The Pinnacle Warrior

The few days before they left passed slowly for Astrid. The anticipation of going into the Dungeon, very literally running at top speed through various floors and only looking to get to the bottom floor was, unsurprisingly, something that she was nervous about. The thought of what had happened to Skandr when they had pushed themselves to fight to the irregular gnoll boss years ago refused to give Astrid peace. Silver scars patterned his face, and he had rather deliberately not gotten them healed.

In fact, as left to her thoughts to think about it, she couldn’t help but think about how her years as a delver had been until now. When she was still a child, or, more correctly, before she had gotten her Class, time wasn’t really something she paid a lot of attention to except to mark its passage and the approach of adulthood. After all, she’d considered her life until then to be just whatever filled the time. Life would only truly begin once she had her Class and began delving.

Now, years later, she didn’t pay attention to time’s passage other than for how it changed the seasons, and in the Verdant Sanctuary, so far as she could tell, the seasons were either controlled or simply lacked the harshness that Humanity’s Bulwark experienced. They’d been in the territory of the Verdant Sanctuary for nearly a year at this point, about eight and a half months, and the weather had gone from nearly uncomfortably warm to having cool nights that only occasionally got so cold as to have frost build on the grass.

On the last day before they began delving once again, Astrid decided to sit down and actually figure out how long she had been delving. From the time that she received her Class to get to level 6 was about six, maybe seven months. Then, she’d left Schteldt for Kznietch, where she met Muti and Skandr and delved together for what, three months? She thought it was about three months that they’d been together before Benedict and Felix joined up. Then, another four or so months for them all to get to level 11.

In retrospect, Astrid felt that saying, “oh, over the course of seven months, we reached level 11,” when she was talking about the fear of dealing with the assassins that turned out to be Anders, Maria, and Pyra’s party was an understatement. There had been a whole lot more than just regular delving in that time, but that difference sat on her chest and refused to be forgotten.

Leaving that behind, the party had then gone to Purcell, where the push to level 15 took about five months and then they learned about the Wandering Trials. Astrid could remember every day of that struggle, the pain of never resting, of living in the Dungeon for two more months.

Now that she thought about it, those memories weren’t that painful, especially in comparison to the full month in the Wandering Trials. Those days had truly been exhausting, painful, and something that she was glad she was done with.

Then, over the course of about a month, they waited for Greely to be ready and then traveled to the Trials and finally entered, where they spent another month inside. Then, after exiting from that, they spent two months training while waiting for the Verdant Sanctuary to give them permission to stay there for a longer time. Then, with that permission, the Wanderers had spent another about five and a half months to get to where they were, level 50 and ready to push for Steel.

Putting all of that together, she’d delved for thirty months, almost thirty one. It was funny, that the days and years spent before delving largely became memories she hardly thought about while she could so much more clearly remember the things she’d done in these past almost two and a half years. As the thought crossed her mind, Astrid actually felt a pang of sadness, wondering if things would’ve been different if she wasn’t quite so stubborn as a kid. After all, she left Ahna and Jan behind, even if she’d been left behind first by the two traitors Borus and Liesl.

She’d made her decisions, and though she did occasionally have regrets, they never lasted. The thought of having just been some guard in town, that didn’t at all appeal to her. In this free time, she let her mind wander through what that life would be like.

Working each day, keeping small disputes from growing, and occasionally jailing someone. Eventually, she could find someone to settle down with, maybe they’d have kids, maybe they wouldn’t, or maybe she’d just be a guard until she died. She wouldn’t know about the things happening in the lowest reaches of the Dungeon, she’d never have to think about if the Duchess was too weak to maintain the status quo that had remained for hundreds of years. She would just continue working for her paycheck, maybe eventually getting into Iron and stagnating there.

The little thought experiment sent shudders down her spine. She would die before she would consign herself to that life, and again the thought had crossed her mind, but she was happy with where she was. Not satisfied, but that wasn’t surprising.

Without another thought of it, Astrid instead trained, using her mana and stamina constantly to ensure that her body was in a perfect state before they started to descend for this dangerous test.

“If you want to,” Skandr said the night before they were going to go down, “you can make us shut this down. You are the leader, and regardless of having previously said differently that this was a diplomatic choice, I’m close enough to on the fence that I wouldn’t be upset if you just put an end to our thoughts about killing a Steel tier Boss.”

“Yes,” Astrid waffled her hand in the air, “I could, if I was willing to bully you all into making the decisions I wanted. I don’t think it would be particularly difficult either, given the very real dangers that following this plan will put us all through. After all, my position as the leader is to make sure that we’re all successful and, you know, don’t die while we are delving. That said, I’m not going to start telling people that their decisions don’t matter, which is effectively what I would be doing if I just decided we all couldn’t go anymore.”

He didn’t say anything more, but the party had obviously heard what he had said, he hadn’t made it a secret. When he started to go to his own cot, only Astrid could see the preparations he was making and smiled. Just as soon as Muti appeared behind him and tried to catch him in a headlock from where he couldn’t see her, she was taken by surprise when his cloud flared into existence behind him and pulsed with lightning before she could pull back. Her hair, already usually an untamed golden mane, stood up everywhere as the static built up in her and she hopped back with a hiss of pain

“You’re becoming predictable, Muti,” Skandr chuckled as he wiggled a finger at her. “If I can see an ambush incoming, the unpredictability is going away.”

“That is not a reflection of my own skill,” she disagreed with a broad smile, “but a demonstration of your growing strength. I do not believe that I will be able to catch you off guard without relying more completely upon my Skills now.”

“Wait a second,” Skandr said as he realized what she was getting at, but it was too late.

“I shall begin to train you all with a greater portion of my abilities. After all, I cannot be assured of your safety if you cannot stand against me. With Dread Master, we shall quickly reach greater heights than were previously possible!”

“Muti,” Astrid said, “you’re always welcome to help us train, but you cannot use the excuse of training as a thinly veiled opportunity to take vengeance on other members of the party.”

Though Muti bared her teeth at Astrid’s words, she also bowed her head oh so briefly to acknowledge that Astrid was right. The Barbarian had been at least a little malicious in ambushing Skandr right there.

The rest of the night’s conversation was more sedate, touching on particular plans for them all to pass safely and quickly through each floor that lay ahead of them. Before long, though, they all came to the decision to call it a night early. Sleep didn’t come easily, but before the moon’s light was too bright, unconsciousness claimed them all under the watch of a Grove that had agreed to keep watch for the night. When the morning came, they all took the time to eat until their stomachs were full, checked the few potions that they had retained and refused to use from the Trials, and then set out on their way.

***

“There is something in the opposite strait,” Muti warned as the party ran forward.

“Are we close enough to the entrance to the seventh floor?”

“Perhaps, leader.”

Astrid groaned and allowed her head to sag before she looked at Skandr. His Alacrity was the lowest of the party, and his ability to keep up largely determined some of the plans that they could enact.

“If we can take just a few minutes on the stairway,” he said before she asked anything, “then I can push it.”

“Felix,” Astrid said as she pulled one of nearly a hundred wind burst enchanted stones that Skandr had made for her over the course of their several days of resting, “you’re in the front. If an antlion appears, you’re on it while everybody else focuses on the closest naiad. We’ll throw a lot at it to make sure we can kill it before the second gets close enough to fight. Otherwise, if nothing slows us, go straight to the stairway.“

Muti slowed herself, just enough to allow her Guardian lover to take the lead in response, and Benedict started using Doubletalk with Hasty Rebuke to hurry them all along even further, at the expense of more of his mana reserves.

Astrid watched as a curling wave drew closer behind them and to the right while the other naiad on the left jumped out of the water and over one of the five meter wide trails to get closer to the Wanderers. A large part of the party's ability and willingness to make this mad dash was due to the fact that naiads were pretty quick, but not so fast that the party couldn’t outrun them with all of their advantages. Hasty Rebuke was one of the largest contributors to this plan, but they wouldn’t always have the ability to rely on it moving forward…

With a frown, Astrid forcefully thrust out the idea that Benedict wouldn’t be here forever to help them the way he was. Instead, she continued watching as Skandr sent a couple flickers of frost into the water in front of the naiads. The thick blocks of ice that appeared there didn’t slow the monsters down much, but did enough that they could continue lengthening the gap between themselves and the monsters, barring the appearance of an antlion.

“Doorway,” Felix reported. The party hadn’t ever gone deeper than the sixth and hadn’t had any reason to look for the specific doorway until then, so the doorway's appearance came as a welcome surprise. Astrid felt her anxieties lighten, but only for a few seconds before Muti’s head snapped forward and to the left, to where another of the winding sand paths through the Dungeon met up with the one they were traveling on. The party's Ambusher didn’t need to say anything for them all to understand what was happening.

“Duchess above, we’re so close” Astrid cursed as he looked at the door, no more than a kilometer away. After a split second thought, Astrid rushed forward, pulling Muti along.

“Change of plans. Shadow Leap,” she commanded. Muti’s bright laughter filled the air as she understood what Astrid was saying, and Felix hurried even faster, making sure to stay in the front and do his part. The two magical party members only hurried along, realizing that their purpose was to stay out of danger’s reach while the others tried to avoid getting bogged down with a fight. Only a single second passed before the sand under Felix disappeared. He flashed just out of the monster’s reach with Guardian’s Wrath, and it screeched in rage as it pursued him out of the sand.

With Astrid’s hand held in hers, Muti’s shadow tattoos burst with a smoke that covered both of them in blackness, and Astrid’s stomach pulled as she reappeared further ahead. She took a quick glance around herself, instantly understanding where she was, and with Spectre Burst and Gravity Surge localized to the head of her hammer and the range limited to only two meters, Astrid’s hammer crushed all resistances before it smashed through chitin and into the organs found in the antlion’s skull.

Now, everything worked together and Astrid‘s hammer nearly decapitated the monster in a single blow, though it didn’t quite kill the beast, so Muti’s blades followed after her attack. With the armor destroyed and the monster's vulnerability exposed, Muti’s attack cleaved the monster's head right from its body.

Astrid ignored the kill notification and looked behind herself. Even that brief delay had allowed the naiads to close in, and she gritted her teeth as she looked at the doorway, now less than 400 meters away.

“Just keep running,” Skandr panted before shouting a short incantation and sending a splitting arc of lightning at the nearest naiad. Sparks danced through the water, and while Astrid jumped out of the pit they were leaving the corpse behind in, she continued forward, bringing up the back. The naiads closed in, and misting water began to soak Astrid through. It was pleasantly cool, but as she continued on her path, she could feel the approaching monsters.

Without saying anything else, Astrid flooded her body with Alacrity-aligned mana and sprinted forward to catch up to her party. In just a few short seconds, she’d caught up with the rest, and she didn’t hesitate to pick Skandr up in her arms and continue her sprint. They’d already decided that doing so was a last resort, since carrying the slower members of the party meant that none of them were as battle ready as they needed to be, but Astrid just needed to get off the floor. The naiads wouldn’t be able to do anything to the Wanderers once they got into the stairs, so that was all she needed to do.

“Go go go!” Astrid shouted as Felix and Benedict slowed to look back, and fortunately they got out of the way for her to barrel into the path. Just as she began to relax, though, the naiads took them all by surprise. Their only warning was the sound of water roaring as it flooded the stairway.

Every word was muffled by the sounds of choking, and Astrid felt the water haul her up the stairway. Fear thundered through her body as she felt herself get separated from the rest of the party, but instead of allowing that to rule her, she pushed an exorbitant amount of mana into Boon of Indomitability and held herself in place. Water ripped at her armor and clothes, but with her mana falling and her lungs burning, Astrid continued trudging forward, deeper into the stairway as the torrents tearing at her slowly lost strength.

Skandr continued along, and after they all had proceeded around three entire loops, they were finally clear from the attack.

The three delvers with equipment Skills dismissed their armor and water dumped from their bodies as they all panted and looked at each other.

“Are we still going to press on?” Astrid asked, and when she saw the looks of determination on the others’ faces, and she allowed a smile to cross her own face.

“Then let’s take a couple minutes, and we’ll continue.”