Astrid rolled her shoulders twice as she mentally activated Immortal Warrior's Aura. She could feel the influence from her Skill settling over her allies. Benedict and Skandr, though they stood farther back, remained within the ten meter area of effect, and Astrid nodded at her party members to let them know she was ready.
Felix strode forward, pulling the attention of the jackals towards himself, and with Guardian's Wrath and Immovable Stance, the damage coming towards him was heavily reduced. On the other side, Muti stood and fought, not throwing herself like an animal at their enemies, but instead trading superficial blows. Astrid held herself just a little back, feeling her arms flare with pain as they started to bruise under her armor. She hadn't thought of that, that some of the people she was taking hits for were going to be much less armored than she was. That didn't matter right now, they were all learning how her Skills were working.
"You doing all right?" Felix asked.
"It hurts," Astrid grunted. "It's not much so far, though. Open yourself up to a real attack, would you?"
Felix rolled his shoulders, seeming to need to prepare himself. Then, he shouldered one jackal aside while leaving his other shoulder open to a jackal on his right. It lunged forward and grabbed him by the upper arm, yanking him to the ground. He breathed out a curse as he fell, and Astrid felt her shoulder complain a little as the Iron tier jackal's Skill fought to pierce Felix's armor. Despite everything, Astrid found herself laughing.
"Your armor is too good! I'm barely getting hurt, even though you're trying to let it happen." Astrid shook her head as she realized that these enemies weren't getting through the armor in a way that would let her experience the secondary effect of Immortal Warrior's Body right now.
"I'm sorry?" Felix responded. "Do you want me to take off my armor?"
"No, I'm getting a little bit of a feel for the aura." Astrid disagreed. "I don't need to try it all quite yet, but I appreciate it."
As she said it, Astrid stepped forward and pushed her mana and stamina into her hammer. With a moderate cost, Astrid felt that she'd be able to use Spectre Burst six times before she effectively exhausted herself. At least, that would bottom out her mana, while her stamina would hold on for a fair bit longer. The head of her hammer glowed with a smoky gray color as Spectre Burst came into existence.
"I'm going to try to make this a 1 meter area of effect. Pull back, if you can!"
As soon as Astrid said it, Muti and Felix both literally pushed their jackals back before retreating at least five meters each, and Astrid was left alone. She chuckled to herself as the Iron that'd been chewing on Felix's shoulder threw itself towards her. Astrid swung her hammer and smashed it into the monster's left shoulder, letting Spectre Burst explode.
The jackal slumped and seemed to shrink as soon as the attack made contact. A faint, bone chilling howl filled the air as the skill spread to other nearby jackals. The Iron that had been hit staggered and swayed, not from the physical force of her blow, but from her Skill. Something deeper than its body had been shaken by Spectre Burst. The other two jackals winced, but continued pressing the attack against her. With a whipping sound of her hammer through the air, Astrid killed the Iron tier before charging up another Spectre Burst and localizing it to a single target.
The other Iron jackal closed in on her and bore down on her shield. Pushing a hint of mana to her greaves, Astrid remained unmoved and released the Spectre Burst in a somewhat glancing blow to the jackal's hindquarters. It slumped from the attack, and to Astrid's shock, another kill notification flashed in her mind.
The party turned to continue shredding the jackal pack apart, and did so with a ruthless efficiency. Astrid gestured to the rest that she was done testing her Skill for now, and the jackals died in quick succession.
"This is nothing new," Benedict said once the fight was complete, "but you're damn scary."
Other times, Astrid would have joked back or felt some measure of pride in him saying this, though it seemed overly complimentary. Now, though, Astrid could only nod. Sure, a barely Iron jackal wasn't exactly a shining example of an unkillable monster, but even so, monsters weren't supposed to die from getting hit in the arse.
"What's the mana cost on that?" Skandr asked.
"Moderate, with a still Moderate but slightly lower draw on stamina." Astrid answered as she leaned over to harvest the materials from the Iron corpses.
"So maybe don't be so judicious with it," Skandr nodded as he kept an eye towards the cave where there were supposed to be scorpions lurking, "but regardless of cost, we have a real finisher now."
Astrid squinted and shook her head at Skandr's teasing. He shrugged as she stood tall and dropped the materials in her spatial pouch. The party looked back and forth as they all seemed to come to the same conclusion.
"Push on as fast as we can safely go?" Astrid asked. "Kill as many as we can quickly to get some levels, but focus on getting to lower floors where everything is Iron before we focus on getting levels?"
The party all nodded in agreement as they went forward on their way. It was just a question of time before they would be able to see level 22 and get to the 12th floor.
"Muti, how much experience do you have right now?"
"I have slightly more than 21,000." She gave the answer without hesitation.
"Shall we see if we can get you to 22 today?"
"If I do not gain that level today, I will consider it a failure." Muti grinned, though something about her tone seemed to communicate that it would be Astrid's fault. The Warrior laughed and shook her head.
"Then let's not disappoint our battlehungry Barbarian, shall we?"
***
Paulie
"Do you think we're the first to get to the 11th floor?" Chloe asked as she picked at the neck of her new robe.
"Overall? I doubt it." Paulie answered. "For the Humans? I'd say we have a good chance. We'll just have to see when we move along, shall we?"
His party members looked at him with smiles as he led the way. Paulie had become the leader of the party not because of his overwhelming strength or anything, but because he could keep the rest of his friends focused and moving. Personally, he thought that Chloe should probably be the real leader, but she'd always refused, so here he was. Plus, it could be fun to tell his friends what to do sometimes. He'd never give a command that wasn't at least a kind of good idea, and everybody was willing enough to just listen to what he said when he took the lead.
He didn't like admitting that that was a part of himself, but Paulie'd long since decided not to lie to himself, so…
"Guys, there's… something going on up ahead."
Jude, the party's Scout, had a strange tone in his voice as he called back to everybody. He'd only ranged off maybe ten or so meters, close enough for them to come to his support in the event something happened, but something had definitely changed in his demeanor.
"I'm gonna need a little bit more detail than that, buddy." Paulie called back as he stepped forward with a spring in his step that still took him by surprise. This new equipment? It was great. It gave 123 attribute points altogether! Chloe's was even better, since it gave 150, but that wasn't surprising, given how good she was. Paulie felt himself step with more of a bounce as he approached Jude.
"Well, I can tell you all for sure that we are not the first ones on the floor. That's all from here, but I'll have more as we get closer."
"That's obviously not all. Do you see them? Are they Barbarians trying to kill Humans? What's going on?"
"I said I can't tell from here." He grumbled to himself as he pointed off to a spot of color between the swell of two dunes. "Well, I have no idea who they are, and they're long gone. The blood's already crusted and everything. Looking at it a little more, I think they might be Human? I mean, they're collecting some ears, which I know the Verdant and Hiveguard don't do. I kind of doubt that Kin or Barbarians would be doing it here, but if they aren't Human, I'd guess they're Kin. Anyways, they absolutely destroyed these jackals as well as the scorpions and adders up here. I'd guess that two of the jackals were Iron, because their ears are gone, none of the rest."
Paulie whistled through his teeth. "Probably Human, then. The Kin don't have a system for paying for trophies. They take the materials, though."
He jogged forward as he got himself close enough to evaluate the scene. The thick smell of iron filled the air, and he looked at the pile of jackal corpses. What was that, nine? Ten? The ears were cut off and fangs were removed from two of them. Pretty clean kills altogether, though the other wounds around suggested maybe a little bit of a struggle. Nothing that would be at all threatening to the party that came through, but it was worth noting he supposed.
"I'm seeing some blades, no burns, and a good amount of blunt strikes." Jude reported as the Five Spears drew close. "I doubt it's going to be Aaron's party. They've got that pyromancer or whatever their Class is."
"I wouldn't dismiss any possibilities out of hand," Chloe disagreed. "Maybe they're letting other people test their Skills?"
"There's no way that it's taken people this long to evolve." Jude replied. "It's just evolution to Iron. It doesn't take that long."
"You're forgetting anybody who might've gotten a higher tier Class than us. It's not likely, but we all got rare Classes, there are two tiers higher than that." Paulie said.
"Exceptional doesn't happen at Bronze." Chloe replied, her tone matter of fact. "I don't know if there's any recorded history of somebody getting exceptional in Bronze."
"Doesn't matter if there is," Paulie responded. "We can't go into the Wandering Trials thinking that things are going to be easy and exactly what we expect. This is a dangerous, difficult place that we're in, and if we're stupid, we're gonna get ourselves killed. We think this is a Human party, so they might be friendly. I don't know anything about that Count's party, but he's not an enemy to be underestimated. This could be him, and, if it is, he's going to be unfriendly if we get in contact. Do we want to follow in the wake of what they're killing, or do you want to go on a different path and get experience for ourselves?"
"I think we should go somewhere else." This time, it was Geraldine that spoke. The Bladedancer didn't often state her opinion, but when she did, the party listened.
"I agree." Chloe agreed. "Even if this is a party that would be friendly to us, we're in a competition. They're ahead, and I don't want to give them the opportunity to leach off of us to continue their own quick descent."
The party seemed to agree with the sentiment, and Paulie nodded for Jude to lead the way. The Scout would find a different path that gave them an opportunity to gain some experience, and if the party in front of them was friendly, and hopefully the Five Spears would run into them later. If not? Then it wasn't their problem.
***
"I just realized I don't know something that's kind of important." Astrid said as she finished cutting the stinger from the Iron tier scorpion. They'd been an interesting foe, that was for sure. Their armor was surprisingly strong against Felix and Muti's blades, but Astrid's hammer and Skandr's lightning had fried the creatures without issue. Benedict's songs had also slowed the monsters quite a bit. In a moment of curiosity, Astrid had asked him to not use Song of Vindication or Hasty Rebuke, and she very quickly understood how they'd taken their supporter for granted already.
The scorpion they'd been fighting, a Bronze, mind you, had lunged forward with startling speed, its claw catching Felix by the ankle and starting to crunch bone. He evaded its tail and Astrid dealt a killing blow to its head, but, more than just the speed granted to the party or the slowing effects on their enemies, it was the combination of the two that extended the gap between the two groups by far more than anybody had expected, even Benedict himself.
Ever since, the party had made sure to give Benedict the benefit of the doubt and as much time and space as he needed to stay productive and using his Skills.
Now, maybe three hours after they started delving for the day, the party was starting to make it to the point of getting close to leaving the floor, which had prompted Astrid's sudden declaration.
"What is this important thing you don't know?" Benedict sighed.
"How does killing the floor guardian work when we have multiple parties on the same floor getting there around the same time? Seems kind of weird to have that be possible when there's a possibility for somebody to just have a different party do the hard work and then scrape past."
The rest of the party hesitated, and Astrid realized further that if there was something about the Wandering Trials that she didn't know, the rest of the party wasn't going to know. She pursed her lips and looked at Muti, who had been guiding them in the same direction, more or less, since they entered the floor. The sky overhead still burned with the light of sunset, beautiful clouds spreading overhead.
"We are approaching our goal. I believe maybe one more fight before we are there. At that point, perhaps we can learn what will occur." Muti's response was reasonable enough, and Astrid nodded as she looked forward. This little pack the party was leaving behind was the tenth fight they'd had so far today, not counting solitary adders while also lumping times where they fought jackals and scorpions back to back as a single fight. All told, the party had killed 21 Iron tier jackals, and three Iron tier scorpions. Every single one of them was only level 21, so, split up, giving 200 experience to each member of the party. That, plus the other jackals, adders, and scorpions, brought the party's total experience gain for these few hours to 7392 experience each. Or, at least, that was how much Astrid herself gained.
"And there's no sign of more jackalopes?" Astrid asked.
"None. I suspect they are a rarer enemy, at least here on the eleventh floor."
That wasn't a surprise, though Astrid did want more experience fighting these more magical monsters before they got onto lower floors where every one of them would be significantly more dangerous than these jackalopes.
"Well, guide us to this next fight." Astrid made the command with a resigned bow of her head, and Muti nodded as she jogged ahead. The party remained close to each other as they continued on their path, unwilling to open themselves up to a potential ambush to one of their enemies, whether they be monster or Human or otherwise.
The party continued to grow more comfortable with their new Skills, with Skandr specifically taking time to enchant Astrid's weapon every hour or so, though each time he did so, she swore that something shifted in what he did and how it affected her hammer. For now, Astrid had no reason to spend her mana and stamina on Spectre Burst when regular strikes would do the job just as well. Instead, she enjoyed the feeling of her upgraded Blunt Weapons Mastery. Though she hadn't gained any more training, the Skill, now that it was Iron and lumped in to her Equipment Skill, made the hammer move and strike harder, even without additional effort. She hadn't paid particularly close attention to that before, mostly attributing it to her surge in attributes, but that wasn't the case. Her Shield Wielding upgraded as well, and made her left arm move faster than it could when she wasn't wielding the shield. Altogether, she could feel the changes in her body due to her Class evolution.
As they continued on their path, Muti signaled to the rest of them that, interestingly, there was another jackalope being hunted by jackals and it, like the last one, was going to use their party as a distraction. Skandr, like before, was ready to take out the monster, and as soon as it jumped high in the sky, his lightning spear exploded into its chest. It summoned a small wall of wind to try to protect itself, but to no avail. It fell, shuddering and twitching as it tumbled to the ground, and the party ripped into the attacking jackals as they approached. Before long, the monsters were killed, and the party had harvested the materials from the single Iron tier. They didn't hesitate to continue on their path, and moved without consideration for what they were leaving behind. It was strange, but they weren't collecting even trophies from the vast majority of the monsters they were hunting. That said, Astrid didn't care to waste the time or space collecting a couple silver's total worth of materials when they were going to be down here for a month.
All together, the party continued forward, and Muti pointed towards where the exit to the twelfth floor was. To Astrid's view, she could see the stairway, and in front of it, an arena boxed in by glowing walls. Inside the arena fought a single ursine Kin in front of the rest of its party, and though three Iron tier jackals threw themselves at him, he shredded them apart with two swipes of his claws. Burning red tears in the air appeared as the jackals fell in pieces. The Kin didn't seem to care and stepped forward to the opposite side of the arena, where a wall shifted from pearlescent and opaque to nothingness. His party followed, and they descended. As soon as the fifth member of the party passed through, the passageway disappeared once more.
Now that the passageway and arena were clear, the dead bodies faded into mana and reconstituted into three seemingly identical jackals. Astrid raised her eyebrows at her party and started to walk towards the trial that led to the twelfth floor.
Please take your turn after we have received our own.
A sudden rumble filled Astrid's mind, and she whipped towards what she thought was the origin of it. That understanding of communication came with a strange feeling filling her body as one of the Verdant Walkers made itself known. Before she could respond or move, the tree-like figure, at least a meter taller than her own 210 centimeters, bowed what seemed to be its head to her.
I am Cresche, and it is a pleasure to make your acquaintance. It would appear that we have found another team of our competitors. You will be lucky enough to see us on our descent. Now, do we need to fight to descend?