Azure: Gunner

The Level of a monster is only a partial indicator of the threat it poses. What Identify doesn’t tell you is often more than enough to get you killed.

Most people break down monsters into three categories – swarm, common, and elite. A swarm, or horde, monster is weak relative to its Level, which is why they typically appear in fucking swarms. It might take anywhere from three to ten swarm monsters to pose the same effective threat as a single common one.

The same holds true for elites – one of these is roughly as dangerous as three commons. Just keep in mind this is all a fucking approximation! Depending on your Class, Skills, and so on, a monster might be a common-level threat to you but an elite one to someone else. Or the other way around. This is why threat levels are given in ranges.

- Delver’s Guild Handbook, Section 9.2 – “Threat Levels”

By the time I came out of my room, the twin’s – or just Alyssa’s, now – door was closed. I hesitated before knocking gently. I waited for a couple minutes before a ragged-looking Alyssa opened the door.

“I’m sorry,” was all I got out before she latched onto me in a desperate hug, tears running down her cheeks. I guided her back into her room, finding another one of her teammates there, sitting in one of the chairs. The girl was some kind of melee fighter. I couldn’t remember her name, but she helped me ease Alyssa down onto her bed.

I sat there, with the Fire Mage still holding onto me, crying into my shoulder as I did my best to comfort her. I’m pretty sure my best was shit, but at least I was trying.

“I’m sorry, Alyssa,” I said again after a while, and she gave me a trembling smile.

“It’s not your fault, Az,” she said. “He died to save me, after all. That ASSHOLE!” she barked suddenly, and I flinched.

“Sorry,” she apologized quickly. “It’s just… I came here to look out for him! You know, we used to fight about who would protect who? I mean, I started growing first, so for a while I was bigger than him, and I used to tell him I’d always keep him safe! Then, he caught up and got to be bigger than me, and he turned it around, saying now it was his turn to be the strong one…”

She trailed off for a minute before continuing.

“He always wanted to be a Delver. He loved hearing stories about them when we were kids. He was so mad when I got to go through the Tutorial first and he had to wait three months… I could have gotten a job, but I knew he was going to go for a combat Class and try to join the Guild. I would rather have, well, I don’t know…”

She paused again, wiping her eyes.

“I guess I always knew I was going to follow him into the Guild,” she said with a tired sigh. “I even started to like it a little bit, these last couple weeks. And then, we were out at the range today, just getting in some practice, having a fun little competition between us…

“All of a sudden the alarm went off, and then everyone was running, and one of those things just appeared out of nowhere! It was coming for me, but Alex… he, he pushed me out of the way at the last second. It, fuck, it…”

I held her tighter, since I had no idea what to say. At some point I started crying with her, and we just sat there for a while, before her teammate convinced her to lie down and rest. I gave the Fire Mage one last hug and walked out the door with tears still wet on my cheeks.

It was another hour before Tara woke up and used the Comms to let us know she was OK. We all headed back to the infirmary, finding her sitting up on her cot. She was arguing with one of the other Healers about being allowed to leave. We immediately took the Healer’s side, which she didn’t appreciate – but she did settle back down as we all glared at her together.

Then we had to explain to her what the rest of the fight was like and how we’d made it back to the school. One of the other injured students was able to fill in a few more details of what had happened at the school. It turned out there were two other permanent deaths – one of the lower-Leveled veteran students and one guard.

Four others had been revived, since there were only four Healers that had that Skill at the school. And once they’d used it, it couldn’t be used again for 24 hours. I was sure that it wasn’t a coincidence that PAST had told me it was impossible to revive someone after 24 hours.

Each Healer could bring only one person back, and it took a lot out of them. Since they couldn’t save everyone, they’d prioritized those with the ‘least’ severe fatal injuries. That let them conserve some mana so they could keep the injured alive until they could recover.

The dining hall was unusually quiet that night. The bar, well, it wasn’t… but I supposed that was how some people wanted to deal with what had happened. Thompson had stepped into the dining hall briefly to tell everyone that classes would be cancelled tomorrow and there would be an assembly at 1100 hours.

I spent some time visiting each of my team’s rooms that night, just talking with them and appreciating the fact that we were all still here. We’d finally gotten our wounds fully healed just before dinner – except for Jayce of course. When I hung out with Raylan and Zaire, I felt like things were finally starting to get back to normal between me and the manaborn.

I guess everything that had happened that day had put things in a different perspective for him. It probably helped that they both Leveled from the fight, reaching 5, though neither of them had decided on their new Skills yet. I gave them both hugs before I went back to my room.

Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work!

I sat down on my bed and took a deep breath. Normally I would have been excited about Leveling, but it felt… hollow. It wasn’t going to bring Alex back, but at least it would help me get a bit stronger so I could protect my friends that much better next time things went to shit.

“PAST, Level up and put my free point in Barrier.”

I felt ashamed at the rush of pleasure that accompanied my new Level, but there wasn’t anything I could do about it. Inspect.

I guess I Leveled some Skills today too, though I don’t remember PAST saying anything. I was a bit out of it after the fight, though.

[Are you ready for your System chest, Gunner?!]

“Can I wait?”

[Level Up rewards expire after twelve hours, Citizen! Unless you’d like to pay a modest fee of – ]

“Fuck, just give me the Wasted chest then!”

My Level 6 chest was the smallest one I’d seen. It looked barely big enough to hold a loaf of bread, if you didn’t mind squishing the loaf a bit. Inside the wooden box, there was a smaller metal box. When I opened that, I found a set of six shells, each in a little individual slot within the metal. Identify.