In truth, the moment immediately following the selection was a little bit disappointing. Nothing changed, and Astrid just stood there as her Status updated. Of course, she hadn't expected anything to change, not really, but regardless of what she consciously thought, she'd still hoped that she could feel the difference. However, since she was effectively recovered to full, any increase in her regeneration or general physical state would remain imperceptible.
"You want to try the immovable stance thing?" Felix asked.
She nodded and, instead of pushing mana into her greaves, moved a small part of her stamina through an unfamiliar but comfortable place that went into her feet and then fortified her legs and waist. There was a slightly different feeling to the pseudo Skill as bestowed by the boon when compared to the enchantments on her armor. To her perception, the difference was that it wasn't something that surrounded her legs and her body as a whole, but something that grew within them, but before she could think further about it, Muti shoved her from behind.
Even without having prepared herself, Astrid barely leaned forward from the sneak attack.
"You are very difficult to move now," Muti laughed. "I did not push the hardest I could manage, but that was plenty strong enough to have made you fall if you were not prepared."
"Thanks," Astrid replied dryly, looking at the stairs she would have fallen down if Muti's attack had been successful. "Once we get onto one of the other floors, I want to see how this interacts with me moving. We don't have enough space for me to really experiment with that right now."
"Yeah that makes sense," Felix said as he mirrored Muti and pushed Astrid from the front without any warning. He pushed harder than Muti had, both of his hands slamming solidly into her stomach as a faint smile colored his face. Astrid didn't move, but strangely, her solid stance served to make the push more effective, as she was exhaling when he did it and he pushed some of the air from her lungs, nearly knocking the wind from her.
"No, that's not okay," Astrid pointed in Felix's face, though she couldn't hold back a half chuckle. "She could do that because she's the damn Barbarian. I don't care if you're courting, if you're married or whatever the Barbarians call it, no! One ambushing party member is enough."
Felix's mouth fell open at that, and though he seemed to try to reply with something, he instead blushed and looked with a hint of panic between Astrid and Muti. The Barbarian looked at him, her head cocked to the side as she forced an almost painful eye contact with him.
"Astrid is correct, this has not been a true courtship by my people's standards, nor yours. Tell me, do you wish to mate with me?"
Astrid and Benedict both choked on their spit at that, while Skandr chuckled and Felix's blush deepened to make his face go scarlet.
"Your face is matching Astrid's hair," Skandr laughed as he slowly closed the grimoire he was working in.
"Have this conversation, I don't care," Astrid stopped any response from Felix. "If you need to, you can tell the rest of us how it turned out, but I am not having this conversation right now in the middle of the Dungeon and with you two surrounded by us three. Not a conversation I need to be present for."
Felix, who'd opened his mouth and was about to respond after taking a few seconds to gather himself, reluctantly nodded, but stepped forward and took Muti's hand. "I'm happy to talk to you about this when we're done for the day."
"Actions speak louder than words," Muti responded.
Benedict gagged loud enough that any possibility of the conversation continuing died as Astrid shook her head in disbelief and led the party down, back towards the fourth floor. Not to leave the situation as it was, Benedict turned his attention back to Astrid instead of what was making him uncomfortable.
"So you're just going to let the nagas and harpies beat on you as much as they want? After all, you're going to need to lose health and stamina to check how things have changed," the Bard asked. "I'm looking forward to seeing it."
Astrid sighed and looked at her left arm. Her shield remained there, and she mentally dismissed it as she also considered keeping her hammer dismissed as well.
"Yes, this is going to be a lot of fun," Benedict laughed.
***
"Honestly, you should probably lose the armor," Skandr grinned as Astrid looked at the harpies with obvious contempt.
"It's not my fault they're too cowardly to actually commit to a real attack!" Astrid whined. "If they didn't just shoot weak blades of wind at me that skate off my armor, the experiment would work!"
"The issue is that your physical attributes are just too high," the Wizard continued, ignoring her complaints. "If you want to take damage, you've gotta open yourself up to the damage. The whole reason that we're practicing here is that they're too weak to be big threats while we're training."
"But if I take my armor off, the wind will rip my clothes to pieces, and I don't have many changes of clothes! It's only my equipment that's got the enchantments to make sure that it can repair itself, and I'm not going to be here in a land populated by trees for who knows how long without any other clothes to change into."
"Well, I'm not gonna suggest you get naked in the middle of the Dungeon," Benedict admitted. "Maybe it could be an exercise in fortifying your clothing with mana, enough to keep it together?"
"And if all they're doing right now is blowing my hair around," Astrid retorted, "I don't want to put some of my very few outfits in danger when reinforcing them might just leave me in the same place that I was before."
"Then I guess the only other option is to let the nagas stab you," he shrugged.
"But that hurts! None of you seem to get that. Yes, I want to experiment with my boon, but losing health isn't like using stamina or mana!"
"Wait, have you been subconsciously using mana to fortify yourself?" Skandr asked, derailing her argument.
Any further protests Astrid had died at that, and Skandr hung his head before he took a deep breath and looked into her face.
"You've already done the experiments with stamina. You've seen that Indimitability is doing exactly what it advertised—your passive recovery has been increased as well as the effect of using a charge of Body. It's pretty much guaranteed that your health recovery will be impacted just the same. If you're not willing to get yourself hurt for this experiment, which, valid, then don't do it. Honestly, you're sounding kind of like an idiot with the hemming and hawing." At that, Skandr shook his head, put his hand up in front of her, and very obviously communicated that he was done. For her part, Astrid hung her head and accepted that he'd been more than patient enough.
"You're right, I don't really need to sit here and take the abuse if I'm not willing to," she admitted.
As a whole, the experimentation had gone well, and she was pleased with what they'd learned. More and more, she was becoming somebody who was difficult to kill. From the very minor experiments they had been able to do since she'd taken the boon, Astrid realized there was another aspect to taking indomitability over leadership. Instead of having her aura reduce the damage that she took, she was able to heal more, and doing so strengthened her next attack after she used a charge of Body to recover.
A part of her wondered how that aspect of that Skill would change as she continued to upgrade it, but that was a question for seven levels from now, not right now. Instead, she simply needed to continue practicing with her Skills. After all, as she learned about the difference between active Skills and effects granted by Skills, she was pretty sure that, even though it was more of an "active Skill" than an "effect" on the sliding scale to determine the difference between the two, charges of Body could probably be manipulated somewhat to focus on recovering more of one of the aspects than the others. After all, maybe she wouldn't be able to adjust the Skill in the middle of battle anytime soon, but if she was mostly uninjured, but her stamina and mana were lacking, ideally should be able to use only one or two charges instead of three to recover nearly to full.
More experimentation lay in front of her, and Astrid groaned as she hung her head. Even as they were in the Dungeon and had gained a level, she was stuck with more practice.
"Well there's nothing to do to get better at what you're doing then to actually do it," she grumbled aloud. Then, without saying anything else, she began channeling her mana and stamina in a unique way to activate Gravity Surge. As she did so, she checked her Status.
Status
Name: Astrid
Class: Immortal Warrior (Iron)
Total Level: 43 (0/205,000)
Attributes
Current
Per level growth
Power
427 (+54)
+13
Alacrity
274 (+37) [+123]
+9
Fortitude
428 (+59)
+13
Magical Potency
160 (+19)
+5
Self-Mastery
141 (+34)
+5
Acumen
118 (+4)
+4
Skill List
Immortal Warrior's Aura (Iron)
Immortal Warrior's Body (Iron)
Immortal Warrior's Equipment (Iron)
Boon of Potentiation
Spectre Burst (Iron)
Gravity Surge (Iron)
Boon of the Hero
Boon of Indomitability
Locked
Like the rest, her "per level growths" had updated to reflect the bonuses from her boon. A part of her was interested in seeing how Skandr's would change as Warlock's Constitution climbed to Steel and beyond, but that was something to be learned later. For now, they were harpies whose flights needed to be ruined.
***
Skandr
He had to fight not to throw the entire book into the fire. He listened as the rest of the party called it a "grimoire", but that was so far off that he couldn't begin to explain it. A grimoire would provide value to somebody who read it, and all this was was a series of mad scribbling from a fool who thought he could create spells.
Realizing what this hopelessness meant, Skandr stood up, closed his notebook, and stretched as he forced his mind to occupy other things. He'd made great progress since they had left the Trials, and couldn't expect himself to be perfect with so little time to improve. In truth, he'd made great progress within them as well. His complaints about not having enough time to really understand spellworking while actively delving were correct, and he stood by them, but there was something to be said about necessity being the mother of invention. Those spells lacked enough variety and flexibility to allow Skandr to feel comfortable calling himself a Wizard at that point, but his lightning spells weren't seeing any comparable level of progress as they had in those four weeks.
It had been what, fourteen weeks since they'd left the Trials? And in that time, none of his other spells could compare to the raw power that he'd developed in those desperate, restless nights. Since working with Saul, he could look at the scribbles that had formed the original basis for those spells and could only call them brutish. They used every last ounce of the mana he gave them, and feeding them with Warlock's Constitution made for truly deadly results, but what he had made were singular items, each one unable to do anything other than complete its original purpose. That lacked the elegance of a real spell.
Of his new spells, he really enjoyed the congealing cloud that he was continuing to tinker with every day. It was so flexible, able to douse, freeze, slow, chill, or kill, but it could also water fields, fill the party's water barrels, and he was working on creating a functional shield of sorts out of it. Most of its potency could be traced back to his Summoned Storm Cloud Skill, but that didn't make the spell any less impressive in his eyes. After all, the other Skill just made it more potent.
Further experiments were needed to see how he could create better blasts of frost or lightning within that to create an area of effect that would control large swathes of the battlefield, but that was something he just continued to work on.
The lightning cloak, though? The damn thing wouldn't cooperate. Maybe it was that he'd spent so much time focusing primarily on making his lightning more potent and dangerous, but he almost couldn't remember what his original Skill, Lightning Reflexes, had done. Sure, he'd created stopgap replacements for it in the Trials, but they lacked the essence that made a true spell.
So much of what he learned under Saul's tutelage served to show him just how little he understood about being a Wizard. It was a path of frustration, experimentation, rage, and after months of despair, a brief, glowing view into the deep, beautiful essence that made magic.
As he walked, he looked at his party members, most resting as they took a brief break from delving. Astrid met his eyes as he returned back to real life and smiled.
"Done for the night?" She asked, holding out a strip of jerky for him. Despite being sick of eating so much cured, mana-rich meat, he took it and immediately ripped a hunk from it.
"Gotta sleep on it," he answered, still consumed with te sort of nervous energy that demanded he continue pacing up and down the stairs.
"Which spell was this? Was it the flotation spell? Or maybe the frost cloud?"
"No, those are basically finished for now," he dismissed as he continued to march up and down. "And they hardly deserve the name of 'spell'."
"They do if somebody asks me," Astrid chuckled. "But tell me about it. I'd say pick my brain, but you're not gonna find anything other than a blank stare."
With that, Skandr laughed back and relaxed enough to settle onto his cot to begin to explain the way the sigils and incantations just weren't working together.
***
Muti
Her blade pierced through the medusa's armored torso, and the monster screamed in agony as Muti's mana disrupted its internals. She still wasn't using Power-aligned mana to strengthen her blows, only the damned tattoos. Despite her practice, her shadow mana was the only tattoo that frequently bore any results. At least, in a way that she was satisfied with its performance in battle.
The medusa turned towards her and Muti disengaged. A puff of shadow surrounded her for only a blink of an eye, but that was more than enough for her to use Shadow Leap to reappear a good ten meters behind the medusa as its serpent tail thrashed in agony. Ideally, Muti would now take the opportunity that was presented to her to strike the monster down, her blades both much stronger from Shadow Leap's bonus than from her months of practice with her boon.
Instead, she waited, slowly changing the mana flow in her arms from the front of her wrist to the back of her hands. There, smoking black gave way to swirling blue tattoos glowing, she knew, though it was invisible under her thick gloves. She felt the palms of her blades go cold as freezing cold mana slowly suffused them. A whole second passed before she was ready to get back into the fight, the pain and difficulty of switching the mana within her weapons, still too slow to use fluidly within the bounds of a battle.
Somewhere nearby, the rest of the Wanderers watched her, and she pushed a veil of non-detection over herself as she stepped silently between the reeds that grew here in the bottom floor of the Dungeon. Now, she was level 45 and two levels higher than the Boss she was facing, and if she relied on what she was familiar with, hunting, it would be as simple as it could be to dispatch the beast. Instead, she continued to practice with her tattoos, and stabbed her straight blade into the base of the monster's spine, where the tail met the humanoid torso.
Ice flowed into the monster's veins and froze that most important connection point to keep it from being able to turn around. It wailed in agony as Muti's seax slashed through the monster's neck. She didn't care to read the kill notification, she'd seen it dozens of times over the past months they had spent here in the Dungeon practicing, training.
As the body fell, a stone whistled towards her, but she cut it out of the air before it could land. The fist-sized missile shattered into gravel and thumped against the corpse behind her as Felix stepped out of the brush.
"Do you wish for my critique to be on the magic or on your fight as a whole?" He asked. It had taken time for the Human to come to understand what she wanted from a "lover", but now that he did, they both found themselves enjoying the relationship for what it was. Those who might become mates but hadn't yet.
"I trust Skandr and Benedict's opinions over yours with regards to magic," Muti dismissed the first aspect of the question. "I cannot understand why you continue to ask me that when I have given the same answer every time, only harsher every time."
"I ask because I can attempt to give answers," Felix answered, his face stoic. "The fight in general was effective. Frankly, we are all so much stronger than the monsters in here that we didn't struggle against them when we were level 42, and we are level 45 now. Your movements were crisp, though your lack of confidence in your magic is causing you to exhibit hesitance in engaging."
Muti narrowed her eyes and thought back to the fight. In truth, a part of her resisted and resented what Felix had said, not because he was wrong, but because what he was saying was related to magic. She knew that she was unreasonable in feeling that anger, but still she had to fight back a snarl of displeasure. Instead, she slowly nodded, swallowed her protestations, and said, "You are correct."
Felix nodded, and with that, their small discussion after the fight was over. She had questions to ask Skandr about maintaining magical potency when in the stress of battle, but she could do that later. For now, she had something much more pleasant to do than talk about Skills and train. It had been difficult to understand how Felix wanted so much to do with her mouth, but his own teeth, much less threatening than her own sharp ones, were far less threatening and had proven to be a very welcome addition to their courtship.
Very carefully, she leaned down and kissed him tenderly, a faint heat rising inside of her as his soft smile seemed to drive away some of the jagged parts of her. That, combined with his Fortitude, allowed her to abandon some caution, and they did so as Muti listened to the Wanderers walk away to afford them some privacy. They would exit the Dungeon's branch this day, and under the light of the moon, they would continue what was starting here.
***
Felix
After thinking about it for months, since he was in the Trials and realized that, regardless of how stupid it might be, he was starting to crush on a Barbarian, Felix was pretty happy with having a girlfriend. No, it was not at all what he thought of when he was a straight-laced Cooper's son, and certainly not what he'd imagined when he was washing his knuckles off in a back alley after cracking some poor 15 year-old's face because he crossed a 19 year-old on a power trip. As a boy, he thought of a demure lady, maybe an Accountant, someone like his mother. As an angry young man, he'd thought he'd only have the occasional visit to a brothel.
Most of all, it was pretty strange, almost uncomfortable to call Muti his girlfriend. Not because she wasn't, but because it was a title that didn't seem to fit her. Sure, they took time to enjoy each other's company away from everybody else, and he had every intent, at least for now, of continuing this relationship longer term, but "girlfriend" felt so childish when looking at the statuesque, beautiful woman. At first, since they first met, and she had challenged him to a fight, her passion was obvious. Initially, it was a burning need to prove herself, and then it became a stronger need to push herself and the Wanderers further.
Whatever it was, eventually, the respect that he held for the golden haired woman had slowly morphed into something different. The fierce grin she couldn't help but hold back when she won any competition, the bright, cackling laughter that flew proud and free when she was amused, and the constant tests she put everybody through, herself included. Strange that his first real lover in adulthood took it as a sign of his affection when he tried to pelt her in the back of the head with fist sized stones.
And she did it in return, though she was a lot better than he was.
Everything was a competition with her, and Felix, though he didn't enjoy arguing and competing in that way, didn't mind that competitive nature in proving strength, devotion, affection, and service. Something he'd never imagined was how a Barbarian loved. She hadn't spoken of a particularly affectionate childhood, and the idea of being raised as a "litter" of children instead of as individuals by their parents was jarring, but Muti's idea of being a lover was single minded devotion. The one who was stronger, the leader of the "mates" had the responsibility to provide, to protect, and command. With that responsibility came the need to be wise, cautious, decisive, and more. The other's was to serve the stronger.
She had made it no secret that, though they indulged in every pleasure of the flesh, they were not mates, not nearly. To do so required a very literal fight for dominance, both parties entering into the fight with the understanding that, if they were to lose, they were to devote themselves to the other, to upholding their decisions and protecting their interests. The loser was to be very nearly a servant to the winner, but the winner would be held to an even higher standard than the loser, that their every action needed to be taken in such a way as to protect their mate, to guide them to victory, and to greater heights.
It was strange. Pillow talk with Muti was one of the few places in which the woman allowed herself to speak in depth about what her hopes and expectations were for the future, beyond proving herself to the entire body of the Hordes. She wanted to have children, to train them to be stronger than she was. She knew she wanted more than that, but wasn't sure what else there was, but didn't want to spend her life within the Dungeon.
Her casual mentions of the winner of that mate's duel having the opportunity to claim more mates as they so wished was uncomfortable to him. Frankly, he wasn't sure he wanted to be the winner of that fight, and it was perfectly content following her command, but not with the possibility of her then deciding there should be another man sharing her bed.
Well, Felix mused as his hand traced idle lines along Muti's bare midriff down to her thigh, that was something to be slowly discovered over the months and years that followed. For now, he had to struggle to pay more attention to developing his skills alongside the rest of the party, instead of losing himself in the addictive high of this new relationship. Looking at the moon overhead lighting the beautiful, sweating body of his lover beside himself, he could only think of the present and what might happen again if he played his cards right.
***
Benedict
"Come on you lumpy bastard, do what I tell you," Benedict groaned. Despite his protestations, Silvertongue absolutely refused to apply to his boon. Watching Astrid and Muti especially understand how to adjust their Skills was infuriating, as he sat back here, twiddling his thumbs and looking like a damn idiot. Supposedly, he'd had one of the most qualified tutors in the world, and he retained nothing.
Yeah, he whinged and pretended like it was all her fault, but there was just something in his head that just didn't understand what she was trying to say. Perhaps she was a bad teacher, regardless of her power, but he couldn't see how he could adjust his Skills the way that everybody else seemed to do so easily.
Sweat trickled down his brow as he slowed the activation of Silvertongue and tried to adjust the way his mana flowed. It was so stubborn, like it was water flowing through a deep channel, and while he tried to dig new canals for the water to flow down, never more than a tiny trickle would go where he wanted it too before the Skill was activated, and there was nothing he could do.
The party had delayed moving onto the next Dungeon branch, finding the denizens of the naga and harpy branch more than enough to continue their experimentations. They provided enough variety for everybody to practice what they needed to, and Benedict watched everybody making progress while he himself was stuck. Level 47, almost 48, and he was falling behind his party. Finally, with a roar of rage, he deactivated Silvertongue and reactivated it in quick succession. On the second attempt, something in his mind seemed to shift and the mana diverted off of its course and into the "fields" of his mind.
As the Skill entirely failed to activate, Benedict threw his fist in the air and cheered, startling most of the members of his party while they looked at him in confusion.
"It doesn't seem like you did what you were trying to," Astrid squinted at him. "I'm not seeing any Skill active."
"No, you're not! That's the point! I made it fail!"
"Benedict, it's been months. Why are you excited about still not working?"
"It's because I made it not work, not that it isn't working! Oh, you don't get it. But I'm making progress. Great progress."
"He's spent way too much time with that Dungeoneer," Skandr muttered to Astrid, who nodded in agreement. Maybe they were right, because finally, for the first time, Isana seemed to make some measure of sense. He just needed to practice more…