The Pinnacle Warrior

The old Druid Greely had made himself available to the Wanderers without hesitation since they had decided to stay here while training with the Golden Fist. He’d made contact with the Grove that he knew, and they could only wait to see if the Verdant Sanctuary would allow them long-term residence. Interestingly, his Druid Class seemed to grant him some extensive clarity with regards to area of effect magic and he assisted both Benedict and Skandr in their training when he wasn’t dealing with external issues. In retrospect, Astrid shouldn’t have been surprised by that, but she hadn’t thought about what exactly a Druid’s magic was. She’d never met one and had heard precious few stories of them growing up. In many ways, however, he explained his Class to function much like Benedict‘s; focused on supporting others as they fought through providing some measure of intent with his mana as he channeled Skills and so on.

“What can I do for you, Greely?” Astrid asked. “I do have a little bit of time right now, but we’re trying to take advantage of as much time as we can get with our new instructors.”

“Yes, it is invaluable,” Greely agreed, “to gain insight from people who have recently ascended to Arcanite.”

As Astrid nodded in agreement, she asked, “They haven’t told us, but do you know what level they are now? Or even what level they entered the Trials at?”

“I do not know,” Greely answered. “I would guess that they entered at at least level 198, if not 199. Regardless of how much additional experience is given while within the Wandering Trials, any experience gained in the Adamantine tier is hard won.”

Astrid shrugged and returned to the original subject. “What was that he wanted to speak with me about?”

“Yes, of course,” Greely nodded. “Something you may not have learned in its totality just yet is how ponderous the Verdant Walkers can be when it comes to making decisions. The only ones that you have spoken with are those who have actively left their comfort zone to fight for their position in the Wandering Trials. As a people, they are largely content to make themselves comfortable and live as trees except when necessity dictates otherwise. I have requested expediency in their consideration, so I would guess that you will have, altogether, a month before we have any answer regarding your continued presence here.”

Astrid‘s eyes widened as she understood just what she was being told. “A month? What are we supposed to do here for all that time? I’d imagine that forcing our way into one of their Dungeon branch access points somewhere nearby would be an amazingly stupid idea, right?”

“That is correct.”

Astrid groaned, looking at the members of the Golden Fist that she knew could hear her and said, “I can’t imagine they’re sticking around for too much longer, and certainly not for a month.”

“Nope! We’ll be leaving here in four days, giving you a full week with us,” a faint puff of mana appeared in front of Astrid, taking the face of Isana. The strange facsimile of life remained just for long enough that the features began to morph into something alien and offputting before it disappeared.

Astrid so desperately wanted to say something about how creepy it was, but she held herself back from potentially annoying the Arcanite tier Dungeoneer. Instead, she shook her head and looked at Greely. “What are we supposed to be doing for the other three weeks? I guess we can just train here, which wouldn’t be so bad for Skandr and Muti, but I don’t think that the rest of us would have much of an opportunity to grow if we were just here doing drills.”

“That is the reason why I am here,“ Greely reminded Astrid. Different from how he’d been for a short time, he largely had returned to his deliberate, calm bearing that he’d had back in Purcell instead of his more earnest apologies he’d not hesitated to make here.

Astrid nodded, and asked, “Do you need to take a seat or anything?”

“No, thank you. I’m not so frail as to need a youngster’s consideration,” he laughed. “There are simply a few things to speak with you about. Most pressing is this: I offer my services for transporting the Wanderers party within the bounds of Humanity’s Bulwark while we remain waiting for the Verdant Walkers’ answer.”

“As in you’ll teleport us around like you did for us to get here?“ Astrid felt her jaw drop at the thought.

“Strictly speaking, no, not like that,” Greely answered. “Instead of spending a week preparing myself for the Tree Stride that brought us all the way here from Purcell, I would be able to hasten our journey through several uses of smaller Tree Strides every day. Would you be interested in perhaps visiting a couple places within the bounds of the Bulwark?”

The thought of seeing her parents made Astrid knee-jerk want to say that yes, of course, but she thought for a moment longer and sighed before she shook her head.

“If we’re staying out of the country to keep ourselves safe, then I don’t think moving a little bit faster through the assistance of a Mithril tier Druid would be able to keep us safe from the threats that loom.“

Greely slowly nodded and said, “You’re right. I remain fixed in my perceptions of what threats exist on the surface, thinking of the past and not the present. Instead, would you like for me to ask if there are any who would want to join us here? There can only be maybe two or three that I bring at a time, but having visitors might help dispel the boredom while also providing greater opportunities to train while you’re unable to delve.”

Astrid‘s thoughts immediately went to her parents, but the last she’d heard of them was that they were in an active battle zone, even if the conflict was cooling. She pursed her lips and realized that, other than her parents and Ahna (and by extension Jan, Ahna’s boyfriend), she didn’t have any close friends other than her party. They’d made associations at every town they began delving in, but they moved too quickly for the people who were their level when they arrived to consider them as friends while people with higher levels were threatened by the speed of their progress.

Other than her party, she only really had one friend, if she wasn’t thinking of Guinevere and Moira, the two women she’d befriended in Schteldt. And they surely wouldn’t consider her a friend after so long without contact, she was sure.

“Maybe it’s just better to have trainers come,” Astrid answered in a soft voice. “I’ll talk to the others and see if there’s anybody they want to have come, but I don’t think that there’s anybody who would be able to come visit me that I would want to have here.”

“If that is what you want,” Greely answered, but he continued, “And if somebody were to become unexpectedly available to come visit, who would you like it to be?”

“My parents. But my mom‘s on the southern front and she’s not going to be able to leave an active war zone just because I asked for it, while my dad‘s there to help her out and wouldn’t leave her.”

“And anybody else?“ Greely asked. His intent was obviously just to be thorough, but it made a pang of loneliness settle into Astrid. Did she regret all that she had done for these past two years? She’d pushed herself into the Dungeon time and time again, spending the vast majority of her wakeful life within, even getting to the point where she would spend three days in and one night out towards the end. That was a sacrifice she’d made, and relationships were the price she paid.

What would happen if her party split? Or if one of them died? She’d been painfully close to that with Felix, and there was no telling if Muti would decide that she needed to return to the Hordes alone. Astrid had always wanted to be a hero, but was this what that would mean for her in the long term? Would she have only two or three people beyond the party she was with that even knew the real her? Or would she somehow have some way of building a relationship with other people?

“No, nobody else,” Astrid answered past the lump in her throat. She could ask for Ahna, she knew, but she was working on fulfilling her dream of a domestic life outside of the control of her parents, Astrid couldn’t pull her from that. By now, in the year and a half since last they had seen each other, surely the Baker and Guard had purchased or rented a small home of their own. Could Ahna be married or even pregnant? Then there was Guinevere and Moira. What would they be doing now? Surely they hadn’t expected it to be years before they even heard from Astrid, but it had nearly been two since she left for Kznietch. Would it be presumptuous of her to send a letter? Did she even trust that her intentions were pure for that or was she just desperately looking for human connection?

She shook her head. Life continued moving, and Astrid had signed up for a life without most of the bonds that typically kept people together and sane. She’d just have to keep herself Human in all the important ways somehow.

“Very well. I will see if I can find your parents and they can acquire leave to come and see you. I did have something else I wished to speak with you about, since we are speaking. It pertains to something that you need to make a decision on as a party as well.“

Astrid squinted towards Greely with a hint of confusion, nodding as she waited for his explanation.

“There is the question of what you would like to have done with your equipment. Are you going to try to purchase it?”

Astrid’s stomach dropped as she immediately began doing calculations on which of her pieces of equipment she could stand to lose. Obviously, she couldn’t afford to keep the entire set of Dungeon Silver armor. It must cost well over 100 gold. The hammer and gambeson were both hers, so there was no need to worry about those, but she needed to choose between all of her other equipment, didn’t she? And then there were the spatial pouches, which she didn’t think she’d be able to go back to a regular backpack or a sled like they had been using before they started their journey. Then, Greely said something that made Astrid’s heart sink further.

“I don’t know if you did this, but very frequently, people take trophies in the Trials in the hopes of being paid for them, but we don’t have any standing extermination requests here. This is the Trials, there’s no danger of a surge, the monsters never come out. Thus, the Guild doesn’t pay for proof of slaying and will only pay for the intrinsic value of the materials you’ve collected.”

“Why didn’t you tell me that!” Astrid snapped, drawing most of her party’s attention to her. They hadn’t been actively paying attention to her conversation, instead focused on their own training. Her explosion brought their training efforts to an end, and a stillness settled over the clearing that the Humans had claimed as their own. To Astrid‘s surprise, every member of the Golden Fist seemed to understand what she was talking about as they pulled back from their instruction and, nearly in unison, laughed.

“She just learned about the fact that the Guild doesn’t pay for trophies?“ Leah asked with a chuckle.

“Why did nobody tell us this? We wasted so much time, especially on the lower floors, gathering ears and fangs, throwing them into our spatial pouches, just to throw them away a week later when we got something of higher value. We might even have gotten to a deeper floor if we hadn’t been wasting all that time!”

“I doubt it,” Miriam snorted. “I’m sure that you, like everyone else deemed worthy of entering the Trials, all have pushed yourselves much harder than the majority of other delvers in your tier. That said, you’ve never been on a delving expedition like this. You’ve never been in the Dungeon proper, and so you don’t understand just how important it is to constantly be taking breaks when you’re spending weeks in unfamiliar, hostile land.”

“Truly,“ Saul added. “Until one has experienced the Dungeon proper, one does not understand just how important it is to be resting at every opportunity that presents itself.”

Astrid scowled but didn’t say anything. She already knew that she was pushing herself, and by extension the rest of her party far beyond what they ordinarily would have been able to deal with on the fiftieth floor. She’d noticed that even taking the short time to cut some materials from the monsters they’d faced had given them all an opportunity to catch their breaths. If they hadn’t done that, Astrid couldn’t say if anybody, even herself with Immortal Warrior’s Body, would have been able to react as quickly against the dragon turtle.

“Nobody is ever warned about that,” Greely resumed speaking. “Those who enter the Steel tier door and above already know, but they’ve also learned the lesson of how to actually pace themselves through more extended delving sessions.”

Astrid nodded, frustrated as her calculations of how to pay for everything that she had went out the window. She slumped and asked, “How much is it going to cost for each of us? We can prioritize which pieces of equipment are the most valuable.” She didn’t wait for an answer before she started gesturing at her party. “Skandr! You’ll be keeping your robe, Benedict, you’ll keep your flute and cap, and Felix, you’ll keep your armor set. From there, we’ll see what we can afford.”

“Well,” Greely spoke loud enough for his voice to be carried over the Wanderers coming together and beginning to discuss what to prioritize, “let’s see how much everything will cost as well as what your materials are worth before you start deciding what you can’t keep.“

Astrid nodded, her stomach twisting at the thought of how much all of this would cost. Then, when she heard the number, she nearly gagged.

“The budget, after reducing the price due to it being internal guild sales, was two hundred and fifty gold per set of equipment.“

“In total, we have to pay over twelve hundred gold back? The most expensive piece of equipment we’ve gotten until now was less than a hundredth of that price!”

“After the price reduction, yes. That isn’t counting your spatial pouches,” Greely continued, his tone business-like and making Astrid yearn to punch him in the mouth, “each of which costs an additional one hundred gold, bringing the total, if you wish to stay as equipped as you are now, one thousand, seven hundred and fifty gold.”

Astrid almost wanted to cry as she heard that. The spoils from killing a Boss for the first time before they’d come to the Trials, the troll, was about ten gold in total. Even if they multiplied that value by 100 to account for the dragon turtle, it wouldn’t be enough to pay for them to keep their equipment, much less their spatial pouches.

“Is it even worth it trying to sell what we have?” Astrid whined.

“Well, what would you like to sell?“ Greely asked. “We haven’t seen what’s in your pouches, so it would probably be for the best to see what you might be offering before you start losing all hope.”

“Sure,” Astrid answered, no hope coloring her voice as she pulled her pouch from her hip and began pulling things out. She still carried the club from the Boss on the fortieth floor as they all hoped that it might be worth something, banded with thick manasteel as it was. A couple bundles of fangs from feathered serpents as well as their feathers followed, as well as many more drake fangs, especially those from the matriarch. Treant bark, minotaur horns, worm devourer heads, wendigo claws, and yeti fangs followed. Finally, she pulled the magma moray and inferno wolf corpses out, the higher level, magically potent monster corpses being pulled out last, and with less care put into their harvesting.

Greely pulled a paper out of nowhere and began writing on it at a frenzied pace. A dozen seconds later, Astrid’s heart still in her throat, he said, “All of this will be about three hundred and fifty gold, after paying the necessary taxes to the Verdant Walkers.”

Astrid paused, looking at the Guild representative. Then, as he continued looking at her without worrying, she said, “Just what I pulled out? All of this is worth all that gold, not if all five of us have the same things?”

“No, what you’ve pulled out is worth about five hundred and fifty gold, but because we’ve entered the Verdant Sanctuary for the Wandering Trials, there is a hefty tax to be paid.” He seemed entirely unconcerned as he said it, and Astrid blinked several times.

“How is it worth that much? How can you tell so quickly?” She demanded, feeling weak.

“This,” Greely answered, holding the Boss’s club up with a casual ease, “is worth nearly fifty gold. It’s high Iron quality of manasteel, and there’s a good… sixty kilos of it. That’s what it’s worth. Although some of these materials seem to have been kept more out of nostalgia than necessity and it would be worth  more if they were a higher quality material. For example, these feathered serpent fangs? I have heard the story as to how Felix was put in dire straits by these monsters, but they do not have the same worth as the materials of the drakes, regardless. As for how I can estimate the value of different materials, that is because I can sense the density of mana contained within each. For example, take these two drake fangs.”

He held up a fang from the matriarch as well as a one from an ordinary monster. Of course, Astrid had no idea which fang was of higher quality, other than those from the matriarch, but Greely explained, “This one is significantly more mana dense than the other. Either it comes from a higher watershed or, more likely, from the floor guardian. Thus, the regular fang is worth about twenty silver while the one from the guardian is worth about fifty.”

Him saying that reminded Astrid of the single time that her party had sold a drake before. It was level 21 and the materials were, because of the poison left by the Gloomstalker Christophe, greatly reduced in value, all weakened as they were. Even so, the party had been paid seven gold for that one corpse. Much of that value came from its hide, which the party had then turned into armor, but the fact remained that it was a particularly valuable monster, damaged and from a much weaker specimen.

“All told, these smaller materials, fangs and so on, are worth in total about another two hundred gold.”

Astrid wanted to say something in response, but she’d already interrupted him enough, she thought, so she just stared. He’d obviously anticipated her to say something, because he just chuckled and shrugged.

“You’re used to Bronze tiered monsters and their values. Maybe, because you were thinking about payment for those materials and the regular costs you’d experienced in your life before delving, you thought of that as how higher tier delvers end up rich. That is incorrect. Most Bronze tier monster materials are paid out in coppers. Iron tier monster materials are paid out in silvers.”

Suddenly, everything made a lot more sense. If she was to guess, she had maybe 100 feathered serpent fangs and twice as many drake fangs. That alone was, if the feathered serpent materials were half that of the drake ones, fifty gold. Other materials were more valuable, but they’d spent less time harvesting in the last days in an effort to ensure that they remained in the lead.

“And the rest,” Greely continued, “comes from the inferno wolves and magma morays. Something you’ll learn as you continue to delve is that the flesh and organs from monsters that live within extreme climates are valuable alchemical reagents. The complete body of a magma moray is worth about thirty gold and a complete inferno wolf is worth about fifty.”

Astrid looked down at the three morays and two wolves and swallowed. Without the exorbitant taxes being laid on her, these five monsters alone would nearly be able to pay for her equipment, not counting the spatial pouch. 

“Of course, due to the Guild’s pricing,” Greely continued, “you are purchasing at about half of the price of what the equipment is worth, and the Wandering Trials notoriously provide exotic and valuable monsters that are extremely difficult to find otherwise.”

Astrid’s dreams of suddenly becoming the richest person around dissipated, but she nodded. “If that’s the case, then we’ll be able to pay for our equipment, if only barely.”

“What do you mean?” Greely asked with a wide smile. “Surely you haven’t forgotten about your most valuable prize?”

Astrid turned her vision to Aleksandr, who’d taken the dragon turtle corpse for the Wanderers when they’d just returned. She hadn’t thought twice about it since, but Greely’s question shook her from looking at the man: “Don’t you want to know the value of an entire, exotic and valuable monster with draconic lineage that thrives best within an active volcano?”