Dungeons and Dalliances

The endless drudgery of classroom academics wrapped up at three p.m., and—as the schedule indicated—next up was extracurriculars. Despite what the name would suggest, they weren’t optional. Everyone was required to enroll in at least one, though more could be taken if chosen.

Natalie didn’t intend on picking up any pointless hobbies, not in an official capacity. Honestly, she didn’t understand the people who did. Drama, art, band, and so on, weren’t pursuits to be disrespected, but as a delver? Surely people had better things to be doing, considering their profession. Doubly true for first years. Despite that opinion, Natalie knew the art clubs didn’t hurt for members. But she herself wouldn’t be joining their ranks.

Which left practical pursuits to fill the mandatory requirement. In Natalie’s case, that was dueling, or a harvesting discipline.

As a paladin, and a person intending to take up the mantle of tank, she was leaning toward mining. The ores that could be gathered from deposits in the dungeon made excellent equipment, supernaturally powerful, imbued with stat-boosts and other advantageous effects. She would have to pay a fee for a metal-worker to handle the material, but it would be vastly cheaper than purchasing the gear outright from the Exchange.

Today—and tomorrow—was a ‘career day’ of sorts, advertising potential options, since many students hadn’t chosen their extracurricular yet. Undoubtedly most had given the topic plenty of thought before arriving to Tenet, but common strategy was to pick a harvesting discipline that matched your class, which wasn’t received until eighteen. Jordan, for example, never would have gone into herb-gathering without having received a class that seemed—so far—inclined toward poisons. Similarly, Natalie wouldn’t have considered mining if she hadn’t received a class—paladin, a heavy armor tank—that made good use of the ores she’d collect.

For two hours—the alloted extracurricular time block set by the Tenet schedule—Natalie wandered the various stations advertising their clubs. She spent the majority of her time at the mining station, listening to the lecturers and picking through the provided information.

Unsurprisingly, the profession was more complicated than Natalie had first thought. Not simply bashing a pickaxe into veins of material and hauling away the valuable resource, Natalie would need to spend fair effort both prospecting for and extracting the ore. Even so, it had a reputation for not being the most complex task. Jordan’s chosen profession—herb gathering—would require a nauseating amount of memorization: the ten million variations of plants found in the dungeon.

So while not simple, it was simpler than many disciplines, which meant mining was up Natalie’s alley, who didn’t care enough to put excessive effort into her extracurricular. By the end of the informational speeches, she felt confident enough she would be committing to mining that she signed her name on the provided sheet. Tomorrow, she would spend her two hours at the mining hall, rather than continuing to explore the career fair.

With that event out of the way, and with the official school day completed, Natalie set out—reasonably—to practice. She was already drained from the previous nine hours, but delvers needed to be accustomed to long days. Some delves lasted entire weeks. Not for low-rankers, true, but high rankers, much less top rankers?

Apparently, trips to the Lower Reaches, much less The Depths or The Abyss—the last categorization of dungeon levels comprising twenty-one to twenty-four, and near mythical to the general populace—could take entire weeks to explore properly.

So, Natalie needed to accustom to long days. Nine hours of classes—both combat and academic—had been draining, but she would make use of the rest of the day, regardless. Plus, she’d be taking a break in the form of the upcoming start-of-semester party, soon enough. Until then, she had a few hours to keep refining the most glaring weakness of hers. Which was to say, illusions—or magic in general.

Natalie’s idea was far from unique. The training facility was almost as packed as it had been in the morning, when attendance was mandatory. She worked her way through the halls mostly from memory, then found her way out into the courtyard—the same one she’d taken classes with Tess in.

There, she scooped up a hammer from the rack of prop weapons and got to work.

The noises and distractions—both visual, and the odder sort of pressure in her head of magic filling the air—faded to the background as she fell into a routine. Frustrating as this process was, she was getting better. Especially now that she hadn’t locked herself into minimizing movement, like many mages did. Natalie had always been a hands-on girl. There was a reason she thrived in physical fights.

So, being able to gesture and link the swinging of her weapon to her illusion spell helped massively. She even thought she might be able to work something simple into spars tomorrow. Definitely, she’d have a grasp—a bare, bare grasp—on the ability by the time next week rolled around, and Tenet allowed them to start delving.

She practiced her ‘flash’ spell, first and foremost. It was the simplest application she could imagine that would be useful. But as thirty minutes ticked into an hour, and sweat beaded on her forehead, she started playing with other ideas. More complex illusions, which weren’t as difficult to construct as she’d have thought. Or, maybe she was getting better.

There were many illusions Natalie could imagine being useful in a fight. Misdirection was crucial, and rather than feints of a normal sort, could Natalie cover herself with an illusion and mask the direction her attacks came from? A literal feint, where her blow came from a false direction? For that matter, could she make herself invisible? How about other distracting images? Something grotesque, that made her opponent hesitate? The flash was useful, but perhaps a crude, unrefined first idea. Could she do better?

That gave her pause. Unbidden, a ‘more refined’, yet ironically, more crude, idea popped into her head.

A flash … of a different sort. That would be effective, wouldn’t it? For drawing attention, or distracting someone?

Natalie flushed, glancing around the courtyard as if someone could read her mind. Rather than a grotesque image, or a blinding burst of light, what if Natalie conjured … other sorts of imagery that was distracting?

Would that even be allowed? Well … of course. While it would be odd, Tenet didn’t put puritan restrictions on how a student could fight. Victory at all costs was the motto of the dungeon, and while dueling had slight restrictions on combat, general spars didn’t. So lewd illusions to stumble her opponent? On the table … just weird. And would probably earn her a reputation.

Again, glancing around the courtyard out of paranoia, Natalie saw no one was paying attention to her. Obviously. They were occupied with their own training. No one was even close enough to see what she planned to do.

Blushing, she turned back forward. She felt compelled to test her newest idea, even if complex imagery had been hit-or-miss.

She steadied her thoughts, focused, drew mana, and executed a natural-feeling pivot, activating [Illusion] with a swipe of her weapon. The motion was becoming quickly instinctive.

She kept it small, barely the size of her hand, so that nobody saw on the off chance they looked over.

It worked.

Except, it wasn’t a hazy image, hard to conjure and maintain, but bright, clear, and so much better than anything else she’d managed so far.

A naked, hand-sized copy of Jordan hung in the air. Natalie’s brain blanked out, seeing it. She hadn’t meant for it to be Jordan. She’d let her instincts guide her, the first thing to pop into her head.

Panicking, Natalie waved her hand through the mist-like illusion and dispelled the image. Her face burned scarlet, and she frantically looked around, but again, nobody was looking her way. Why would they be?

Still, why had she done that? Tested the idea at all … much less with Jordan?

Natalie swallowed, then checked the clock hanging on the courtyard wall. She had about an hour before she needed to go take a shower and head to the party to meet up with Sammy.

Enough time to do a little more testing.

Just, probably not here. Too indiscreet. Too likely to get caught, considering what she wanted to try.

Natalie hung up the hammer in the weapon rack, then scurried away, headed for a secluded bathroom in the training facility.

With how easily the first illusion had come into life, how much more could she do?