Worthy Core

"Stop, wait! NOO-" The screaming of the elvish Archer was cut short as Lollyp's heavy steel axe dug itself into the floor, making its way through her skull as it did so. The room was silent then for a moment, but not for long as Lollyp turned to the sound of clapping coming from the dungeon master behind her.

"Hot damn, girl! Look at you fucking go! If I was paying you, you'd be able to count on a raise, believe me." Xenia gestures at the boss chamber, and Lollyp spares herself a grin as she looks at her handiwork. Not far from the door was the steaming corpse of an elf in heavy armor. He'd been the first to go, with Lollyp swinging her way out of the ceiling and knocking him into one of the pools of boiling acid. He'd managed to pull himself out, but with his armor full of acid, it's unlikely he would have survived even if he'd received immediate healing. In the center of the room sits the still-burning corpse of a small woman in black, where Lollyp had quickly turned around and hit her with a five-second wand-powered flamethrower attack. The elvish woman had been unable to put out the flames on her companion, but the fact that she'd tried had given Lollyp the chance to recover one of the heavy weapons hidden around the room, and from there it was all over - the Archer's mundane arrows did virtually no damage to the slime woman, and she could only dodge so many times before her luck had run out.

Of course, Lollyp couldn't claim the entire party herself. The Mage had fallen first, with the new slime in the Slip'N'Slide room working exactly as Xenia had hoped - he had overconfidently rushed into the pool to get the room's key, been caught by the hidden slime, and crushed soon after by falling rock traps. It had thrown the intruder party off early, though they had managed to make their way through the rest of the floor without too much trouble. That ended when they took the elevator down, when their gnoll Cleric had the misfortune to have two ambushing orc skeletons land right next to her, cutting her down before her party could react. Xenia expected them to call the attempt off after that, but apparently they sensed that the final boss room was all that stood between them and a full dungeon clear and decided to take the risk. Sadly for them that final boss was a now fully upgraded Lollyp, or at least as fully upgraded as their current tiers would allow.

Lollyp smiles at the praise, but loses it as she finds a nearby decorative rock to take a seat on. "Thanks, and it was a good workout, but thinking about it now I think I might've messed up. Maybe I should've taken a fall?"

Xenia tilts her head. "Why would you wanna do that? On your first real boss fight, even?"

Lollyp stretches, then lifts her hands. "Ten percent." She raises her fingers, stops to count them, and grows a few more to get to the required ten.

"You want...what? A ten percent cut?"

The slime shakes her head. "Ten percent is the average fatality or career-ending casualty rate of a dungeon intrusion. It's not evenly distributed, of course. Half of that is Initiates in their first year of challenging, and a lot of the rest are full-party wipes from groups who get in over their heads. The average professional who makes it to their Advanced training can usually have a pretty steady career. But when Lady Cerise asked us to kill Rainlanders, I don't think she really meant all of them. If more parties are like this one, we might wanna figure out a number somewhere between ten percent and...well, a hundred."

The dungeon master shrugs. "Eh, not too worried about it right now. For all we know, this was just one of those really unlucky parties. I mean, they lost half their team and just kept on going? The elevator has an up button! They extremely brought this on themselves. And I don't want you holding back just to find out that someone is actually a match for you, you know."

Lollyp smirks at that. "I don't know. I think we established that I can take on a lot. Maybe even too much." Xenia blushes a bit, remembering their 'tests' the previous day. They'd discovered that there were some truly...interesting side benefits to being part of a dungeon. Xenia herself no longer suffered from physical tiredness, only perhaps the mental kind, and while Lollyp could grow tired her Boss status allowed her to catch her breath and pick back up within minutes. They had eventually ended their testing not because they grew exhausted from it, but because they mutually agreed that if they didn't find something else to do, it would be the only thing the two of them would do. And as they saw today, the dungeon was still far from forgotten by the outside world.

Xenia looks around for a distraction, and finds one in the vanishing corpses. "Oh, look at that, we officially won. Guy! What's our prizes?"

The guide joins the pair from the core chamber, popping up their intrusion report as they arrive.

Guy produces their own best simulation of a clapping effect. "Very well done, to the both of you! An excellent use of traps and ambushes, and fine footwork on Lollyp's part. I would never have guessed you were trained as a Mage, and not as a Warrior!"

Xenia mumbles to herself as she reads through it. "Mrmmm...good for the killcounts, and a new floor, nice, but the equipment they were carrying must've been absolute shit. I mean, damn, the only new thing they had on them was their bones. How's that for a legacy? Though speaking of, how do classes work around here? We got 'Mage' skills from you, so I'm guessing that dude upstairs was just another basic Mage, is that shit standardized and all that?"

Lollyp stands up to return her axe to its hidden nook. "Mostly, at the Initiate level. Every military training program may have a few slight differences, and while the Challengers Association is present in every nation, their training programs might vary a bit from branch to branch as well. But only off by perhaps a spell or a skill or two, since an Initiate only has time to learn so many things. If a training program goes way off the beaten trail then it's probably gonna get called something different, only the Domain trains Lashers for example."

The dungeon master raises an eyebrow. "But if a Mage might have different spells depending on where they're from, how does that affect leveling up? Do they get different upgrade options or something?"

The slime's only response is confusion. "Upgrade...options?"

"Like, when a Mage hits level five, do they choose something to get more powerful, or is it just whatever they were first trained in?" Lollyp only seems even more confused, so Xenia decides to try and backtrack. "...Uh, alright. Tell me what levels mean here, cause I think I'm misunderstanding something."

Lollyp shrugs. "Gaining a level doesn't, uh, 'do' anything. It's a promotion. If you clear a dungeon, you may get approved for a level or two, or more if it's a big one. If you accomplish a minor training program or an important mission, that could be a level. Going on a long military campaign might be like, five. Your pay goes up a bit, and every ten levels you qualify to go to a more in-depth training program where you learn a more specialized class. All the militaries on the continent have the same sort of system, and the Challengers picked up something similar, though exactly what qualifies for a promotion could vary from organization to organization. What did you think levels meant?"

Xenia scratches her chin awkwardly. "So like...you don't earn experience from killing shit, and then when you hit a certain amount you get tougher and smarter?"

"...You must've come from a really weird world. Like, just having the gods automatically hand out power to everyone or something? No, I trained as a Mage when I signed up, and when I was promoted to level ten I took on Slime Elementalist training for my Advanced class. If I'd wanted to spend my golden years going back to school, I probably would've taken on Slime Sorcerer for my Expert, but almost no slimes ever actually go up to Expert. The Domain doesn't even have specialized Slime training programs for Master classes, let alone Supreme ones."

"Suppose there's a chance for you now, if anyone's got a dungeon-based homeschool program. Supreme's the top of the rank, then?"

The slime nods. "As far as paperwork goes, yeah. Theoretically there's no upper limit to power, Champions and Paragons are almost always higher than that, but there's no one to train you at classes higher than Supreme, so at that point you're basically making up your own class, if you'd even still think of yourself in terms of classes."

Xenia sighs, rubbing her forehead. "One question's always gotta lead to another fuckin' question, doesn't it. Okay, Champions and Paragons. Those are god-things?"

Guy takes over, giving Lollyp a bit of a lecture break. "I can handle this one. Yes, both represent a chosen of the gods, or at least, a singular god. Champions are usually individuals chosen to accomplish some sort of quest, or task. For example, a nature goddess may choose a Champion to purify a forest overrun by corruption. Paragonhood meanwhile is usually more of an outright reward, either for a successful Championship, great success in dungeons, or whatever other accomplishments a god considers important. It doesn't always mean improved combat ability, for example, the Goddess of Fertility usually chooses people who have had a large number of children to be her Paragons. To inspire the people to follow their examples."

Xenia leans forward, interested. "Oooh? And what does being a Paragon of Fertility actually get you?"

The guide doesn't appear to actually have that detailed level of information, but Lollyp gets an embarrassed grin. "Last one I heard of, it was a dude who could knock up consenting ladies just by making out with them. And if he did it the old fashioned way, it was like, always at least triplets. That's the story I heard, anyhow. I think when she picks ladies, they get like...an aura of increased fertility for all the women who hang around with them, or something. I think they usually end up starting entirely new villages or something like that."

"Heh. Well, here's hoping we don't get any Supremes down here anytime soon, though if a Love Paragon shows up, send em...hold on." Xenia tilts her head, then scowls. "God, fuckin', dammit. Sensing a new party at the door, and it's the worst fuckin' kind. You two have fun, I'll handle this one personally." With that Xenia fades out, teleporting upstairs and leaving two confused dungeon assistants behind her.