The Pinnacle Warrior

One of the most frustrating things for Astrid was that they couldn’t even sit and talk about why they’d failed once they were out of the Boss floor, because they still weren’t safe. Instead, she was forced to recognize that the discomfort that had been building in the pit of her stomach wasn’t just anxiety. Instead, Astrid was forced to confront the reality that it was mana toxicity, and she was suffering the least from it out of everyone in her party. Somehow, every other member of the Wanderers had come to the conclusion that they should only mention the mana poisoning they were suffering from when it was more than just a suspicion that that was what they were experiencing. In fairness, Astrid had also chalked her own suffering up to anxiety and anticipation, but she knew that the others had a greater susceptibility to the mana than she did because she had a higher tiered Class than they did.

Instead of any conversations about the fight itself, the party's time ascending was consumed with callouts about what paths were the safest, which steps to avoid, and where to take a break to let Benedict cleanse everybody. Otherwise, they walked in a painful silence that prevented any relaxation, and Astrid preferred that discomfort.

“It’s a good thing we already mostly cleared out these paths,” Skandr said, trying to break the tense quiet that had settled over the party.

“Yeah, it is faster,” Benedict answered, glaring at Astrid and Felix to pick up the conversational slack as he continued to blow a tune into his flute.

Unfortunately for him, neither of the two people that he was trying to lean on gave him what he wanted. Instead, they remained quiet and continued on their path. The Bard didn’t give them much time to continue to stew in their grumblings, and before long, he grabbed his spear and took the butt of it, which he jabbed into Astrid’s ribs. She had been consumed enough with her thoughts and he took her by enough surprise that he managed to actually hit her, and she whirled before glaring at him as he raised the spear again and tried to smack her in the head. With a snarl, she caught the haft and ripped it out of his hands.

“We lost a fight, what’s the big deal? Sure, Muti got hurt, but she’s mostly fine already, we learned a lesson, we made some progress. Went pretty well, so why are you moping?” He demanded. “It was a long shot for us to kill a Steel tier Boss. We knew it was a long shot, and in case you forgot, you didn’t want to go down because you thought somebody might die. Right?”

Astrid didn’t respond with words, merely glaring at him.

“I’m sure you’re baring your teeth or squinting at me or whatever, but I can’t see. Anyways, we heard Leviathan, we knew it lives in the water, and we’ve struggled with being able to hit things in the water the entire time we’ve been in this Dungeon branch. Yes, we’ve gotten better, but we have nothing to deal with monsters that can just dive away from us. Ever since the first naiad we fought, we’ve known that it was a problem.

“If it was flying? You and Skandr can tear it from the skies. If it’s underground? It isn’t too hard to pull it right out for you gorillas on the front line. If it walks on the ground, perfect! The problem just so happens to be that the one Dungeon branch that suited our hopes and dreams happens to also have a Boss that was tough and smart enough that we simply do not have the capability to deal with right now. So quit your moping, and be glad that we came out without any of the injuries that we all were worried about.”

“I’m not pouting, I’m frustrated,“ Astrid snapped back. “We worked really hard, we had high hopes, and it didn’t work. I’m the one who made the call to retreat, I was the first person to be willing to throw in the towel. I understand that loss is a part of life, and I was and am more than willing to call it. It doesn’t mean that I can’t be a little upset that the difficult goal we were trying to achieve doesn’t seem to be achievable. That’s all.”

“Then say that,” Benedict replied, his tone no longer so angry. “You’re the leader of this party. It makes sense that Muti is angry, she gets angry anytime she gets hit by an attack. Felix is quiet, because Felix is quiet. You’re supposed to do something, to pull us all up.”

“Benedict, shut up. Just… shut up,” Astrid said, raising her hand. “I understand what you’re trying to do, and I don’t think you’re wrong, but we also don’t need to be talking every second of every day. Right now, we’re all frustrated, we’re all grumpy, and how about we get out of the place where we need you to actively cure us from poison that continues to get worse every second before we start talking about our feelings, huh?”

He opened his mouth, then nodded and raised both of his hands in front of his hands in surrender. “You’re right. I could’ve given it some more time. Sorry.”

Despite the apology he had to make for it, Benedict’s outburst helped immensely. Having broken the silence allowed each member of the party to do more than grunt or curse as they hustled up through the floors. Though none had any real conversations, they were in better moods as they ascended. What Skandr had mentioned was right, that as they retraced their previous steps, their path was largely uncontested in leaving. That is, except for when they left the seventh floor onto the sixth, where one of the naiads that had chased them remained near the door.

This time, they weren’t in the same amount of a hurry and everybody took the opportunity to vent a bit of their frustrations on the monsters they encountered. Yes, they couldn’t remain in the Dungeon for a long delve, but there wasn’t anything better for stress relief than venting some of that anger in a totally healthy way that also brought them closer to level 51.

Less than five hours after they left the bottom floor, the party emerged under the starlit skies of the surface. They left early in the morning, not long after sunrise, and then spent about eight hours getting down to the bottom floor, half an hour resting to prepare themselves to go into the fight, then just a scant few short minutes inside, only to learn that they were out of their depths, literally. Another ten minutes to heal Muti and recover as a group, five hours to come up, and here they were right after sunset, the night of the same day, and entirely without anything to show for it.

As soon as they reached the surface, Muti stalked off towards the river, and everybody let her go in peace.

“She does not want company,” Felix said when questioned. “She’s not like most Humans, she hates being coddled or comforted. Worse, she largely considers this failure to be on her. She won’t want comfort, she wants space and an opportunity to prove herself. She can only get the first for now, though the sooner we can provide the second, the better.”

“That makes enough sense to me,” Skandr said, seeming to want to step to the side and around this conversation himself.

“Everybody, take some time if you need it,” Astrid said by way of delaying any further conversations. “We’ll regather in the morning, talk about everything, so until then, do whatever.”

She couldn’t muster the energy to say anything more, so she dismissed her armor with a thought and strode towards the lake as well. When she arrived, Muti was nowhere to be seen, so she stripped down and bathed herself without looking around. The cold water was a welcome change from the permanently tepid lake of the Dungeon branch below, and Astrid enjoyed the gooseflesh appearing up and down her arms and legs, for some strange reason. She supposed that was strange, but the constant sweat of the day being washed away by cool, rushing water was a welcome change to the sweat, sand, and warm sprays of water from the day.

As the currents sluiced over her body, Astrid allowed herself to stop thinking about the delve. There was no reason to dwell over her failure, not right now. Instead, she ran her fingers through her tangled hair, undoing the braid that it had been put in that morning. Muti’s blood washed out easily enough, and it wasn’t long before Astrid was totally clean. Even then, she didn’t feel the need to go try to sleep right that second, instead turning and finding a smooth stone nearby that she could sit on and just enjoy the cool night. When Skandr came and washed himself, she welcomed him over to enjoy the cold water as she was.

He hissed a little as he settled into the water, and Astrid chuckled as he wrapped his arms around himself. Though both were naked, they didn’t look at each other, respecting that aspect of modesty though every member of the Wanderers party had seen each other exposed in some fashion or another dozens of times already. So many years traveling together with frequent extended camping trips inside of the Dungeon didn’t allow for total privacy.

“I don’t really get how you can just sit here in the cold water and be fine with it,” Skandr said. “I can only think of vulgar ways to say it, but it’s damn cold in here.”

“If you wanna say it vulgarly, I don’t care,” Astrid laughed. “But the reason why this is just a pleasantly cool dip for me is because my Fortitude is over 500 at this point. I’d guess that the water is probably cold enough to make a regular person go into shock and for you to be uncomfortable, but for me? It’s just a cool dip. Pretty relaxing on the muscles, too.”

“I’ve always preferred hot baths for that,” Skandr hissed out a laugh as he acclimated to the cold, and the two continued talking about nothing important, enjoying the opportunity not to think like delvers, but just as two friends enjoying the night. After about 15 minutes, Skandr gave up on staying in the water and left, saying, “You can freeze over here. I’m going to get in bed. See you in the morning.”

Astrid waved, looking at the moon overhead. This river they bathed in was a cut through the forest that grew a short kilometer or so away from the entrance to the Dungeon branch. Having just that slice of a view of the sky had Astrid smiling, and she found herself nearly drifting off as she lay there. Instead of allowing herself to fall asleep naked and alone, though, she stood, pulled her towel out of her nearby spatial pouch, and dried off. Then, pulling on a loose pair of shorts and shirt, she went back to camp.

Muti was still missing, but Astrid felt a faint tickle at the back of her awareness, and she knew that the Barbarian was watching over the camp. On a hunch, Astrid turned towards where she thought Muti could be and waved.

“Good night,” she whispered before settling into her cot. Fortunately, sleep found her before too long, and she fell into darkness.

***

“So, what do we think about yesterday?” Skandr asked blandly.

“Hated it,” Astrid grumbled, but collected herself and expanded her thoughts. “It was disappointing. You know, we made all these preparations, and in the end, they didn’t really go anywhere. We gained a bunch of experience and made some headway towards killing the Boss, but all that we really learned, so far as I can tell, is that we won’t be able to kill the Leviathan as Irons. What Benedict said yesterday about the environment not being good for us seems to be pretty apt, and our Skills are just too weak. The Leviathan could just retreat, and there wasn’t much we could do about it. If it wasn’t quite so durable, if it couldn’t take so much of a beating, we would have been able to deal with it whenever we closed in, but we only did some damage to it, didn’t kill it.”

“The Boss certainly wasn’t a good matchup for us as we are,” Felix agreed, but his tone betrayed some other disagreement as he continued. “The problem is that there isn’t any other Steel tier Dungeon branches around here that has similarly low level monsters in it. Starting at Steel is where the Dungeon proper becomes the usual place to delve.”

“And the Dungeon proper is too unpredictable to go in there underleveled,” Astrid finished saying. “Yeah, I get it, I just don’t like to hear it. But you sound like you disagree with something.”

“It wasn’t the Skills that were the problem,” Felix said after gathering himself. “Yes, if we had Steel tier Skills it would have been easier, but fighting a massive water monster in the water when you can’t swim or breathe water isn’t easy. There’s a reason only the Kin have a navy, and it’s not because the rest of the races have never wanted one. It’s because there’s the… what’re the fishy ones called?”

“Piscine and Cetacean, technically,” Skandr answered. “And the Piscine are the ‘fishy ones’ like you said. The Cetacean are whales, so they can’t breathe water, but they can come out of water. There’s other kinds too—”

“Yeah, I don’t care,” Benedict cut him off with a laugh.

Though she opened her mouth to protest, Astrid forced herself to acknowledge what he was saying, and she welcomed the others’ talking and keeping her from arguing. The issue wasn’t that their Skills weren’t working. With a hesitant voice, she said, “Maybe I just didn’t want to make an excuse about why we failed.”

“Sometimes, it’s not an excuse,” Skandr said with a shrug. “Sometimes, it’s just reality. We just can’t fight well while we swim. The Leviathan’s too tough to take out without allowing it an opportunity to escape, as much as I hate to say it. But we’re not planning on going into the ocean either, and when we’re in the Dungeon proper, we’re going to stay away from the floors that have water dwelling monsters, so we can just chalk it up to a learning experience.”

“But if I were given another chance,” Muti started to say.

“You would be unable to kill it,” Astrid cut her off. “It’s shown that it’ll retreat when it’s facing danger. We just couldn’t get this one.”

“That is untrue,” the Barbarian shot back. “Vital Strike and Dread Master together would allow you to deal a deadly blow before it could retreat.”

“If I was in the perfect place at the perfect time, it’s possible that I could kill it,” Astrid allowed. “But I doubt we’ll ever be able to get into that position again. We can try again, but tell me, how much experience do you have?“

Muti scowled and looked down, and after a little prodding, she answered, “214,096.”

“Out of 245,000,” Astrid nodded. “And on our descent to the thirteenth floor, do you recall how many Steel tier monsters we killed?“

“Two hundred and sixty-eight,” she answered immediately.

“Yes, there’s just too many fights that are unavoidable to get down there,” Astrid nodded. “We gained about 100,000 experience on that delve, and you know that we won’t be able to avoid over half of every one of those fights. We’ve lost the opportunity.”

The party went silent for several seconds as that reality settled over them. Most had probably already known that was the case, but having Astrid put it in explicit numbers had drained what little hopes for different options they’d had away. Hating feeling like she might be a downer for the party, Astrid pivoted, saying, “Then do we want to slow down just a little, take two weeks to reach the peak of Iron instead of less than one? Do even more last-minute training now? Or do we want to blaze ahead?”

“I’m done training, I’m done practicing, I’m done,” Benedict said, hanging his head and chiding Astrid. “I’m just so tired of training, let’s push on, I don’t think that making it take two weeks instead will change anything.”

Felix didn’t say anything, but he pointed and nodded at the Bard in agreement.

“There’s never an end to training,” Muti said, “but I also do not see much value in remaining an Iron tier for only a short extra time. Any training will not be as impactful as what we have already proved, so it is my opinion that we ought to push onward.”

“I’m the only one who likes to slow down,” Skandr laughed. “But I get it. We’d have to slow down a lot more than I want to to make any difference to the Classes we’re offered.”

“Okay,” Astrid said. The nervousness and anger that’d settled in her stomach changed, and she felt excitement stir once again. “Then we’ll take two days to make sure we’re cleansed of all mana toxicity, then we’ll go in and cross to 51 on the same day.”

“And nobody can look at their Class options until we all hit the threshold!” Benedict said with a grin. “I want us all to see what it is and share at the same time.”

Although she felt like laughing, Astrid looked at the rest of the party nearby, and as the disappointment and anger bled away to excitement, she smiled, ready to rest only so long as she needed in order to reach this next threshold.

***

“How close, Astrid? You’re killing me!” Benedict demanded as the party struck down another antlion.

“362,” Astrid replied. “It was your idea in the first place, so it’s your own fault!”

“Well, I wasn’t considering the consequences to my choice when I said, it,” Benedict laughed. “So hurry up!”

Despite the teasing, Astrid too wanted to just figure out what her evolutionary options were. Fortunately, another antlion was approaching, and a single kill would give her the notification that she was desperate for. With a grin stretched across her face, she rushed forward towards the last fight of Iron before she knew what awaited her in Steel.