The Pinnacle Warrior

Nobody disagreed with Astrid’s question, and as they picked through the remains of the battlefield, they could see that the mass destruction of the vine-trees had progressed toward where they were standing now, and hadn’t originated there. At least a kilometer of vine-trees had been cleared out, with the exception of any of the plants that were “higher tier” than green. As such, a few yellows and one orange tree stood nearby, though only a handful. Then, a bit over a kilometer away, there seemed to have been a different group of shimmerbugs that had curved away, with their origin being somewhere further down that path.

“I think we’ve got at least another fight like that ahead of us if we want it,” Astrid said, trying to peer around the corner and see where the shimmerbugs were coming from, though it was so far away that the subconscious movement was worthless.

“If we have a little bit more time to prepare before we get into it, I think that’s fine,” Skandr shrugged.

Muti and Felix, however, were chomping at the bit, and almost started marching forward towards the next battlefield without talking to the rest. Instead of just doing so, though, they looked at the rest of the party for confirmation, and then they all seemed to come to a conclusion at the same time.

“Let’s skirt around close to the wall where the exit is,” Astrid suggested, looking at Muti. “If they’ve managed to eat all the way to the edge again, then it’ll be easier for us to prepare our avenue of attack in a way that they can’t prepare for us. And if they haven’t reached all the way to the wall, we can still come from their blind side.”

“We must remember to remain aware of the creatures in the trees,” Muti said, though she agreed with the route of attack and started guiding the party in that direction. “We do not know if they will attempt to hunt us, and with how many of the shimmerbugs are nearby, there is no telling if they have been driven into the remaining forest between where we are and where we are going. They may be solitary hunters, and if they are all forced into the same area, they may be more desperate or willing to make attacks that they wouldn’t have done otherwise.”

The party all made noises of acknowledgment to that, and then, looking forward to what might happen next, they followed Muti’s path.

As they made their way forward, nobody’s attention was really on the ground. After all, it was much easier to be hurt or killed by the unknown than the expected. It was fortunate that they were doing that when they saw a quick movement, only a flicker that flashed towards Skandr. He couldn’t react in time, and Astrid cursed herself for not having her sling ready. Then, Muti twisted, her concealed blade around her wrist flying forward and sinking into the ambushing tavari’s neck. 

It tumbled to the ground, wounded but not dead. If Astrid was to describe it, she’d call it a meter-long mongoose. While the monster twisted, trying to escape, Muti’s other concealed throwing blade swung around her wrist and flew at it. This next one crackled with cold, the cord that attached it to the Lethal Shadow glowing with mana. The body was frozen to a sculpture, and then the tavari shattered.

“Let’s keep a closer eye out,” Astrid said as Skandr’s eyes went wide open. Nobody said anything, though they all obviously agreed to do so. Even with their now increased vigilance, they didn’t see anything in the trees, and once they’d gotten closer to their target, the sound of vine-trees falling, of thousands of kilograms of tree smashing into the ground, filled the air while destroying any chance the tavari had to be lurking nearby.

“We still haven’t seen if the greens have a different Skill from the others, have we?” Astrid confirmed, looking at the rest of the party, most specifically Muti.

“We have not,” Muti replied, looking forward between the trees to see what was waiting ahead of them. “Perhaps if there are several in this next group, we can separate one to experiment on.”

“I think that’s probably for the best,” Astrid nodded. “It seems like the Skills get stronger with each new color as well, since the shields and charging Skills are better for each new one. What might be an easily ignorable Skill while used by a green might become deeply important at higher tiers.”

The conversation died out as Muti activated Shadow Aura to envelop the rest of the Wanderers. Knowing that they were close to entering combat, the party looked forward at the surging mass of shimmerbugs. Again, instead of a scattered few of the monsters, there were dozens of them, even more than there had been in the last swarm. This time, there were actually three of the greens, nine of the blues, and an equal amount of violets and indigos.

“Focus on the blues for now,” Astrid whispered as the party settled into their ready positions. “Once they’re taken care of, Skandr can focus on taking care of all of the weak ones in one or two spells.”

Muti nodded, taking her assignment with a smile as she and Astrid both looked at the enemies waiting for them.

A part of Astrid couldn’t help but do the quick calculations about how much experience she was looking at. Assuming an average of each of the monsters being about in the middle of the pack, considering their level ranges, they were looking at around 30,000 experience each, and this was just the second fight, maybe ten minutes after entering the Dungeon today. Sure, the amount of fights wasn’t going to be easily sustained without depleting the surroundings of all the shimmerbugs, but just these shimmerbugs being the first monsters that they found in the Dungeon proper? This was already a wealth of experience.

Astrid and Muti spread out only a little, making sure to stay close enough to the three men to come to support them if necessary, while also ensuring that they could crash in from opposite sides to pick off the blue shimmerbugs.

Then, with only about fifteen seconds of preparation, the party was ready to make their attack. Glancing back and forth, they all nodded and let the others know they were ready. Then, as one, they ran forward, Benedict’s Skills pushing them to greater speed. The nearest shimmerbugs, violets and indigos, perked up at their approach, but Felix waved his axe dismissively through them, either flinging or smashing them to the side with impunity.

Behind them, Skandr’s voice shook the area as he prepared his spell, and Astrid and Muti closed in on the blue shimmerbugs on the flanks. Muti’s blades flashed, one by strength of arm and the other with subtle bursts of mana. She shredded through two blue shimmerbugs in short order, the kill notifications flashing in the party’s vision as Astrid closed in on a group of three blues that were feasting on a felled blue vine-tree.

They turned toward her, their cutting arms flashing with their Skill as they activated their shield and charged toward her.

Astrid grinned, deciding to meet strength with strength.

She pushed mana into her shield to make it expand as she activated Body Surge and pushed mana into her boots. With her Alacrity pushed to such great heights, she smashed forward into the bugs’ charge, and she felt her collarbone creak, and then break under the force of her attack. The Immortal Champion grunted, the fiery pain threatening to make her drop her shield, but she spent a charge of Physique to recover as she trampled over one twisted corpse.

Her opening attack had smashed the centermost shimmerbug inside of its body, killing it instantly. The other two had taken mostly glancing blows, and were thrown to the side by the force of her rush. They struggled to their feet as Astrid pushed a wholly gravity-intentioned Spectral Graviton into the head of her hammer. The twisting death tentacles were largely ethereal, barely visible as Astrid raised her hammer and smashed it into the shimmerbug on her right.

She had put very little of her mana and stamina into the attack, mostly ensuring that she was continuing to practice and experiment with the Skill, but the experiment was more than a little successful. The bug was pulled off its feet into the air to meet Astrid’s hammer early, and then, as she smashed it down, its torso was completely pulped. She needed to continue her experimentation, to see what she could do like what she’d been able to do before evolving, but this was a good step.

With a smile, Astrid turned and smashed her hammer into the side of the other blue shimmerbug. Its shield had already been destroyed by her initial charge, so her hammer crashed into its wing protector and reduced it to so many shards of shiny blue carapace. It wasn’t completely dead as she turned to her next target, but it wasn’t long for the world as Astrid charged to another group of blue shimmerbugs.

This time there were only two, and Astrid remembered to activate Unconquerable Aura as she charged for this time. The damage reduction kept her from sustaining any real wounds as she crashed into the next two victims. Then, with their shields seemingly mostly focused on magical protection, she destroyed their defenses and ripped them apart in a few short seconds.

She started to look toward the three greens that were near the center of the swarm of creatures, though they were being held there by Felix, but was interrupted from going to support him.

“Everybody disengage!”

Nobody questioned Skandr’s command, and Astrid saw on the opposite side of the battlefield as Muti disappeared in a puff of black mist. Astrid just planted her boot and sprinted away as Felix used Raging Guardian to disengage superhumanly quickly. Even before they were all clear, two chains of red lightning exploded from where Skandr stood. They danced along the edges of the formation, staying clear of the stronger greens in the center.

The first three monsters on each side hit by the branching bolts died immediately, their bodies bursting into flame. The next three also died immediately, their bodies only smoking, while those who came after weren’t killed in that single stroke, but were instead crippled or merely wounded. Astrid idly noted that the few indigo and violet shimmerbugs in the back of the swarming formation were not the best off as she’d suspected. Instead, as both waves of lightning crashed into them at the same time from both sides, a second wave of kill notifications appeared.

Of the seventy or so shimmerbugs that had begun the fight, every one of the blues was dead, and only seven violets and indigos remained to support the three greens.

“Take down one of the greens, cripple another, and leave the third untouched,” Astrid said as she hustled forward to dispatch the stumbling, weak stragglers.

Of course, the party had no trouble doing as she had commanded, and they quickly picked off the green in the center, the kill notification and experience flooding into Astrid as she grinned widely. Less than a full day here in the Dungeon proper, and she’d gained over 120,000 experience.

Muti appeared under another of the greens, cutting off its six legs like she had to the other green today. Then, leaving it there like that, the party surrounded the final green. They dodged in and struck here and there, trying to see how it could react to the attacks coming its way. It didn’t seem to activate any new Skill in response to that, but the party continued harrying it, casting small spells or Skills focused on slowing it. Even so, there was little that they could learn about what it was capable of beyond what its lesser brethren could.

That was, until the crippled one started to stand up.

“I think we’ve found out what these ones are capable of!” Astrid laughed as she saw the smaller, but still functional, legs under the previously crippled green. While she watched, the legs continued to grow at a surprising rate, but far from anything as immediate or overwhelming as Physique. Her mirth drained away, as while she could tell that the speed of regeneration for these legs wasn’t enough to really impact a fight against the Wanderers, if they were fighting harder, she couldn’t say how much that regeneration would change with another fifteen levels to get to a red.

As the party quickly came to the conclusion to dispatch one of the greens and then test the regenerative properties of the other, Astrid’s nervousness spiked further. They continued to experiment as Astrid spoke up.

“The pattern’s holding steady for each new color getting a new Skill,” she said, watching as Muti carefully carved a large section from the shimmerbug’s protective wing covering. “If it holds steady, we’ll be looking at a real boss of a monster in everything but name, even with an orange, much less a red.”

“Yes,” Benedict said, his face looking a little green. “Now, can we stop torturing the poor thing? I don’t care if it’s a bug or whatever, but do we really need to know if it can regrow the wings as well as the legs?”

“Yes,” Muti answered before anybody else could say anything. “The legs are important, and if it can regrow them, it will retain mobility at higher levels. However, if the monster can also regenerate its armor as well as its shielding Skill, it will be nearly impossible to break its defenses. I do not find any pleasure in inflicting suffering on this creature, but I will do so to ensure that we are best prepared to fight its kin.”

Benedict’s face twisted up in displeasure, but he didn’t disagree with the statement. As such, he just nodded once and turned his attention away.

The party continued conversing as Astrid also kept a special eye on the surviving creature. After replacing its legs once, the legs grew back a second time, but much slower than before, and the front legs, the weapons, didn’t seem to have any ability to cut through armor any longer. Armored plating that had been cut away did not grow back, but the armor that was crushed did knit itself together, so long as it remained connected to the body.

“This is almost like we’re fighting an Astrid bug,” Benedict said, wincing at the sound of a crunch behind him.

“We can only hope that the Skill for one of the higher tiers isn’t Body Surge,” Astrid laughed.

“Don’t even pretend like that could happen,” Benedict shook his head. “The yellows are going to have higher attributes than us, to say nothing of the oranges being twenty levels higher than we are now. If that has something like Body Surge? It’ll kill us before we can react.”

Astrid’s joking bled away at that, because he was right.

Assuming an orange shimmerbug had about the same attributes as even the regular dragon Boss they’d fought, which was, at its highest level, level 65, then the orange shimmerbug would be working with about 1200 in Power. With all of its other Skills working in tandem, a burst Skill like Body Surge or Defender’s Avatar would end up with attributes three times her own, and they couldn’t deal with that.

“That’s something that we can figure out when we get to it,” Skandr said. “For now, we just need to keep moving forward, being careful not to get in over our heads. After all, we’ve already faced about as many shimmerbugs today in less than fifteen minutes from leaving camp than we did yesterday in two and a half hours. We need to figure out what’s going on here, understand what the general numbers are around here, and do that before we start setting up any schedules.”

The rest of the party agreed, and after taking a short while to make sure that everybody was all right and moving together, they started to discuss which direction they should go to continue finding out what was happening in this section of the Dungeon proper.

***

“Since we’ve been cleared to keep delving in the Verdant Sanctuary until the peak of Steel,” Astrid said, “I’m eager to get back into the Dungeon, now that we’ve spent a couple weeks getting familiar with it. At our level now, I think we can finally dare to go deeper in the forest and encounter some yellows or even oranges. Is anyone planning on just waiting around once we get back to the entrance?”

“I’ve got plenty of extra food,” Felix said. “There’s nowhere near enough valuable materials to collect to justify not doing it, so I’ve done everything to work towards continuing to push hard.”

“And even the preserved stuff from Michel is leagues better than anything else we’ve got from the Dungeon,” Astrid agreed.

“So we’re sticking around for two weeks this time around?” Benedict confirmed, the tune he was using to push the party to move faster a well-known love ballad.

Astrid started to open her mouth to tease him about Vera, but decided against it.

Somehow, the Bard had convinced the Greenthumb to let him take her on a date, and he’d said something about “older woman who can kick my arse,” so she stayed firmly out of it. For now, the woman who’d shut him down before seemed to be fine with entertaining a casual relationship of sorts, and though the two women in the party had told him exactly what Vera had told them on the day they first left Neverwood, he’d maintained his willingness to continue to pursue the older woman.

Instead of talking about the obvious reason for Benedict’s good mood, she simply confirmed, “Yeah, two weeks. Now that we’ve spent three full weeks in this entrance, we know how the waves of the shimmerbugs come and can deal with that a lot better. When we get there today, we should have one day of medium concentration then the full three days of low concentration. That’ll be plenty for us to get at least about ten kilometers into the forest.”

“And we’re all dying to really try out our newest Skills and equipment against something that’ll pose a threat,” Skandr agreed, patting the enchantment grimoire that hung on his left hip. 

Astrid laughed, tapping her new draconic helmet as she looked at the others. Yes, they were all ready to really push into the Dungeon proper for the first time, now that they were level 71.