The Outlands

The next twenty or so floors were nothing special. They just continued to gradually ramp up the difficulty from the previous floors – more monsters began showing up, more than one type began showing up on one floor, and traps became more commonplace.

The weather continued getting worse too, as much as that was even possible. The wind blew more, the fog was denser, and the snow was even worse. It became normal to have the snow they were trudging through be as deep as two feet, something that would be a great hinderance if Tess wasn’t actively melting it.

That was basically only when it actively snowing, though. In those situations, Tess preferred to keep Phoenix Fire off; there was just too much snow in the air, and the hissing of its evaporation was deafeningly loud. The high winds and low visibility would still hamper their progress significantly, so they weren’t even able to speed up that much, either.

They encountered one of the sheer, vertical climb sections that they had been warned about, but in a way, it was actually easier than the non-sheer ones. Tess and Maven naturally had no trouble getting up, and Ellie’s ride on her swords was stable, so as long as no monsters attacked her, she was safe. That meant Tess and Maven had to deal with the monsters, but they were just the birds from earlier and required no great effort to exterminate.

For their part, the instructors just…took the hoverer. Apparently, if they ramped up its power consumption, it was able to rise a fair distance in the air. They didn’t have to worry about the monsters, either, since Tess and Maven were already taking care of them for Ellie, so they had a smooth ride.

Furthermore, there were few traps on the floor, and it was much shorter than the other floors they had traversed so far. And, to add to that, the couple of traps that were there were attached to the wall, and, so as long as a certain distance was kept from the wall, there was no need to even look for the traps, since the triggers didn’t extend that far away.

It was a shame that they had hit that floor before floor fifteen, otherwise they might have been able to knock the Challenge out then and there. Tess wasn’t timing their ascent, but it certainly felt fast enough to qualify them for the Challenge. Fortunately, they encountered another vertical climb at floor twenty-three, and they were set to attempt the Challenge.

If they were fast enough, that was. Still, like Jin had said before they entered the dungeon, the instructors helped keep their students safe from monsters and traps so they could focus on speed.

Said help came in the form of Ava lounging atop the hoverer and casually sniping any monsters with a spell the moment they showed up. The ease with which she cast the spells and their precision was awe-inspiring; she had the air of someone who was casually kicking pebbles across the road, not someone who was slaughtering whole groups of monsters. She even took care of traps in the same fashion, not that it was particularly necessary.

And those acts of support alone allowed the three younger women to ascend at a reckless pace, paying little regard for normal, “safe”, dungeon crawling procedure. The Challenge’s climb was a fair bit shorter than the other climb floors, too, so it was with relatively little effort that they were able to make it to the top in time.

“I will be honest, I have not been in a Challenge room.” Maven admitted. “My instructors called them a waste of time, seeing as how we were entirely focused on raising my level. Does it operate in the same way as normal Rewards Crystals?”

“Yup.” Alice said. “Just put a hand on it and you’re done.”

Tess didn’t wait for them to finish their talk, choosing instead to place her hand on the Rewards Crystal and obtain the reward as quickly as possible.

Tess looked to Ellie, who seemed to have had a similar idea. “Get anything good?” She asked.

Ellie shook her head. “It’s a dud.” She said. “It’s a Skill that lets me convert some of my own HP into direct damage. It sounds nice, but it only deals like…half of the HP I put into it. It’s just the rare variety of the Skill, though, the rarer versions are better. I seem to recall seeing them and getting interested. Anyway…how about you?”

“Uh…kinda same, actually? Except it’s not a dud.” Tess said. “It sorta looks…super good?”

Ellie raised an eyebrow. “Do tell.”

“Basically, any five things within thirty meters each take ten percent of the damage I take, though it’s reduced by their defenses too. It’s supposed to only have a ten percent chance to work on things that aren’t willing, but….” She trailed off, and Ellie nodded.

“Yeah, I get it.” Ellie replied. “Well, if you don’t have five enemies about, feel free to make me one of those targets. I’m already doing that with Aegis, so a little more isn’t any issue. Actually…” She turned to look at Ava. “How do those two stack? Additive or multiplicative?”

“Multiplicative, sorry.” Ava replied. “Tess isn’t going to be completely immune to damage while you and at least four other things are around. Her reductions should apply first, starting with ones like this that redirect damage and then going onto ones that just reduce it, and then your ability from Aegis will kick in.”

“Shame, but I suppose that makes sense.” Ellie said. “Maven, you get anything decent?”

Maven blinked in surprise. “Uh…I’m…not totally sure, to be honest. It’s a Skill that I spend some Stamina to turn on, and it drains my Stamina for as long as I keep it active, but makes my physical attacks do ten percent more damage.”

“I know the one.” Alice said. “Have it myself, actually. It’s pretty good if you’re going to attack a bunch in a row, but otherwise not great. And since you’re mostly a magic-user, it’s probably not going to be super helpful to you.”

“I understand, thank you.” Maven said. “Shall we move on, then?”

And so, they did, climbing floor after floor until, eventually, they reached the last one. “So…” Tess began, “want to crack open that pamphlet one more time? I want to know what we’re getting into before we just waltz in.”

“Already on it.” Ellie replied, reaching into her bag and pulling out the pamphlet. “Let’s see…it’s something called a Zephyr Eagle, and…well, it looks like it fights dirty. The arena is a nest on the pinnacle of the mountain, and it seems that the boss’s main strategy is to try and push you off of the mountain with wind. It’s got high Agility and pretty decent Magic, but that’s about it. The trouble is pinning it down long enough to do any sort of meaningful damage.”

“I…can do it.” Isabella droned, peeking out from within Tess. “I can keep its wings still…long enough.”

“We’ll be relying on you, then.” Tess said. “I can get close to it, Isabella can cripple it, and then we go to town on it, rinse, repeat. Is there anything in the pamphlet that would suggest that wouldn’t work?”

Ellie looked down at the pamphlet for a while more before handing it to Maven. “I don’t see anything, but two sets of eyes are better than one.”

Maven took the pamphlet gingerly. “Are you sure?” She asked. “I’m not as experienced in these matters as you two.”

Ellie waved a hand dismissively. “Well, everyone’s gotta start somewhere. You’re a member of this party, so you deserve to have some input.”

Tess nodded. “I agree. Besides, there’s a real chance you bring up something that both Ellie and I missed, you’ve got a bit of a different perspective on this than us.”

“Very well then.” Maven replied, looking the pamphlet over. She was silent for a long moment as she read, carefully scrutinizing the document before looking back up at Tess and Ellie. “What do we do if Ellie gets blown away? Tess and I can catch ourselves, but Ellie isn’t so fortunate.”

“I was planning on using my swords as an anchor. I doubt the wind will be strong enough to blow me back if I’m having the swords push against it.”

“And if that doesn’t work?”

“Then we do the thing we were discussing before coming here where Tess catches me. It really shouldn’t come to that, though. If the swords can’t catch me that way, I can thrust them into the ground and hold on using my own power too. It’s not like I’m a lightweight, anyway, with my armor on I’m heavy.”

Maven paused, then nodded. “Alright. And Tess, how are you going to get close? You don’t have any experience in flying in high winds, so I’m a little skeptical.”

“I’m just relying on the Attribute.” Tess replied. “Silky’s got a similar one and it’s never steered her wrong. If that doesn’t work, then we can have Isabella just fly to the boss on her own. She’s not concerned about the wind and she can take a hit or two.”

“I understand. And what if something else happens and we can’t do this specifically? What’s plan B?”

Ellie shrugged. “I figure if things start going too far off the rails, then I could start going all-out and try to kill it on my own. I should have overall better stats, so with my swords I’m definitely better.”

“And…well, if it looks like we’re going to die, I can always…you know…” She trailed off, looking at the other two meaningfully. “It’s basically a guaranteed victory, but I’m really trying not to rely on it, so I don’t develop bad habits.”

Maven blinked. “Right. I…forgot that was an option. I have nothing else to say, then.”

“Let’s do this thing.” Ellie said, walking over to the door. The others followed, and soon they were stepping through into the boss arena. As advertised, they were on top of the mountain, in some sort of huge nest. Beyond the nest, the mountain sloped sharply down, though how far the drop was, Tess couldn’t say – just a few feet down there was a solid wall of clouds stretching out as far as the eye could see, blocking the ground below from view.

There was a screech as the brown bird in the center of the nest spread its wings and took off. It was huge, easily twice the size of Tess, and it looked angry. Aside from the size, the only thing that set it apart from a regular bird was the pulsating streaks of glowing green that ran through its body, their glow intensifying as the wind suddenly picked up.

Tess didn’t waste any more time, spreading her own wings and taking off in pursuit of the bird. It was…well, hard. Good Flier helped keep her from immediately spinning out of control, but it became immediately apparent that she wasn’t going to be able to catch the bird if she just followed after it.

Fortunately, the bird had begun to circle the nest, and it was taking no notice of Tess, its eyes instead focused on Ellie and Maven. So, Tess cut across to the other end of the nest, aiming to meet it the next time it circled around.

And then she was blown completely off course by a particularly strong gust of wind that came from the opposite direction the wind had been blowing just a moment prior. She spiraled for a moment, and then her body stopped, Isabella’s magic keeping her from plummeting any further.

Thanks, Isabella. Tess said. That could have been bad. Thanks given, she resumed her journey to the other end of the circle, keeping a careful eye on Ellie and Maven as she did.

They seemed to be doing fine; neither of them had been thrown off of the cliff, and they were performing counterattacks of their own. Maven was casting some sort of spell, while Ellie had one of her blades peel away from the others and chase the boss.

Tess tore her attention away from them as she reached her destination, waiting for the boss to come close. And, within about ten seconds, it had. Alright Isabella, do your thing. Tess instructed, turning off Phoenix Fire so the bird didn’t pre-emptively take notice of her.

The eagle stopped suddenly, plummeting as its wings stopped working. Tess chased after it, touching down next to it as it fell onto the straw-like material of the nest. She unsheathed her claws, activated her Skills, then thrust down at the eagle’s neck. As she did, all four of Ellie’s swords struck the beast, and a spell of Maven’s scorched its side, leaving Tess as the last one to hit.

She pierced the eagle, withdrawing her claws and waiting for You Are Already Dead to kick in. After a moment, it did, and there was a spray of gore that immediately evaporated into rainbow mist as the eagle’s body disintegrated.

“How much damage did you two deal?” Maven asked, shocked. “That was…like….as fast as my tutors would be able to do it.”

“About two thousand.” Ellie said. “Turns out the Blades of Death are good at killing things. Who woulda guessed?”

“About two and a half thousand here.” Tess said. “Caught me off-guard too. I was…expecting a bit more resistance than that, so I went all in with Skills.”

Maven shook her head in disbelief. “That’s ridiculous. Don’t you have like…eighty Strength?”

“Yeah, but I have a lot of multipliers.” Tess said. “If you take all those away, and I just did like…a normal attack, it only would have been like one hundred and fifty damage. Well…including multipliers I get from using the claws, so if we take those away too, that’s like…ten to thirtyish damage?”

“Fourteen.” Tess corrected. “Give me a second, I’ll tell you how much defense it had, for reference.” She grabbed the core the boss had dropped and absorbed it, glancing over its stats.

“Three hundred Defense on the dot.” Tess confirmed. “Now…let’s go get our reward, we can talk about this more in there.” She motioned to the door that had appeared next to where the eagle had died.

She stepped through the door without waiting for a reply and began sorting through the new Attributes. She’d take Exceptional Flier for herself, since Silky already had it, and would give Silky Wind Surfer when she next upgraded her attendants. Silky would probably benefit far more from Wind Surfer than Tess would, seeing as how Silky was a lot smaller than Tess, and therefore more likely to be blown about by wind.

And Isabella would get Wind Magic and Wind Affinity. Though…she was already pushing their “estimated maximum power”, so she might have to figure something else out. Worst case scenario, she transplanted their memories into other cores, but that was…less than ideal. She liked their current forms a lot, there were a lot of advantages to them that weren’t so easily shown on a status page.

“Tess, are you gonna get your reward?” Ellie asked. “You’ve been spacing out for a bit there.”

“Sorry.” Tess said. “Was just managing the Attributes and stuff.” She walked forward to the Rewards Crystal and laid a hand on it, taking a moment to read over her reward.

“Well?” Ellie asked curiously.

“It’s a Skill that basically lets me swap places with any creature within thirty meters.” Tess said. “So, I can already think of a few uses for it.”

“It’s definitely a good one.” Ava agreed. “It’s gonna take a lot of your Mana, though, so be careful how you use it.”

Tess nodded. “Don’t need to tell me twice. How’d you two fare?”

“I got a buff to fire magic.” Maven said. “Just increases its damage a bit.”

“And I got an active Skill that lets me reflect some damage using a shield. Pretty handy, it seems.” Ellie replied. “So…ready to go again?”