Watching the group slink away with their tails between their legs was fun.
Watching Judith sneakily give them the middle finger was even better, something one of the Amazon twins seemed to agree with me on.
Said twin hummed happily as she walked up to me. "Y'know, we were already super curious about who Ais-tan kept running off to go see, but to find out it was a man just makes it even more interesting!"
"He's even pretty handsome too…" Her sister chimed in, smiling like the cat that caught the canary.
"You don't think…" Tiona trailed off theatrically.
"I do…" Tione purred as they both turned on Ais with impish smirks, an Ais who at this point had actually started pouting.
"…You're bullying me." Ais protested. "I'm just interested in how he's getting strong so fast…!"
"So she's only into him for his body!" The flat Amazon gasped.
"How scandalous." Her older sister followed up as Ais started to pink at the accusations, before turning her glare on me like this was my fault. And in two ways I suppose it is. The obvious of course, but also because I recommended that she spend more time with friends at one point.
So I smiled and shot her a thumbs up.
She pouted harder.
I laughed and turned my gaze to the twins. "Nice to meet you two, and sorry about that whole thing, I'm Elric."
"It's fine, it's fine~ honestly it was kinda interesting! I never thought I'd see that guy pull something like that, he's normally so meek y'know?" The smaller of the two rambled enthusiastically. "Oh! I'm Tiona by the way!"
"Tione." The curvier of the two injected with an indulgent smile.
"Judith." Red added, stepping into the conversation with a timid smile, the others also introducing themselves after a beat.
"Oh, I know you!" Tiona said, trotting up to Judith. "You left our Familia right? I was sorry to hear that."
"You were?"
"En!" The Amazon nodded. "Captain said we had a bumper crop of talents this year and you were one of them. Ilya too! It's a shame you left, but you look happy so… all's well that end's well right?"
I turned my attention to Ais as the pair of them started happily chatting away, Tione and even Ilya joining them after a spell.
"Thanks for coming, I appreciate the help." I smiled.
"…You had it handled already." She shook her head, still looking a touch embarrassed. "And it was our responsibility regardless."
"Maybe, but I appreciate it all the same."
She was silent for a beat at that. "You're not making fun of me are you?"
"I'm not, it always means a lot when people are willing to help without cynical reasons." I replied simply, trying to make my honesty easy to read.
"I see…" She spoke quietly, as an ever so slight smile ghosted across her lips. "Um, we'll need to get going now."
I blinked at the non sequitur, before noticing the dusting of pink on her cheeks deepening.
Ah.
I returned her smile. "Ah, take care then." But that just seemed to make things worse as she walked quickly over to the Amazon twins and tugged on them insistently.
"Eh? Wai- I wanted to talk to them more! Ais!" Tiona protested as she was dragged away with her amused looking sister.
The rest of us watched that scene with a strange kind of puzzled camaraderie until they disappeared out of sight, at which point Judith rounded on me. "What did you do?"
"I didn't do anything." I rolled my eyes. "She wasn't upset, just embarrassed."
"Embarrassed?" Judith uttered in surprise. "I mean she looked… but like, how?"
"I thanked her."
"That's it?"
"I think she just struggles with social situations." I downplayed a tiny bit.
"Ais does?" Judith whispered like it was some big revelation, which I suppose it would be to someone who had put her on a pedestal. But, honestly it was more common for top adventurers to be poorly adjusted than not.
You needed to be a certain kind of crazy to go far in the genocide business.
Actually, now that I think about it, even the people around me are like that. Miyabi had seemingly been content to stand menacingly behind me this entire conversation without saying a word, like a tiny mafioso. Ilya had never really been that vocal, always just kinda doing her own thing and focusing on training, which in this case is killing things. And Judith… well I liked my new student, but damn if she isn't operating on a drive that's as temperamental as it is willful.
And what did it say about me that I attracted all of these people? And that they're all women?
Those are good questions which I'm going to ignore.
"Yup, now c'mon, you're sticking with us from here on out."
Red opened her mouth to protest, thought better of it, and closed it with a click as she almost deflated with a grumble. "Fuckin' stupid Schmitt…"
Laughing, I turned to the only odd one remaining. "Ilya, you wanna come with?"
"Possibly." She hedged, though her gaze betrayed her interest. "It depends on what you're doing."
"Right now? There's a pantry not far from here, so I was going to toss Judith into it and see what happens." I joked as Judith squawked in indignation. "After that? I was going to give her a crash course in all the monsters from here to the eighteenth floor."
"A pantry, that's…" The noble hesitated.
"What, you can't do it?" Red immediately seized on that hesitation to taunt her, probably seeing it as a way to one-up her old -and slightly one-sided- rival.
"I can." Ilya announced, ignoring Judith to stare straight at me. Red's eyes immediately blazed with determination and I smiled at my good fortune.
-
Pantry hunting went surprisingly well. Instead of me having to whittle down the numbers to about half, the pair of them managed to handle the War Shadows and Frog Shooters of the sixth floor pantry on their own, with only a few scrapes for their troubles.
The seventh, eighth and ninth floors were substantially harder purely on account of the sheer number of Ants they were throwing at the pair of low level ones. But Judith at least seemed to be in high spirits, coming out of the gauntlet in a better state likely due to her higher stats, better equipment and improved skills.
Also the fact that I'd already dragged her through said gauntlet multiple times now might have helped.
This series of one-upmanship went out of the window as we descended down to the tenth floor however. Neither of them had been this far before and it showed in their hesitant steps. They also didn't really have the stats to be here outside of an expedition.
"Whoa… you really can't see a thing through it." Red commented as she peered down into the thick mists that blanketed the open floor.
"This openess… it's going to be used against us isn't it?" Ilya commented, staring at the vast, cavernous ceilings and what she could see of the open plains of the floor from our spot above the mist.
"Good catch." I complimented. "And yeah, the open environment lets Imps sneak up on you startlingly easily as well as giving the Bad Bats almost free rein."
"Bad Bats?" Judith asked cluelessly.
"Your dungeon advisor didn't tell you?" Ilya sniped before I could say anything, still sounding a bit rough from the previous floor.
"Wha- I mean, she did, but like…" My student floundered. "They're really boring about it." She admitted, and I nodded approvingly.
The noble girl rolled her eyes. "They're small, tough, bat-like monsters who produce a screech that can disrupt Adventurers…" She explained. "If they screech at the wrong moment, you can be left vulnerable to attack."
"Yeah, that pretty much sums up the entire floor actually." I nodded. "Orcs are slow, fat and powerful so they serve as the monster's front guard. Imps are there to distract you and open you up to those slow attacks by going for surprise attacks of their own, and Bad Bats do roughly the same."
Miyabi chimed in. "Inexperienced Adventurers oft see the Orcs as the greatest threats and focus on them first, leaving themselves vulnerable to disruption. But really they're slow enough that you can typically outpace them to destroy their backup first and then circle back for the Orc last."
Well, that's if you can find the supports in the mist, not everyone has the senses for that, but it's a pretty good rule to remember regardless.
"Yup, but for now we'll handle the supports if they're in a group, and you'll focus on the Orcs. Got it?" The pair of them nodded, at least seeming serious. "Remember, don't block their attacks, stay out of their range and whittle them down."
They nodded again, and I just knew one of them was going to discard my warnings somehow.
-
I should be a prophet. It didn't even take an hour until my prediction came true and I found myself standing over Judith.
"Owww…" She moaned as I gave her the flattest look possible.
"What did I say?" I asked dryly.
"That I should look for chances to challenge myself?" She offered with a cheeky, pained smile. And… shit, I can't even say anything against that, I'm only a little mad and yet so proud right now.
With a half smile I grabbed her by the gorget and hauled her off the ground, ignoring her groan of protest as Ilya continued to fight the Orc away from us.
"Healing." The mnemonic helped focus the ridiculously clumsy spell into some form of order, letting me channel its healing energies into Red.
I was still a novice in the field of Restoration, and while there was an overlap in the magical language used, it wasn't everything. I was also just unused to the magic itself, not truly understanding what it was doing on a biological level, while understanding remains the basis of all magic.
All that to say I have to brute force the spell and it isn't exactly efficient.
"Those fat fucks are specced into two things." I spoke up, ignoring Judith's furrowed brow at the word 'specced'. "Being fat and being strong, which means their strength is well above average for this area and you're already under that average, so don't push your luck yeah?"
Those words probably felt a bit hypocritical to her given my tendency to literally throw her at monsters, as well my tendency to fight things well over my own stats and… okay, I may be a hypocrite. But she wasn't me at the end of the day; I have advantages she simply doesn't and when you're risking your life, you still need to be calculated about it.
You need to know the difference between 'Endurance grinding' and 'that tree trunk is just going to cripple me'. You probably also need the foresight to realise that you're better off just grinding Endurance on weaker monsters with your armour off.
"Sorry I just… like to get a good idea of what I'm fighting, need to experience it y'know?" She said sheepishly, leading me to shake my head fondly.
"Show me your arm." Taking the offered, healed arm I pulled it up so that I could inspect the armour.
The plate was dented, but only mildly, it had been shaped for exactly these kinds of impacts after all. The underlayer; a form of hardened Ant Nectar I'd developed after my Advanced Materials Smithing perk had kicked in, was about the same. It was molded to the underside of the plate to absorb impacts and vibrations, and had safely bent out of the way of the dent as I'd designed it to. She probably couldn't even feel pressing in.
The Orc Skin leather underneath seemed fine too.
"Alright, it's fine for now, but I'll have to hammer this out later."
"If it's too much of an issue I can just stop wearing the armour y'know?" She offered eagerly, so I flicked her on the forehead.
"If you hadn't been wearing this, your forearm would have snapped in two." I explained, her hand faltering from where it had been rubbing her forehead at the 'snapped in two' comment.
"That… sounds painful."
"It is." I spoke from experience. Though in my case those breaks came from fighting with my life on the line, and that made it totally different.
"Right." She swallowed nervously. "So no blocking?"
"No blocking, now get back in there." I clapped her on the back of the armour.
She headed back into the fray with a thankfully more cautious mindset, one that had the pair synchronising surprisingly well as they started to whittle the big monster down. Taking turns with its aggro as they cycled offense and defense between them, exploiting its lack of intelligence to safely bring it down despite the stat gap.
My smile widened.
-
The earth shaking rumble was kind of nostalgic to me at this point.
It was pretty common on the eleventh floor to feel it as Hard Armours moved in the distance, curled up into their shells like giant armadillos. Though instead of just remaining in one place like the actual animal, these fuckers rolled around like giant wrecking balls waiting for Adventurers to stumble into their path.
It was kinda like running into the Indiana Jones boulder, only this one tracks you like a heat-seeking missile and it has the sturdiest defense of any level one monster.
The solution?
Hole.
"Is… this fair?" Ilya asked hesitantly.
"Yup, now get to it." I ordered with a fair bit of amusement. Hard Armours are typically nigh impossible for level ones to kill. When rolled up, their back scales are pretty damn impenetrable at that level unless you're like me and have sharpness boosters.
In other words, they can just keep rolling until you're flattened.
Because of that, there's probably not a single other level one who's had to fight these things that would complain about the fairness of what we were doing to them.
"Kriiiiieeek!" The Hard Armour squealed, thrashing on its back in the hole we'd baited an Orc into pounding out for us in front of a particularly sturdy tree. Well, I call it a tree, but it's technically a 'landform'. A tree-like thing the Dungeon spawns for monsters to grab and turn into weapons.
Point is, we baited the fucker into rolling into said landform, only for it to get stuck in the pit in front of it. Which now meant its belly was exposed.
"Be careful with the claws." I called out cheerfully.
Red, ever the less cautious of the two, was the first to jump in and give it a poke. Her thrust inspired a fresh wave of struggling that had her backing off.
"Tricky bastard." She laughed. "I'd heard some of the older guys talking about this, but they said it was a lot riskier."
"Eh, they're kinda right." I agreed much to her surprise. "If it isn't in an awkward position when it falls into the hole, it can climb right back out. But then you can just try again afterwards."
Ilya overcame her trepidation next, moving close enough to pierce its neck, before warily hopping out of range of its scrambling claws. On its back like this, it always reminded me of Sandslash, just a lot more homicidal.
The rumbling around us shifted in intensity, drawing my eye from where Judith and Ilya were starting to take the killing seriously to where Miyabi was sprinting straight at me, a pair of Hard Armours on her tail. She darted behind me with a glimmer of amusement and challenge in her eyes.
Ever since I'd killed a pair of Bad Bats from afar on the floor above, she'd continued our previous games, dragging monsters over for me to kill while she watched. Specifically, she seemed to want to observe my projectile cuts.
And well, I didn't mind showing off.
Sliding into a draw stance and digging my boots into the ground, I steadied my breathing. Focusing, visualising what I wanted to cut. I'd come to realise that rather than raw power, this was the most important part of the cut.
The draw itself wasn't fast, it didn't need to be; power and speed were just part of the equation, and more important than both was skill. With a gentle flick, the pair of Hard Armours -nearly two meters tall in their ball form and equally wide- split in two as if someone had drawn a line through the world and commanded it to part.
And then every landform around them split as well.
Speed, power and Burden all added to the force, but that same force often wound up being wasted in sloppy aftershocks and pressure waves I didn't mean to create. My skill apparently not quite enough to pull it all together.
One day.
"Holy shit!" Red cried out as the pieces of the giant monsters tumbled into our zone with earth shaking force, and even Ilya looked up at the sight with wide eyes before they swiveled onto me with a conflicted look. But I just ignored them to turn to where a certain Foxgirl was staring at my sword.
"Happy?" I asked, sheathing the blade with my usual flourish.
"Very." She smiled.
-
"I would let you fight this one, but honestly you kind of need the stats for it." I joked, stepping lightly around the Giant Monkey's attacks as it swung around fists the size of food carts.
"I can see that!" Red shouted in a panic from where I was holding her by the back of her armour. Her eyes were trying to follow what was going on, but she wasn't quite there yet, which left her looking a bit dizzy.
Unfortunately for her, she'd also said she wanted to 'experience' fighting one of these things despite me telling her it was probably a bad idea. So I was letting her experience it up close and personal as its fists dug house-wide furrows through the earth, dragging her scared stiff body through my motions as I weaved through its furious attacks.
Spotting that Miyabi was back in the midst of this, I abruptly stopped, holding us in place even as the Silverback threw one hell of a haymaker our way and Judith panicked even harder.
Her scream was kind of funny, not going to lie.
Reaching out from behind her, I grabbed the oncoming fist and in a clash of physics that really should not work regardless of how much higher my strength stat was, stopped it while only being pushed back a meter or so.
Realistically, I just didn't have the mass behind me to stop something like this. This thing was damn near seven meters tall and built like a gorilla, it was like trying to stop a train with your face. But Adventurers often didn't seem to care about regular physics; if they did Ais would be exploding every roof she used her ridiculous speed to kick off of.
Something about us just naturally borks concepts like inertia and momentum, even when I'm not using Alteration magic to do so.
Which allowed me to stop this blow as I finally let go of Judith. And to her credit, she remained standing, still gripping her sword as she stared at the giant fist encompassing her vision. Before doing something that surprised even me; she lashed out with her sword, tearing the blade across its fingers just below where I was holding it back.
"You… You're a real bastard, you know that right?" She panted angrily, before yelping as the fist she just cut fell to the floor with a boom. Letting us see the rest of the Silverback as it came apart in pieces, Miyabi calmly sheathing her sword in the midst of the destruction.
"Oh fuck you both." Red moaned, nearly collapsing from fright. "You planned that, didn't you?"
"Only a little." I chuckled. "If you have a problem with it, then perhaps don't charge the giant monkey I explicitly told you not to fight."
"I knew you'd protect me?" She tried.
"Should I do this with every monster we're going to fight from here on?" I countered immediately.
The worst part? She looked like she was genuinely considering it, and honestly, despite myself I kind of understood. This was a surprisingly good method to give people an understanding of the tempo of a fight, even if they weren't ready to even fully follow what was going on.
Before she could respond, I shook my head and waved the watching Ilya over. "C'mon, the expedition is nearing the stairs, we should catch up. The Middle Floors are… well, stick close, especially you." I swivelled my gaze to Judith who was trying her best to act innocent.
The 'Middle Floors' beginning on the thirteenth floor, were pretty damn sketchy after all. The monsters weren't too bad, or at least they weren't for me, but the floor had a tendency to fall out from under you and drop you down to lower floors. Where 'coincidentally' a pack of monsters would be waiting, and it would be a dead end.
Basically, it's one of the parts of the Dungeon where the Dungeon itself is your biggest problem.
And she can be a bitch.
-
Our introduction to the floor went off with a bang, or it did after we separated from the convoy again. The level ones had almost all returned, so things were a bit too busy to hunt in its vicinity.
"Damn, what did you do?" Red whistled as Ilya stared intently.
"Rock." I explained, tossing a pair of stones up and catching them. At her frustrated look, I explained. "They're Hellhounds, they're not really breathing fire but casting magic. Magic that you can disrupt if you distract them enough." It was by far the best way I'd found to kill them, and the most spectacular; just a rock down the throat and boom.
"And that makes them explode?" She asked.
"Magic explodes a lot when not done right." I laughed. "I think it's called 'Ignus Fatuss' or just 'you fuck up, you explode'."
"What about you?" She turned to Miyabi, a plea of some kind in her eyes. "How do you handle them?"
Miyabi looked at her for a long beat, before nodding and stepping up to the plate in front of one of the circling Hellhounds. Predictably, the dog-like monster's jaw unhinged and the telltale glow of its magic illuminated its throat, building to a crescendo as Miyabi patiently waited.
That glow became an overwhelming gout of fire that blasted out of its snout, quickly covering the distance to Miyabi, who simply gripped her sword and waited for it to reach her.
The cut was like my own projected variants, yet I could immediately tell something was off. Her intent wasn't a simple 'I will cut this thing regardless of distance'. It was specific, sharp and to the point, and it was entirely focused on the fire itself.
And then there were the effects.
The fire didn't shift like a force passed through it, it guttered, it collapsed in on itself into nothingness as the invisible wave made its way through. It was like she wasn't projecting a cut, but instead cutting the fire itself.
I could try the same thing with raw force, throw a shockwave that would push the fire back, but not this. This was something new.
And I wanted it.
Interestingly enough, the Hellhound actually survived the cut. The slash simply guttered its flames and nothing more, leaving a rather confused dog behind until my fellow Captain put it out of its misery.
I tried to replicate what she did a moment later as Red started excitedly questioning Miyabi. But when I tried it, exactly what I predicted would happen, did. Despite focusing on the fire itself, what I managed was just a sloppy projectile cut, the force of it scattering the few remaining Hellhounds that survived the cut itself.
The shockwave loudly reverberated in the tunnel as I turned back to the group with a confused expression. Contemplatively running my hand down my broadsword.
"How much?" I offered blatantly, turning to the slightly smug looking Miyabi; though given how stoic she normally is, that probably indicates maximum smugness.
"I cannot barter away the Foxfire Style, it is a technique passed down through my family after all." She shook her head. And for a second, I genuinely contemplated whether or not marrying into said family would be worth it, at least until she went on.
"But there are no rules against teaching it to friends." She smiled.
Ah, damn, that kind of made me feel all fuzzy inside.
Which is why we found ourselves wandering the thirteenth floor, looking for Hellhounds to train with while callously massacring everything else. Crystal Mantises? Get them out of here. Almiraj? Those tiny bunny fucks will go extinct if I have anything to say about it.
Outside of initially serving as examples for my explanations of each monster, if it doesn't breath fire for me to practice with then it's useless.
Despite this effort though, and Miyabi attempting to explain things, I still hadn't actually made all that much progress.
"I do not know how to be more clear. Fire does not have a true texture, the feel of it you're talking about is merely the feeling of disrupted air." Miyabi stated, before pausing and admitting, "or so my family's teachings say. I cannot truly feel what you're talking about after all."
"You can't?" I asked in surprise. After a period of frustration I had tried to explain my own side of things, to try and relate what she was talking about back to my own experiences. But if she can't feel it then…
"If what you're talking about is the ability to use the Sky Sword, then no, I cannot." She admitted, and while I made note of the odd terminology, I assumed she was just talking about the same thing I was.
"So that's why you looked so interested earlier." I nodded, now understanding why she'd been trying to get me to demonstrate it for her as she nodded.
I'd honestly just kind of assumed most people on our level could do it after the Athena Vice-Captain had thrown that stab at me. He didn't exactly strike me as the most martially skilled after all, but maybe I'd underestimated him.
Or maybe his copying habit let him ape it somehow?
"The Sky Sword?" Judith chimed in, unable to contain her curiosity.
"It is what my homeland calls the ability that Elric wields." The foxgirl explained, with a certain reverence entering her voice. "For it is said that it has the potential to part the skies themselves."
"Whoa, wait- you can cut clouds!?" Red turned to me incredulously.
"Like fuck I have that kind of reach." I denied with a deadpan, this conversation was really spiralling out of control. Cloud layers are typically kilometers in the air, so to cut clouds I'd have to have the reach to be able to… do a shocking number of other things.
Miyabi just shook her head. "While the domain of sword masters is deep and its feats vary wildly, what I was talking about there is considered more akin to myth at this point. My ancestor wrote that simply being able to touch the rim of the sky was enough to be considered a master."
"Who exactly is your ancestor?" Ilya asked, seeming to zero in on that part.
"They did not share their name, simply entitling themselves 'swordmaster' in their writings."
"Wait, so can you feel this whole rim thingy?" Red cut in.
"If they're talking about what I use for throwing around those big cuts then yeah." I said as simply as I could. "If not, then I have no idea."
"I believe that is what they were referring to, yes." Miyabi confirmed. "But I have also only ever heard of the most talented of level threes and above attaining the Sky Sword, to have reached it as you have is nothing short of incredible." Again, that was news to me, I'd assumed everyone at a certain level could do it and not thought much of it.
"It just kind of happened." I waved the achievement off, more focused on what started this whole conversation in the first place. "But to get back to it, what do you mean fire doesn't have a texture?" Something about that phrasing stuck out to me.
Miyabi frowned slightly, but explained. "It means just that. Fire is a formless thing like magic, so to cut it you need to be able to cut that which does not have a form." She frowned further at her next words. "My ancestor's writings warned that it is not related to the Sky Sword, but rather something that exists in parallel. To achieve success in one does not mean success in the other."
Which meant that this was a new skill I'd need to learn, and it was probably what had been twigging me about the way my new rapier was performing; the idea of 'cutting without feeling'. Something in the instincts I had for the sword had been letting me know this was a path I should follow.
Luckily enough, there was a certain foxgirl right in front of me looking to do the exact opposite of what I was doing; she had success in the field I wanted and I, the field she wanted. In other words, we were the perfect teachers for each other, and I could see in her eyes the moment she came to the same conclusion.
Perfect.
-
Would've been out sooner, but I don't have AC and running my computer in this weather is brutal. Also not sleeping isn't great for creative pursuits
For transparency's sake, Miyabi does have an ancestor just dubbed swordmaster in her source. The idea of the Sky Sword isn't something canonical to Danmachi, but there are examples of people doing similar shit within the world, it's just not really named outside of attacks specific to individuals and the whole Afterglow thing which is partially related.
Likewise Elder Scrolls has lore in the same vein, though that normally goes: 'something, something, some Redguard cut a continent in half' xD
The foxfire style comes from One Piece, I felt it fit because I'm evidently rasist
Anyway, next three chapters are up on https://www.patreon.com/c/OneFallLeaf have a good day people!