you sure?” I asked. “I know that this is important, but—“

“Again,” Rose said, practically snarling.

_____________________________

They didn’t make it any farther the second time. This time, it was Rose’s fault—well, kind of. She missed a callout when she swapped from [Song of Mana] to [Song of Strength], and Troy didn’t adjust for it. The [Mephit]s were stronger here, so the [Thunderspark] hadn’t been enough to take them out. They’d swarmed the [Apprentice Mage], and that had been the end of the fight.

“That was my fault,” she said afterwards. She’d only met my eyes once, and there’d been a bitterness in her gaze that definitely hadn’t been there before. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Troy said. “We had Lucas to put us back together. I’m sure he’ll do the best he can to keep us in one piece when the Kingsguard come.”

“I will,” I said. “You should really take a break, okay? Seriously. Mindset is just as important to an adventure or a fight as your abilities, and I know all three of you are running really short on mana.”

“One more might get me a level up,” Rose said. “I need to get stronger.”

“No,” I said. “You need to rest. If you keep on going like this, you’re going to get yourself killed beyond my ability to fix you. There’s a difference between optimizing your growth and driving yourself to your own death. Please.”

“I can’t,” Rose said, shaking her head. “I—it’s okay if Ryan and Troy need some time to reset, but I—I can’t stop—“

I stepped forward and wrapped my arms around her.

Rose was the cheeriest person I knew, and seeing her breaking down over this made my heart twist in a way I couldn’t quite describe.

She was so much smaller than she could seem, shorter than me by half a head and made even smaller by the way she was huddled in on herself.

“You’re going to be okay, Rose,” I whispered. “We’re going to be okay.”

The [Bard] was shaking, I realized, and I could see a tear or two trickling down her face with my dungeon senses.

“…yeah,” she said. “Yeah.”

“We’ll get this done,” I said, letting her go. “One and a half levels today already is so good. You can come back later, too, alright? Take care of yourself. You can’t save anyone else if you can’t keep yourself safe first.”

“I understand,” she said, turning and wiping her eyes. “Sorry.”

“You’re fine,” I said. “The pressure’s getting to everyone.”

“We’ll do better next time,” Rose promised. “We’ll be—I’ll be back as soon as my mana recovers.”

I sighed. “Fine. But promise me you’ll relax until then?”

“I will,” she lied.

_____________________________________

“You’re alone,” I noted.

“I am,” Anderson said. He held up his wrists, revealing the glowing bracelets that Lisa had said would control him. “Don’t worry. I can’t hurt you.”

I stared him down, then thought better of trying to start something. If he wanted to not be an asshat, that was perfectly fine. People changed in times of crisis, and seeing a change for the positive was honestly kind of nice.

“Why are you here alone?”

“The other three are coming later. I wanted to try a round myself. Apparently it’s easier to level up now?”

“In this cave, yes,” I said. “For the time being, at least.”

“That’s all I needed to hear.”

_______________________________________

Anderson reached level 4 midway through attempting the first room shortly after doubletapping the last of the [Mephit]s. Even with the level, it wasn’t enough to get him strong enough to solo the entire room, but he came scarily close. His [Void Bullet]s were coming along more regularly now, and he’d unlocked a [Deadeye] skill at level 4 that made his bullets more than twice as effective for a short period of time.

Still, he just couldn’t stand up in the face of raw numbers, and the horde of snakes managed to take him down before he could finish off the last earth construct.

________________________________________

“Thank you,” Anderson said. “May I try again in an hoour? My temporary party should be here by then.”

“Sure thing,” I said, studying him.

Things were changing, and they were changing fast. It was only day two of seven, and I could already see. Anderson had gone from cocky threatening asshole to a deferrent, determined man while Minus One had lost almost all of their cheer.

I was going to have to do something about that at some point, but that point wasn’t now.

For now, the important goal to work towards was getting Ketz’s entire adventuring force to learn how to work together. I’d announce it when the rest of the [Sharpshooter]’s party came.

We had to work as one in order to survive this. At first, that would mean just the adventurers growing used to each other’s capabilities and weaknesses, but there was going to be a point where I was going to have to train myself, too.

Speaking of which…

I started on an [Assimilate] as I felt it come off cooldown, closing my eyes as Anderson left the dungeon.

This first pick was going to be a [Devouring Ooze]. Lower-level, yes, but there was a lot that I could do with it. I had plans, plans that didn’t only involve training or security.

Five and a half days left.

After that, it would be the Kingsguard, and I’d be damned if I didn’t go down fighting.