The Pinnacle Warrior

Unfortunately, the feathered serpents refused to give the party the several hours they needed to recover back to their peak. They didn’t leave the island, staying directly beside the two corpses that they made of their last enemies. Astrid, and then Muti, set about cutting the teeth from their mouths and steaks from their tails. Before long, they’d set up a fire to cook some fresh food on and were enjoying the smell and sound of sizzling serpent flesh on a pan.

Before the first steak could be finished, one of the serpents appeared, taking a more stealthy approach than its fellows as it fell on the party from above. Like before, Muti could sense its approach, and this time, Skandr had finally perfected a spell to use against it. Something about the feathered serpents in particular made them particularly susceptible to being pushed, whether that be by Gravity Surge, strong winds, or even a particularly determined delver. Their inertia and strength wasn’t to be underestimated, but getting them to move was simpler than any of the party members could have expected.

The serpent flew down and, as it opened its mouth to attack, Skandr’s cloud above it seemed to exhale a massive breath. Wind pounded against the serpent, and it tried to control its descent, but lost the fight against the ambushing spell. With Muti’s warning, the party was able to get out of the radius of the monster’s crushing fall. With the beast on the ground, even though the party hadn’t recovered anywhere near to full, they could quickly deal nearly crippling damage in just a few seconds of concentrated attacks. All three of the weapon fighters had already learned their lesson regarding how tough each of the feathered serpents could be and didn’t hold back. In addition, Benedict used Hasty Rebuke and Song of Vindication together, slowing and weakening the monster while hammer, axe, and blade carved it into pieces.

Shaking off the stun from smashing against the ground, the feathered serpent let out its devastating roar to force magical fear into its enemies. Muti immediately took two steps back while Felix was able to shake the magical effect off after a split second. Astrid, having suspected it was coming, had already converted enough mana through her helmet to keep herself from being overwhelmed. Instead of stepping away, as the monster wanted, she stayed close and, with a scream, let off a Spectre Burst directly to its head. The kill notification flashed in her eyes, and Astrid shook out her hands as she looked around.

“Are we ever going to get a single peaceful meal on this floor?” Benedict asked as he gestured at the crushed remains of their steaks and frying pan. The feathered serpent had already been aiming towards their fire and Skandr’s spell definitely made things significantly messier.

“I will be more attentive,” Muti stated it almost as an apology. “If I give a better warning, then this will not be a worry.”

Astrid nodded her appreciation and looked at Felix. “As we get cooking again, you’re on skillet saving duty whenever a new monster appears. Then, once that’s secured, you’re frontlining.”

The Guardian, his helmet dismissed, rolled his eyes, but saluted her. Astrid then looked down at the remains of their fire. She shook her head, but mentally noted that the first charge of body was getting close to coming off of cooldown. 

“How close are we to an hour since you first used Body?” Skandr asked the question as he set up another fire pit.

“Fifteen minutes?” Astrid estimated as she mentally inquired her internal timer.

“Thinking about how you can use it so much now,” Skandr mused, slapping a new steak onto the party’s pan, “it almost makes me forget how much I thought the Skill was overpowered while untiered when first you explained it to me.”

Astrid laughed, but didn’t disagree. “I’m grateful to everyone I’ve spoken to who’s helped me make good decisions. With every level, it feels more like the centralmost Skill I have.”

“Everything else that you’re able to do so well is ancillary to your ability to do it often and for long periods,” Skandr stood up as he made eye contact with Astrid. “Spectre Burst and Gravity Surge are both amazingly powerful Skills, but for a regular Warrior or Knight who got it, they only realistically would be able to use each one once in a single combat and then have to spend a couple hours recovering afterwards. You, with the charges paired with having almost double the passive regeneration of everyone else? Once you pass the baseline 100 in every attribute, I’m sure you’ll be absolutely monstrous.”

Astrid nodded while scoffing and pushing the Wizard away for his final comment. He chuckled and turned his attention back to the food as Astrid wondered what the boon, if her party got it, would be from winning the Trials. If it was an upgrade to Body, what would it do? Her understanding was that nobody got to choose it, but they were tailored to each individual, so all she could do was wonder.

“I’m realizing this more and more,” Benedict said as the party’s conversation died down, “but the meat tastes different the stronger the monster is. Almost tingly or spicy, in a good way.”

“It is due to the mana density,” Muti immediately replied. “The stronger the monster, the more mana rich their meat. We will be able to recover more quickly after eating this than eating food that the Guild prepared for us. Even if a food is prepared from a mana rich ingredient, that mana slowly dissipates over time.”

“Most Humans who get mana poisoning,” Astrid said, pulling herself from her thoughts about boons, “get it one of two ways: being trapped somewhere that there’s a mana surge, or consuming or being too close to something especially mana dense. I mean, I think I can speak for all of us in saying that our new equipment was maybe a little bit uncomfortable when we first got it, but now we’re totally fine. Our bodies are acclimatized to the constant presence of mana, and the things here have more mana. Same thing goes with eating monster meat, it’s part of why most delvers don’t bring any meat back after level 10 or so, nobody but delvers who can procure the meat themselves anyway can eat it.”

Benedict nodded and answered, “I probably should’ve known that. You know, given the whole growing up on a farm thing.”

“I’d imagine that you weren’t paying a whole lot of attention when your parents were talking about why Farmers needed to exist, given that you never wanted to stick around the farm anyways,” Skandr laughed as he checked the steak to see if it was finished. He seemed to think that it still needed more time and set the pan back in the fire as Benedict spread his hands and bowed his head in acknowledgment.

“And you’re all grateful that I’m here, so we should all be grateful that I’m learning this now. Otherwise, I might have tried to stick around the farm instead.”

“I would be more grateful if you had already gotten that Skill to help us all recover our resources more quickly,” Muti smiled. “After all, you people who do not fight with your hands must always prove your worth.”

“You’re right.” Benedict rubbed his chin thoughtfully. Then, his face lit up, and he pulled his hat from his head as he bowed and said, “Next time a giant snake falls on you and breaks your legs, I will let you recover from your injuries without any magic, so that two times from now, when you somehow manage to get cut all the way to your organs, you can be extra grateful that I’ve proven my worth to you. Beyond that, Astrid, do you know how I should position myself to make sure that the snakes that Muti fights aren’t hindered by my Skills? I don’t want her to think that I’m not very useful!”

Muti bared her teeth, just as much a threat as a smile as she spoke, “You are correct. Perhaps for today you have earned a reprieve from my tests.”

“You think I’ll take back my words with so weak of an apology?” Benedict’s words and constant joking blurred into the background as Astrid tried to settle her nerves. She failed to do so, but instead of losing herself in worry, she doubled her focus on how to make sure she and her party never got into a situation like that again. The passage to the next island had been the primary problem, so how could she circumvent that?

“If I talk to you,” Astrid asked, Muti, “will it distract you from keeping a watch out for the feathered serpents?”

“No. What is it that you wish to speak about?”

“Just how to make sure that we don’t get ourselves killed the next time we try to go to an island. We’ll be crossing between them for the rest of the day, or however long it takes to get to our destination, and I don’t see a whole lot of a reason to open ourselves up to falling to our deaths more than absolutely necessary.”

“You and Skandr are our greatest assets for this,” came the immediate response. “The rest of us can kill them, but you two can move them away from us before they can present a deadly threat to us. That spacing will be the key to securing our passage.”

“Yes, I’m going to focus on that,” Skandr jumped into the conversation. He pulled a steak off the pan, checked it, and tossed it to Muti, who pulled her knife from her hip and stabbed the steak out of the air before it could fall. Again, Astrid was reminded of how superhuman they all were becoming with every level, and she wondered just how much her parents had held back their own strength when they were raising her. After all, her father was still a higher level than her, so what were his attributes like? There was no way to tell, because she didn’t know what rarity of Class he had. 

Muti groaned, taking a bite out of the steak and wrenching Astrid’s attention away from her thoughts again. The juices dribbled down her fist and chin, and she licked her fingers as she nodded appreciatively to Skandr before she spoke again.

“The rest of us will do our best to ensure that we do not die,” Muti continued, “but there is only so much that one can do with a sword to keep a snake that size at bay.”

Astrid chuckled as she nodded in agreement, locking eyes with Skandr as he slapped another steak onto the pan with a whap and a sizzle. “I can only do it a couple times before I end up exhausting myself. Do you think you can take responsibility to keep them at bay?”

“If I can’t, someone will die, it’s only a matter of time,” he shrugged, the weight of his statement settling over Astrid. “More than that, though, I’m going to see if I can figure out a way to move us quicker through these stretches between islands. Quick, safe passage will be much more impactful than using spells on the monsters as we go past. The less opportunity that they have to attack us when we’re so exposed, the better.”

The party continued talking, trying their best to plan how to escape the impending dread of the potential for these beasts to come out of nowhere and attack. Fortunately, they were able to finish preparing their meal without additional interruptions, and each member of the party scarfed down the meat while it was still piping hot. Astrid could feel her recovery rate increase markedly as she digested the mana-rich flesh. Then, all together and ready to continue on their journey, the party set off.

***

“How many more islands do you think we have left to cross to?” Astrid asked, amazed that Benedict had managed to keep himself from asking the same question a dozen times over. The party had been forced to struggle across three different precipitous crossings so far, and each one had been terrifying and accompanied by a feathered serpent’s appearance. Fortunately, Skandr’s newest wind spell was doing as it was supposed to, lightening each person’s load to allow them to almost sprint past every obstacle in their way. Thus, the serpents, unable to put the party into as life-threatening of situations as before, became tough foes instead of nearly unconquerable roadblocks.

“I believe that we have crossed one third of the total distance remaining to our destination.” Muti‘s answer didn’t instill any particularly good feelings in the party, but the truth never cared for people’s opinions and desires.

Although he hadn’t been the one to ask the question, Benedict whimpered in disappointment as he thumped back into a laying position on the soft grass. He laid there for nearly a minute before putting his arms over his face and changed the subject with a muffled tone, ”Have any of you come to a decision on what you want us to name the party?”

Astrid grimaced, the question nearly as difficult as dealing with the enemies on this floor. Nobody wanted to go around with an unremarkable or embarrassing party name, but similarly, none of them wanted to have to come up with the name themselves. Skandr’s suggestion of waiting until this floor has been a welcome one, and not only because it seems like a good idea at the time. Putting the decision off was appealing, but now the decision making time was here.

“Well, we said we’d get something interesting from this floor, then use that to call ourselves by that item,” Skandr said. “There isn’t anything that sticks out to me right now, but maybe we could take some of the feathers from the serpents and do something like ‘The Feathered Few’.”

Even as he said it, Skandr’s face twisted up in dislike. Muti was the next to speak, and she spoke without conviction when she suggested, “Perhaps ‘the Hunters’. It is not a unique name, but I would say that it is more apt than Skandr’s suggestion.”

“Yeah, I think it’s better,” Astrid hedged, “but I don’t feel like it particularly suits the party. Also, I was hoping we could do something with ‘Wandering’ in it, to reference that we’ll be people who have gone through the Wandering Trials, even if we don’t end up being the victors.”

“Not a bad option,” Benedict said with a shrug as he held up fistfuls of the items around him, “but what would you say for it? ‘The Wandering Stones’? ‘The Wandering Scales’? It doesn’t seem like there’s anything in here that would serve as a good namesake for the party. I guess we could do something that has to do with lightning or clouds? Be ‘the Wandering Storm’?”

“Nope. No way,” Skandr disagreed. “That makes it seem like I’m the party leader or the most important person in the party, and I don’t want that. Putting aside any validity regarding my feelings of inferiority, it’s just not true. Astrid’s the key to the party, and if we wanted to incorporate someone’s Class or Skills into our party name, it’d be her.”

“We already talked about that, though,” Astrid shut it down. “We’re not calling ourselves ‘the Immortals’ or something like it. A bunch of Irons saying that? We already tempt fate enough.”

The party went silent, looking at each other until the only person who hadn’t said anything chimed in.

“Instead of getting something from this floor,” Felix offered, “we could just call ourselves ‘The Wanderers’. Covers what we want it to, doesn’t get too pretentious either. Wouldn’t be too hard to add something to it in the future either.”

Astrid, not disagreeing with the statement, and looked at the other members of the party for confirmation. Muti shrugged and nodded once while continuing to keep her attention on their surroundings. No feathered serpents had managed to get the drop on them again since, but they were deadly foes regardless of if they managed to surprise the party or not. Skandr frowned for a second then seemed to come to a decision and nodded.

“I’m happy with that. I don’t think it’s particularly deep, but I don’t think it needs to be either.”

Benedict didn’t seem to think about it for too long before waving a hand through the air and saying, “I suppose that’s acceptable. But I would prefer some better title eventually.”

“Stop being so dramatic about it,” Skandr laughed. “It’s a name. It doesn’t mean anything in the long run. It’s just something for people to remember us by.”

“Yes, exactly! I remember a lot of people for a lot of really stupid reasons. Let’s not have it be our pride or our lackadaisical approach to naming the party that ends up getting everybody to laugh at us. I know that most of us aren’t as concerned about what people think of us as others, but I am not one of those people that can ignore others’ opinions. If I can put a little bit of care into the way that I talk to people and have others talk to me, I’m going to do that.“

Skandr raised both of his hands in surrender, but he didn’t look particularly embarrassed by the tirade that had been unleashed on him. Instead, he looked at Astrid, as did the rest of the party. “What do you think?”

For her part, Astrid nodded slowly, agreeing that the decision needed to be made. The more she thought about it, she thought that Felix’s point was good—there wasn’t anything bad about it, the title of the party was memorable enough, and adding to it in the future would be simple enough.

“I think,” Astrid answered Skandr, “that it’s time for the Wanderers to get to teaching the thirty-fifth floor that they’ve learned its tricks.”