Chapter 145: Chapter 133: Teammates

I tightened my grip on my sword-staff as the goblin assassin silently approached Cluma from behind. She hadn't given any visible indication that she knew he was there. I probably didn't need to do anything; once he actually attacked, [Threat Perception] would alert her to his presence even if [Monster Perception] failed, and even if it didn't, her overpowered armour protected all of her vital spots at the back. With the rank four enchantments, even the thin bodysuit offered a lot of protection.

There was a big difference between probably and certainly. I watched the assassin draw back an arm, ready to put his full force into a thrust, and prepared to invoke [Far Reach] to parry the blow. Then I noticed Cluma's smirk and cancelled it.

The goblin stabbed violently just as Cluma turned to the right to investigate a particularly uninteresting brick in the wall. The attack missed completely, and the overextended goblin stumbled forward, trying to regain his balance.

Happy that the brick was every bit as uninteresting as it appeared, Cluma resumed her walk through the room.

Over the next few minutes, Cluma spotted a surprising number of points of uninterest, evading the goblin's attacks in ways that looked completely accidental. He continued to stab and slash, acting as if she couldn't see him. With that lack of intelligence, he'd never make it as part of the army on floor ten.

I wasn't sure why the goblin never attacked me. Perhaps I wasn't as good at hiding the fact I could see him. Whatever the reason, two rooms later, a second goblin joined in. Cluma's evasions got even more ridiculous, but still the goblins kept going. It wasn't until a third joined in and she had to parry an attack that their delusion broke, and the three jumped backward away from her.

"Well, that was fun while it lasted," she said. "I picked up a level of [Monster Perception]."

"It seems this training is too easy for you too," I complained, beheading two of the three goblins with a [Far Reach] powered swing. Alas, my dimensional shenanigans meant that I struck the wall before the third goblin, needing to follow up with a quick thrust to dispose of it.

"Perhaps I need to train you instead," Cluma commented, laughing.

"This staff is longer than my old one! I'll get used to it eventually."

"I wouldn't have been able to do that without yesterday's blind training, and the stat boost from changing class. I've got a lot better with [Monster Perception] than the change in level would suggest."

Given the ease with which Cluma could handle the assassins, there was no point hanging around here. Our next target was the floor nine and ten traps. Her [Trap Perception] was still very low level, but I knew that between her evasion skills and her armour, it wouldn't matter if she missed some.

"Since you've not only finished what I had planned for today, but tomorrow too, I'll take you down to floor nine. We don't have a huge amount of the day left, but we can see what you make of the traps."

Frankly, I couldn't see them causing her problems. With her lightning fast reactions, [Threat Perception] would be more than enough to avoid the darts, even without her other abilities. That would leave... what, exactly? The tenth floor boss? And to think I'd felt confident betting that she couldn't clear the dungeon before spring. I no longer felt confident that she wouldn't clear it by next week!

She'd likely make the attempt the moment I returned to the village for Darren's birthday, in the last week of winter. I'd need to run the final boss with her a few times before then.

I'd need to run the final boss... That had gone badly last time. Very badly. Could I do it now? Should I use potions again? Maybe I should ask Vyre if we could tag along with his party.

That was a problem for future me. Current me was walking through floor nine, where it turned out that [Mana Sight] was still unable to pick out the traps, even when actively scanning. [Distortion] meant that they didn't matter to me, and Cluma's impressive reactions meant that they didn't matter to her either. Watching her casual acrobatics when she set off three at once and somersaulted and rolled between the darts made that perfectly clear.

The unarmed lesser orcs on the floor had no surface-level weak spots she could exploit with [Minor Harm], making it a very mana inefficient way to kill them. She stuck to using her daggers, which sliced through them with seemingly no resistance.

I had some concern over the short reach of her daggers. Even if they could cut through anything, I could imagine higher level, larger monsters with hides thicker than their length, or at least no vital points within striking range. Would she have to rely on exsanguination via the bleeding enchantment? Or a literal death by a thousand cuts?

Part of the answer came at the ninth floor boss. [Minor Drain] dampened the orc roars by enough that her endurance was sufficient to tank them, but conversely, the armour worn by the orc warriors, along with their larger statures, meant that the daggers didn't reach their hearts, and their necks were above easy slicing height. I watched in disbelief as she stabbed into an orc's chest anyway, then thrust her arm into the resulting wound, casting [Minor Harm] directly on the orc's heart.

Fine then. If they don't have a weak spot, make your own. But that was silly; if she could shove an arm into the stab-wound, she could equally have done so while holding a dagger. She could have stabbed out his heart, but chose not to, in order to experiment with her magic.

The experiment was successful, the orc's heart rupturing and lakes of blood flooding from the wound. All over Cluma.

Her movements changed. She dodged and weaved between the remaining orcs, but her attacks became less frequent, and she stopped trying to keep the monsters in view. At a guess, I'd say she had blood in her eyes.

Despite being blinded, outnumbered and visible, she gracefully handled the group of orcs before running over to me.

"Water!" she shouted, but I was ready and waiting, with a water crystal in hand, ready to rinse her eyes. "That stings," she complained.

"You just beat the ninth floor boss without even using [Stealth], and the worst that happened to you was a shower of blood. I'm pretty sure you aren't allowed to complain."

"I can complain if I wanna," she said, giving me a hug and smearing blood all over my own armour.

"Not that I'm unappreciative of your gift of blood, but what was that hug for?"

"Because, yet again, your teaching has paid off. If I'd been blinded like that a couple of days ago, I'd have had no hope. Instead, I won, and got levels of [Threat Perception], [Minor Harm], [Minor Drain], [Snap Thrust] and [Armour Break]. Not to mention a class level, and I got [Trap Perception] earlier too."

She only changed class earlier today. How has she gained a level already?! To think she was worried about holding me back. I'm going to be the one holding her back. Even if she is more combat specialised than I am, this is getting silly. If we fought seriously, could I still beat her? With her few days of training, I bet I'd struggle to hit her with [Far Reach] now.

We exited the dungeon and headed back to the guild to sell our spoils. With [Mana Sight], I spotted a table in the bar at which a group of four dogkin were seated. Cluma still couldn't pick up the traps reliably with [Trap Perception], but that wasn't causing her problems. I was really struggling to think of things for her to do next; we may as well finish up this place and move on to somewhere that was a better match for our abilities.

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"We're stopping off at the bar before leaving," I said, causing Cluma to look at me quizzically. "I want to ask Vyre if they'd let us join them on floor ten," I added in response.

"What, already? I suppose we did do floor nine today, and you didn't need to step in once..."

We headed over to the bar, where Vyre was soon staring at us in exasperation.

"We met you on floor five, doing basic teamwork exercises. That was, what, four hours ago? Maybe five? And now you're telling me you want to run floor ten? I didn't blink and miss a few years, did I? You both still look the same height."

"Give it up, boss," laughed Bluvre. "Us mere mortals are never going to be able to make sense of prodigies like them."

"I wouldn't mind seeing Cluma in action," commented Kelja.

"Or not seeing her, as the case may be," added Zalkri.

"Well, yes, neither would I," agreed Vyre. "But floor ten? You know what? I just don't care anymore. Come along, but I'll warn you now that if either of you pull a stunt like you did with the eighth floor boss, there's no way we'll be able to save you."

To be fair, rescuing someone from the middle of a crowd of a hundred goblins when they'd just taken an incapacitating hit would require a very particular skill-set. It would be unreasonable of me to expect anyone on their team to be capable of it.

And once again, Cluma seemed to have outdone me. When I wanted to find a party to run floor ten with, there was no-one, and yet when I needed one for her, there's one available the very next day. Does she have a hidden luck stat? Not that I have any right to be jealous; I must have one too, given how many suicidal stunts I'd managed to survive.

Whatever the cause of our luck, the next day the two of us entered the dungeon as part of a party of six. Or maybe only five. It was hard to tell.

"Given what you're trying to do, you should be conserving your mana," Vyre told the empty air.

"[Stealth] doesn't cost mana!" the empty air replied.

"Or more accurately, you regenerate faster than it's consumed," I pointed out.

"Same thing!"

"Not now that you're using actual spells, too. Keeping [Stealth] up will mean that you can't use spells as often."

Cluma paused briefly, but didn't reappear. It was no mystery which one of her skills was most important.

"My natural regeneration sucks anyway," she said, eventually. "And your recharge trick is so overwhelming that whether or not I have [Stealth] active won't make any noticeable difference."

True enough, but I hadn't been intending to do that in front of Vyre's party.

"Recharge trick?" asked Vyre, being unnecessarily observant.

"Peter can touch me, and my mana goes whoomph!" explained Cluma. "From zero to full in two minutes."

The beastkin party stopped walking.

"What?" deadpanned Vyre.

I facepalmed.

"Uh? Was that supposed to be a secret?" asked Cluma. While I couldn't read her body language through her overpowered [Stealth], from her voice she sounded guilty, but I hadn't told her not to mention it, so it wouldn't be fair to blame her.

"Not really," I reassured. "It's just another way to use mana control skills," I added, for Vyre's benefit.

"So, just to be clear; you can use your mana control skills to completely refill an empty mana pool in minutes?"

"Yes? Sort of? It depends on the size of the pool and the ambient mana."

"Right. Change of strategy for today. Since we seem to have a bottomless mana potion travelling with us, everyone feel free to go all out with any mana consuming abilities."

Three of the four dogkin vanished, presumably having enabled their own [Stealth]. This was going to be a strange dungeon trip... Aren't I forgetting something, though? What was it? Ah yes. "Before you use up all of your mana, I should probably warn you about the itch."