Two orc warriors screamed in rage as they leapt from one massive stone to the next in their pursuit of Muti. She'd disappeared, but the reason for their rage was obvious—the one on the left had a small knife lodged in its eye. Even with its vision obviously impaired, it followed behind its companion without any apparent trouble. Their giant clubs, banded with iron, remained a promise of violence as they threw themselves towards Astrid. She'd settled into a smaller clearing where the orcs, each as tall as she was though nearly twice as broad of shoulder, wouldn't be able to comfortably stand beside each other. The first to reach her was the uninjured one, its club whirling above its head before it smashed it down towards her.

At this point, fighting the orcs was routine more than anything. Astrid let the blow skate to the side off of her shield as she returned a body blow with her hammer. It crushed bone behind the tough leathers the monster wore as armor, and it screamed at her, green face darkening with its anger. It thrust its shoulders back as its companion hurled itself towards her. Knowing what was coming, Astrid put the edge of her tongue between her molars and prepared to bite. The orc without a knife in its eye used its Stunning Howl, and Astrid felt her mind swim for a brief second. She'd learned that her Self Mastery was too low to fully resist the Skill and bit hard on her tongue, the pain bringing back clarity as she smashed away the monster's next attack. As the two monsters fought to get at her and the two men behind her shield, Felix made his appearance.

He buried his axe in the spine of the half–blinded monster, and it fell on paralyzed legs. With one orc crippled and the other consumed with trying to kill Astrid, he forced the monsters to focus on him with Draw Anger. His Skill was just in time as the raider made itself known about 15 meters away. Its spear was held high, and as it failed to wrest its attention away from the influence of the Skill, it turned its attention to the Bodyguard instead of Astrid. Astrid saw Muti drop out of Stealth beside the raider and start slicing before it could let its throw loose. Meanwhile, Skandr shot several Lightning Bolts at each of the monsters. It may have seemed to be a lack of effort on his side, but he wasn't needed to deal with the orcs. Instead, he was focusing on preparing a lightning javelin for the troll that would soon appear. Apparently, they could be quite sneaky, and having him ready to slow the beast before it could successfully attack anyone was more important than doing a little bit of extra damage to the orcs.

Astrid raised her hammer and smashed it down at a diagonal into the back of the still–standing orc's skull. The bone softened at the hit, though the monster wasn't quite dead. Felix took care of the rest, twisting with his whole body to decapitate the monster with one swing.

Mountain Orc Warrior slain. 36 Experience gained, split among party.

With that kill notification, Astrid returned her attention to the other, crippled but living warrior. Muti would be fine against the raider, given that its two Skills were only for throwing its spear and being stealthy. She was already in melee with it, so it couldn't throw its spears effectively. Worse still—for it—she'd already found the monster. Over the next handful of seconds, two more kill notifications flashed in Astrid's vision, and she looked at Muti to get a status report on—

"By Benedict!"

The Rogue's scream immediately clicked in Astrid's mind. She whipped around to Benedict, who also reacted immediately. He threw himself forward in an awkward roll, disregarding the stones that hit his chest and shoulders. The troll swiped its hand through the air, barely missing the Bard, and he turned, raising his flute to his mouth. With a shrill note, he physically blasted the troll back two steps. Dissatisfied with that, he stood and began playing a trilling sound that, even to Astrid—who wasn't the target of it—was painfully shrill. The monster, unable to deal with the continuous sonic attack, hissed and activated its berserk rage.

Now less susceptible to the agony of its brain being vibrated, the troll went to close in on Benedict again, only for Skandr;s lightning javelin to smash into its chest. It shrugged that off too, but then Felix was there, Guardian's Rush, making him flash forward and whip his axe through the air. With his first swing, he knocked away its first attack, and his second chopped its left hand off at the wrist with almost casual movements.

"Okay, go to hell." Skandr growled as he pulled a small throwing knife from his hip. Confused by his actions, Astrid looked at him, but couldn't spare too much time to do so. Felix was doing great at dodging the monster's frenzied swings, but she could see new bone growing from the severed stump of the troll's wrist, slowly but surely returning a functioning hand to existence. She stepped forward, adding additional pressure as she smashed her hammer into the monster's hip. It turned with its entire body weight and strength to smash the back of its fist into her, but Astrid raised her shield and flared mana through her greaves to only be pushed back half a step. Muti then appeared, her swords flashing as she tried to cut through the beast's spine. Its hide, bone, and ridge of fur down its spine were too strong to so easily cripple it, but with three people whaling on it from every direction, there was only so much that it could do.

The troll squatted to leap from the containment, but as it did so, a Lightning Bolt flew into its eye. It reeled back, screaming as electricity arced through its head and made its blood steam. Confused but unwilling to let the opportunity go to waste, Astrid raised her shield and swung with its edge into the tendons on the outside of the troll's knee. Magically regenerative or not, there was no immediate recovery from that, and the monster fell. As before, three delvers surrounded the fallen body and swung again and again and again until the kill notification appeared when Felix severed its spine.

"What… was that?" Astrid panted as she turned to Skandr. He didn't sag, but some measure of mana exhaustion was apparent in his face as he smirked and raised a fist in victory.

"That right there is just a taste of what I can do when I combine Skills and spells." He obviously took some measure of enjoyment from being deliberately obtuse, but Astrid thought for a moment before coming up with a response.

"You used your enchantment on the knife before you threw it with Lightning Bolt? How does a magical Skill let you throw a knife like that?"

"I mean, I wasn't being particularly secretive, but I wish you hadn't got it and your first guess." Skandr grumbled as he said it, though he obviously wasn't upset as he smiled and explained, "I've been practicing when you all were too busy exercising."

"Then you must join me in practicing throwing!" Muti threw a blood-covered arm around Skandr. To his credit, he was mostly no longer bothered by blood's presence, and instead of reacting just looked up at her as she continued, "There is nothing like practice to improve your throwing. Nothing can cover for hours of practice, so you will join me."

He started to open his mouth to explain, surely something about how using a Skill was different from using your arm, but he shook his head and raised his hands in surrender."Very well. If you want to teach me how to throw knives, I will happily learn."

Muti didn't reply with words as she stepped away to take care of the harvesting of the orc materials. Their clubs were only slightly more valuable than regular wood so they were left behind, but the metal wrapped around them was typically relatively high-quality iron, and though it was annoying and a pain to harvest that, it was better to take the time to get rid of the useless wood to keep travel weights low as they carried dozens and sometimes up to 100 orcs worth of clubs. With just the metal that had been wrapped around the tops of the clubs, the party could make effectively the same amount of money with only an eighth of the weight.

"I'd love to hear how you came up with doing that, but in the future, I prefer not to be surprised by a new spell in the middle of a fight." Astrid scowled, shaking her head.

"Don't be grumpy just because you can't make new spells." Skandr stuck his chin up at Astrid as he said as much, his smile wide and eyebrows wiggling in faux challenge.

"You are toeing the line right now. If you dare to fully step past that line, and you're gonna be taking my place on the front line. Let's see how well you can hold my shield, huh?" Astrid held the shield forward in a teasing offer, the troll's blood still slowly dripping down it. Strangely, it was already coagulating, and Astrid couldn't help but wonder if that was part of how they recovered so quickly. Would she be the same as Quick Recovery grew stronger and stronger? Skandr spoke, pulling Astrid from her random thought.

"You make a very eloquent point. I shall repent forthwith and beg for your forgiveness." He bowed as he said as much, the sarcasm dripping from his every movement.

"We all already knew this, but you're spending way too much time with Benedict. You're acting like him more every day, and one of him is already more than enough."

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"Astrid, you wound me! I'm nowhere near as bad as that feckless man!" Skandr's response came quickly, though by the look on Benedict's face, he'd hoped to say something much the same.

"What does feckless mean?" Muti asked while the two backliners looked at each other. She looked first to Astrid, who shrugged, and they both hoped that Skandr could give an answer. He shook his head, having no answer to give, and knowing Felix wasn't going to know any better, all four looked at Benedict to answer.

"I've got no idea." The Bard answered.

"How's that work? You're the person who taught me the word in the first place!" Skandr's voice raised in pitch in annoyance

"Just because I say something doesn't mean that I'm right or know what it means! I never gave you a definition, I just said it because I heard it once and it's a nice word! I mean, the way it rolls off the tongue? Perfect. Feckless. Feckless. It almost feels like a curse beyond mere insult. 'You feckless fool, you ought to find yourself fully filled with foulness and failed… fillies'?"

"Isn't a filly a young horse?" Astrid asked.

"Yes. I admit, it wasn't the greatest closer to an insult, but the alliteration was just too much fun to abandon it right at the end, isn't it?"

"Sure." Astrid waved her hands through the air, turning her attention away from the meaningless repetitions of things that didn't matter. Instead, she turned to help with the recovery of the trophies from the raider while Muti sawed away at the troll's fangs. As she climbed from one stone to the next, Astrid, not for the first time, wondered how it was that the orcs were so surefooted on such precipitous paths. After all, they never stumbled or tripped, while she was sliding over the craggy stones with every step. When finally she got to the corpse, she saw the remains of Muti's ambush. The raider's body was covered with countless cuts, though what had obviously taken its life was a massive puncture where its heart once had been. Blood still wept from the wounds as, even destroyed and dead, the monster's heart pumped a few times more.

Stowing her hammer and wiping her shield's face on the furs covering the raiders body, Astrid pulled out her knife and started cutting. Though they had their tusks on the bottom of their mouth, it turned out that the teeth weren't worth harvesting, something about how they weren't meant to be sharp? Astrid had been told that they weren't worth harvesting, and she didn't harvest it instead of asking further questions. Instead, she hefted each of the spears just to make sure that none of them happened to be magical equipment. Each sat comfortably enough in her hands, but once she received the confirmation of their ordinary natures, she took her knife, placed it just under the heads of the spears, and then hammered the back of the knife to chop relatively cleanly through the wood and take the spearheads. With the ear and two spear heads, Astrid stepped back towards the rest of the party.

"We're still going, right?" Astrid confirmed, looking at the others. Each nodded, and with a smile, she turned to Muti, waiting for the next destination.

***

Nobody needed to say anything when the party was done. They'd just killed another squad of four orcs, and two failures born of exhaustion and carelessness brought the delve to the end. Skandr's lightning curtain had missed one of the two raiders while Felix's Draw Anger did too while Muti was locked in combat with the other raider. As such, the spear-wielding monster managed to make a throw that buried its spear a full 10 centimeters in Astrid's back, through her pack and armor. In her rage, she'd pulled it free and thrown the spear back at the monster, but to no avail. Of course she wasn't good at throwing a spear, she never did. As the weapon clattered down the mountain face, Astrid growled her rage while returning her attention from helping Felix kill the warriors to the monster she had a vendetta with.

With Quick Recovery, Astrid was largely okay after the hit, though she continued to feel her blood run down her back, arse, and then her leg. She forced herself to master her need to rush forward, instead staying near Benedict and Skandr to ensure they wouldn't be the monster's next victims. When finally the kill notifications for the two warriors flash in her vision, Astrid grunted to Felix, "I'm going to take it out."

She didn't wait for a response as she rushed towards the monster. Knowing that her Alacrity was higher than the monster's, she could barely close the distance, given the attribute difference and its sure footedness, her own rushed but ineffective approach against its need to preserve its own life. As it continued to try to kite her, it skirted to the side to get an open shot at her, or maybe her companions behind her. Skandr was paying attention, though, and a Lightning Bolt flashed forward and struck the monster's eye. With that slowing the bastard, its fate was sealed, and Astrid dispatched it with a certain morbid satisfaction.

Once they collected all the materials, the party all gathered themselves and began descending the mountain. They'd left a trail of destruction in their path today, and the Dungeon hadn't spawned too many monsters in the five hours or so that they've been actively hunting on the fourth floor. As such, they didn't encounter any trouble until most of the way through the third floor, as the edges of the Dungeon showed where hills morphed into mountains. In their first few delves here, Astrid had curiously explored the edges of the Dungeon, where an invisible wall prevented her from continuing on her path. There was a certain feeling that let her know where the true exit was, and the party followed that feeling after killing another squad of three orcs.

Astrid looked at her Status, which quickly left her wanting to run into just a single other orc.

Status

Name: Astrid

Class: Warrior (Bronze)

Total Level: 14 (22,989/23,000)

Attributes

Current

Per level growth

Power

78 (+1)

+5

Alacrity

49 [+10]

+3

Fortitude

79 (+3)

+5

Magical Potency

19

+1

Self-Mastery

20

+1

Acumen

20

+1

Skill List

Blunt Weapon's Mastery (Bronze)

Shield Wielding (Bronze)

Quick Recovery (Bronze)

Locked

Steady Load (Bronze)

Locked

That meant she was effectively 24,000 experience away from getting her level 16 boon. The thought was strange, given it was something like a year and a half ago, just before the Bestowal, that she'd thought that getting to 16 would happen six months after getting her Class. Then, once she actually started delving and realized how stupid her math had been, a part of her had felt like it would be at least five years before she got to see what the Great One's boon would be. Now, with this branch of the Dungeon having a level 20 Boss, even Iron would be in her grasp before the end of the year. Not so fast as she had planned before she had seen her first monster, but not so slow as she feared when everything had seemed lost when she received her Class.

Thinking of days and weeks passing, Astrid figured she'd have a letter from her parents waiting for her when she got back to town, yet another reason for her to hurry, but level 15 was calling for her. Even with the chainmail on her back hanging open from where the links had been severed, Astrid couldn't bring herself to leave off with so little experience standing between herself and the next level.

"There's the stairs to the second floor." Felix spoke, pulling Astrid from her thinking. When she looked at him, she saw that he'd mostly said as much for her benefit, as everybody else had been largely focused on where they were.

"Sorry, was just thinking." Astrid bowed her head to her party, only Muti not immediately waving off her apology. The Rogue turned to Astrid and raised her eyebrows, something the Warrior could only barely see through the other woman's helm.

"How many remain?"

Astrid chuckled as she shrugged. "11 experience to level 15."

"I will find you an orc on the first floor. Until then, focus on the Dungeon."

Astrid nodded and focused as the party strode through the shimmering gateway into the stairway. Strangely, the stairs lead up as they ascended to the second floor, but as soon as they stepped out of the long, straight stairway, they found themselves apparently further down that same mountain range with further steps they needed to take down the hills they'd just ascended to get to. Just another paradox of the Dungeon, and after seeing it as many times as she had, Astrid didn't think so much about it.

Walking forward onto the second floor, Muti cocked her head, chuckled, and looked back at Astrid, before saying, "I was wrong. You will not have to wait until the first floor. There are two orcs," she said, pointing, "over there. Prove yourself a mighty Warrior."

Astrid didn't hesitate to do so, rolling her shoulders and then rushing forward with a clanking of steel to deal death to the two monsters. And then, less than a minute later, Astrid felt the Great One's descent as she dealt the first killing blow. It was almost thoughtless to dispatch the second as her attributes soared, and she watched her experience counter change.

55/24,000

One more level, and then she'd be in the final watershed of Bronze. And would be offered her choice of Boon.

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