The Pinnacle Warrior

“I don’t wanna hear whatever criticism you have. But actually, please tell me,” Astrid said as the wyvern corpse cooled on the ground behind her.

“I’ll be honest with you,“ Benedict said, though he wasn’t the one that Astrid was actually talking to, “I don’t really get the whole obsession with figuring out every tiny little thing that your Skills can do. From what I can tell, you used to be stretching yourself to learn some more things that you can do that’re useful, but now you’re just finding whatever thing, stupid or otherwise, is possible. Focusing the Spectre Burst or whatever to only hit one monster? Good thing to test out. Testing if you can transition all of the mana from one aspect of the Skill to the other? Again, good test. But I don’t see what the use is of weakening the Skill so much that nobody can feel it like you’re doing now. What’s the use case for that? When are you ever going to need a thirty centimeter area of effect that nothing larger than a grasshopper is going to notice?”

“It’s to understand my Skill’s limits!” Astrid replied. “If I don’t know how small it can go, how will I…”

As she trailed off, Benedict raised his eyebrows and gestured for her to continue. She didn’t really have anything else for that, because he was right, and that she didn’t know what the use case for that would be, but she figured she needed to experiment. After all, she needed to understand how the Skills worked in general. Instead of continuing to talk to the Bard, she looked at Skandr, who shrugged.

“What are you trying to get out of this experiment in particular?” he asked instead of reassuring her or siding with Benedict.

“I just want to know what I’m capable of. How will I know what I can do if I need to in the future if I don’t experiment now?”

“That’s true,” Skandr nodded. “Knowledge for its own sake is plenty valuable, I’m never going to say anything to the contrary on that. But again, do you have a purpose for doing this? Is there a reason why you think that you should learn these things?” 

“I want to shove it in the Golden Fist’s face of all that I’ve learned when we run into them again,” she said, not hesitating to reveal the pretty petty reason. “They could have taught me a dozen different ways and treated me like a damn adult, and instead, they treated me like a slow child. I want to shove it in their faces.”

“That’s what I thought,” Skandr nodded. “I agree with the idea that you need to know what your Skills can do. I don’t think what you’re doing right now is useless.“

“However,” Astrid grumbled as his shoulders shifted.

“However,” Skandr agreed. “However, you’re not a Wizard. You’re not a Spellblade. You don’t have Boon of the Mana-Touched. I don’t think you’ll ever have any of those things. Do you?”

“No,” Astrid snorted. “That possibility is long gone. Didn’t even really consider the Spellblade option when I got it.”

“Then why do you want to treat one of your Skills like it’s one aspect of a spell?” Skandr asked. “Because, while this is a pretty flexible Skill, and you can probably find some corners of it that can be used more creatively, it’s always going to be a Skill meant for trapping and killing things. It’s never going to be a Skill meant for flying, for moving yourself, or for strengthening your allies.”

Astrid took a long, deep breath. Of course, he was right, and she knew it. After taking a few seconds, she asked, “Do you think that I’m focused too much on showing off that I’m not as inflexible as before instead of just learning how to use my Skills more effectively?”

“I think you’re crossing the line,” Skandr nodded, and when she looked at the other members of the party, Astrid got a very similar response.

“It’s just hard to look at what you’re capable of and not want to be able to do something similar myself,” she justified.

“Which makes sense,” Skandr replied with a shrug. “But you don’t need your Skill to be able to grab a wyvern by its neck and dispel its winds or pull a monster from under the ground as well as freeze water and make you fly. Understanding flexibility in your Skill will be valuable, but you don’t need it to do all these other things that it isn’t made for. I think the experimentation is right, I think you’re just looking for flexibility that isn’t useful. Maybe when we’ve been Steel for longer, the experimentation  will be right, but for now, maybe slowly broaden your experience.”

“Now that he says that,” Benedict said, “I want to disagree a little. I mean, there’s no harm in doing what you’re doing, and more flexibility will always be good. I just think that maybe you’re looking for progress earlier than you should and to do something the Skill maybe can’t quite do.”

“And stepping forward steadily will serve me better than to run rampant trying everything,” Astrid agreed. “Just slow down a little. I’ve only been in Steel tier for a week at this point.”

Astrid squared her shoulders and smiled before she moved on from that part of the conversation, refocusing on the bits of Spectral Graviton that would best serve her in battle. Now that she’d had more opportunities to explore what she could do in Steel tier, even just a little, she was missing some of the utility of Gravity Surge. As the Skill was higher tier, of course, it was more impactful than the original, Iron tier one. However, the two aspects of the Skill were only a bit stronger than they had been in Iron tier, respectively, except it now did both of the same time for what would be a reduced cost.

Of course, by nature, the Skill was one that allowed her to push more into it to get more out of it, more flexible than the Skills that’d made it. However, there was kind of a baseline if she wasn’t thinking too hard about it, of a Moderate cost to both mana and stamina. Her mind was wandering, and she forced herself to refocus on the experimentation. For now, her focus would need to be on making the effect more “Spectral” or “Graviton”. From there, if there was more experimentation that needed to go on, she would do it, but she sighed and turned to Muti.

“How close are we to the seventh floor?”

“Less than three kilometers,“ Muti responded.

Astrid nodded and checked her experience. 32,492/300,000.

That was good progress, considering how they were all focusing more on experimenting for now, but it had been three days since they started hunting the wyverns in earnest in the nest. To Astrid‘s estimation, they’d killed 73, as well as the nightmares. Ever since there had started to be two of the lesser dragons appearing at the same time, the party had slowed the speed of their descent, but more out of an abundance of caution than because they were struggling. 

“I vote that we take a break between the seventh and eighth floors, keep pushing until then,” Felix said.

The other members of the party had varying responses, but despite how long they’d been pushing today, nobody had any real complaints and they hustled onto the next floor. The only real difference as they went deeper, once the wyvern had started hunting in pairs, was that their levels climbed. Unlike with some monsters they’d fought before, the party could feel the difference with each level that the monsters got. The way their levels scaled meant that they gained something like 30 points in Power and Fortitude per level, and now that they were on the lower floors, every single one of the wyverns was level 60, with what Astrid estimated to be Power and Fortitude somewhere around 750 to 800. The conversation that Skandr’d had with the rest of them in the Trials to detail how much monsters would grow stronger had used Wyverns in particular as an example, and though their per level growth was slightly lower than Astrid’s the boost from the watersheds they passed brought them higher than the exceptional Wanderers.

At least, according to the Verdant Walkers, none of the wyverns would cross the watershed and reach level 61, which continued to hold true across the seventh floor as well. The second hunting pair of wyverns they encountered wasn’t distracted by nightmares, and instead swooped towards the party. Skandr was continuing to experiment with his hands spell, which he still refused to give a good name to, and he used it to haul one of the wyverns down earlier than it planned.

It tumbled across the ground, sending shockwaves towards the delvers as its mate was pulled towards Felix with his attention drawing Skills. Unlike the monsters’ brief immunity Skill, Felix could use Defender’s Mandate and Raging Guardian as many times as his mana and stamina would allow, and he forced the monster to turn away from Skandr at the last possible moment, just as he’d learned before.

“It’s strange,” Astrid called out as she threw herself at one of the wyverns, “that I’m not feeling so stressed about these fights when we’re fighting dragons.”

“They are not true dragons,” Muti answered simply as she decapitated the wyvern held captive by Skandr’s magical hand constructs. “Thus, they are weak.”

“They’re not weak,” Astrid disagreed. “That said, they’re not nearly so scary now, and I’m feeling more casual towards them by the day.”

“It’s only been three days,” Benedict scoffed. “Don’t go getting ahead of yourself.”

“You know what I mean,” Astrid shook her head as she concentrated on moving more of the “spectral” aspect to her Skill into the head of her hammer as she smashed it into the wyvern‘s skull. She had very limited success in what she was trying to do, but the bone and scales crunched together under the influence of the Skill, collapsing into a condensed sphere for several seconds before they fell.

“I feel like we’ve already had this conversation,” Skandr said. “I’m kind of sick of having it, if I’m honest. Our plan is to push into the next few floors, finish our assignment, maybe kill a dragon Boss, and then get to the Dungeon proper, right? I don’t think that we need to make a whole big deal about how difficult or not this particular thing is.”

Astrid waved him off, though she didn’t disagree. “I’m just trying to make conversation,” she said.

“Then let’s have a conversation we haven’t had every day,” he said back. “What are you looking forward to doing once we finish up here in the Sanctuary? After all, even if we end up staying past the end of the second watershed of Steel, we’re not going to live here like the people in the Neverwood. So I’ll go first: part of me wants to make a massive Wizard’s tower.”

Skandr gave a massive smile of that, a particularly boyish look on him as he looked at the others. Muti quickly spoke up, “I will prove my worth to the Horde which threw me out.”

“Yeah, we know that,” Skandr gestured for her to continue as she led them towards the next fight. “How about something that the rest of us don’t necessarily know?”

She pursed her lips before her pointed ears twitched, and she allowed herself a small smile. “I wish to teach children. Perhaps my own, but to provide training, to push them to be successful in this world.”

“You’ve always wanted to teach, or at least been willing to,” Skandr replied, “but this is the first time I’ve heard about children specifically. Do you like children?”

“They are cute,” Muti chuckled. “They are strong as well, and most rewarding to teach. To raise a child is one of the greatest callings one can receive.”

“Your people don’t really have families, right?” Astrid asked. “Like, people aren’t raised by their parents.”

“It is different from the Human way,” Muti answered, “but it is still children born to parents and protected by their parents until they are of an age where they can be taught to be a part of the Horde. After that, they are integrated with the rest of their litter and taught to work together.”

“Work together?“ Astrid laughed. “Does that look like the way you tried to work together with me when we first met?”

“That was an establishment of authority,” Muti shrugged. “The litter will bear many forms as the children grow, with each child gaining different responsibilities in accordance with their inclinations and abilities. None of that is solidified until the day that they are given their Classes and made adults. Then, the new generation is integrated wherever their Classes are best suited.”

“So the litter,” Astrid confirmed, “isn’t really returned to the parents until… ever?”

“No,” Muti answered. “They must become more familiar with the responsibilities that they have as members of the Horde. There is no need for them to return to the tents of their parents, unless they will follow in their parents’ steps and become one of that same Class or responsibility.”

Astrid wanted to ask something else, but instead, she was cornered by Skandr. “How about you, brave leader? Are you going to do anything other than show the Golden Fist up?”

In response, she could only shrug. “I’ve always said that my goal is to become an Arcanite tier delver. That’s what comes next, moving towards that.”

Skandr shook his head. “That’s a path, that’s not what comes for you after. Can you truly say that, once we don’t have quite so much of a threat hanging over our heads, you don’t have a couple side adventures you want to go on through this journey?”

A thought crossed Astrid‘s mind and she felt her cheeks heat. It was subtle enough that nobody would be able to recognize it without her helmet on, but with it on, she was sure that nobody knew of her brief display of embarrassment. Even so, the rest of her party seemed to look at her with a knowing smirk, but before she could say anything, Felix said, “I wish to have more opportunities to relax. To spend them with Muti.”

The overbearing attempt at romance had a shudder run down Astrid’s back, and Benedict said, “Okay, whatever. I don’t wanna hear it. I just want to hurry up and get to the point where I don’t have to worry about random nobles coming and making me a slave. Honestly, the rest of it isn’t as important to me. I wouldn’t mind getting a little bit more rest time, but I’m looking forward to not having to be in the Dungeon as often.”

His words were a sobering reminder that he didn’t want to do this forever, and Astrid swallowed any words she was going to say. Instead, she just nodded. Nobody had much to comment on that to Benedict, though Skandr did ask, “You looking to have a family? You’re no longer quite as nervous around women, so are you hoping you might be able to convince somebody to spend their life with you? I’m told Bards’re pretty good at that.”

“Ha,” Benedict fake laughed. “Yes, I would like to find somebody to spend my life with. I don’t think I’m the only one, though.”

Felix and Muti obviously didn’t need attention in that respect, so the three looked at Astrid and Skandr for an answer. Skandr shrugged, and gave an answer without any resistance, “I wouldn’t mind finding romance along the way, but that’s not really my number one hope.”

No longer able to avoid it, Astrid sighed as the rest of her friends stared at her meaningfully. “There’s plenty of beautiful men and women,” she said with a shrug, “ and I wouldn’t mind finding somebody to at least try something out with at some point.”

“So the Dungeon-obsessed woman can think of things outside of the Dungeon,” Benedict laughed, though not meanly. Instead, he smiled and looked expectantly at her. “What kind of person are you interested in? Have you ever had anybody catch your eye? How about flings?“

“Not really,” Astrid shrugged, feeling uncomfortable. “There was a guy back home that I trained with that was pretty good looking, if a total prig. Maybe, if somehow, I’ve gotten a Class that wouldn’t let me delve at all, I could have seen myself settling down with him, but that feels wrong. Markus was nice.”

Benedict leaned forward to continue to press her for more information even though she felt a pang of sadness at the mention of the Pugilist who’d been taken prisoner, but the shriek of an approaching wyvern pulled the party out of their idle conversations, and Astrid breathed a sigh of relief. When she saw the wyvern that approached, though, there was something off about it. The first was that it was obviously larger than the others that they’ve been fighting so far. It wasn’t so much that she would have noticed it without having seen so many, but it was probably a couple meters larger than all the others, and despite the fact that every wyvern they had found from the fifth floor onward had come in a pair, it was all alone.

“Its face is different,” Muti reported as she took measure of the monster. Astrid couldn’t see the difference for herself, but she believed the Barbarian and watched as the wyvern wheeled higher into the air and shrieked a challenge.

“Skandr,” Astrid said, a thought crossing her mind, “I don’t want experimentation, I want a spell that will hold this thing down. It might be an irregular.”

Little things that she hadn’t paid attention to, slight differences in the feel of the mana, the unusual strength of the monsters with them all being at the peak of the limits of their strength with four levels left to descend, and the Verdant Walkers’ urgency in requesting them to cull the branch came together. Were they expecting a surge? 

There was no way to tell, only to make sure that they got through this fight. Astrid rolled her shoulders, and hoped that she was wrong as the wyvern looked down, and it began to dive.