Chapter 219: Chapter 201: Selection

I giggled at the disappointment in Cluma's voice when she realised I could still detect her.

"Don't worry, it's a skill I have to actively use, and that I can't keep active even if I wanted to. On top of that, it doesn't tell me exactly where you are any more; you're all blurry. And I can't see you with active [Mana Sight] at all, however hard I try, and unlike when you used [Darken Senses], there's no sign that my perception is being blocked."

"Doesn't change the fact you still have a way to see me," she grumbled.

"Well, there's always rank four."

The System was largely balanced. Some classes were better than others, like my [Artisan] compared to a regular crafting class, or a complex affinity compared to a regular one, but they took additional effort to earn. And even then, [Artisan] didn't grant me rank three skills, nor could [Eldritch Mage] compete with a higher ranked simple affinity.

Back in my first tournament in Synklisi, I'd formed the opinion that skills and classes largely formed an elaborate game of rock-paper-scissors. Cluma's new class was simply another example. Perfect stealth would be overpowered, and for the System to keep any semblance of balance, there needed to be counters for it. Cluma's rank upgrade had certainly cut out at least two counters, given that my active scan no longer worked and noises she made weren't localisable, but how many more would it disrupt? Could monsters still pick her up by vibrations of the ground, or slow movement of the air? Could something with better ears than me still pick up her location when she spoke?

"The library didn't list any evolutions of this class," she sighed. "Hopefully that's just because no-one has completed it, rather than because there isn't anything."

"It is," I reassured her. "[Eye of Judgement] shows unlocked classes, and you have a rank four class called [Invisible Death] available."

"Oh! That does sound promising. I'll hide from you yet!"

"Then I'd better get some better perception skills before you hit level thirty."

She didn't respond, but I could feel the waves of displeasure the invisible catgirl was radiating. Why she was so fixated on being able to hide from me, I had no idea.

"Well, now what?" I asked, to change the subject. "I suppose we need to change dungeon again."

"How deep do we need for the next rank up from [Proficient Delver]?"

"That would be [Expert Delver], for which we need to clear a fifty floor dungeon solo before rank five."

Which essentially meant I'd need to fight something on the level of the Emerald Caverns' final boss all on my own. Krana had made it look easy, aside from the save I needed to give him, but he was a rank five dragon. I'd have far more difficulty. It wasn't as if I could repeat my soul affinity trick to one-shot the boss of an unbroken dungeon. Then again, I had plenty of time. I wasn't going to be hitting rank five anytime soon.

Each of the original settlements had a fifty floor dungeon. Perhaps there were others around, too, but the dungeon of each original settlement was geared towards that settlement's inhabitants, like the Sapphire Peaks and its assumption that delvers could fly. It was worth a check at the delvers' guild in case there was a dungeon around that would fit particularly neatly with our skill builds, but otherwise, the Emerald Nest seemed our logical next step.

But, despite that, dungeon delving wouldn't help me much at the moment. I had a crafting class, so to level it, I needed to engage in crafting. Delving may give me an excuse to build things like flame grenades, but on its own it wouldn't get me anything more than a few skill levels in the skills I hadn't capped back at eighteen yet.

"I suggest we check at the guild to research available dungeons and find which will suit us best, but it's likely to be the Emerald Nest. I can't spend all my time delving, though; I need to craft stuff to level [Artisan]."

And the extra bit I didn't add; I wanted to trigger [Test Subject] a few more times, to see if I could upgrade [Versatile Crafter]. What crafting could I do that was novel, meaningful, and involved experimenting on myself? Theoretically, I could have self-tested the flame grenades, but that would have been too foolish for me even had Cluma not been watching me like a hawk.

"Mmmk," agreed Cluma.

"How long are you going to stay invisible, anyway? Surely that skill has a higher mana cost than [Stealth]?"

"Probably, but as you pointed out, I already regenerated mana at a minimum of twice the speed [Stealth] consumed it. Even if this skill costs double, it's still not a problem."

Dammit. So now she could be permanently invisible in a way that my active [Mana Sight] couldn't see through. Even if I stayed vigilant, unless I scrapped my rule against using [Soul Perception], I could be surprise-hugged at any time. A fear that was underscored when she grabbed me from behind again, completely without warning.

"Anyway, there's no reason to wait. Let's visit the guild in Synklisi and see what dungeon they suggest!"

As I teleported the pair of us, I pondered if I could craft anything to help with my new problems with the [Invisible Terror]. Something that continuously gave off clouds of dust, in the hopes that would let me see her? Maybe a high-pitched siren to drive her away? Something above the frequencies humans could hear, but still within hers. I knew she had more acute hearing than me, but did she have the full feline frequency range?

I didn't particularly want to drive her away though, so no sirens. How could I make dust? Or smoke. Or mist would be better; it needed to be safe to breathe. Ideally, it would be something Cluma couldn't see, so she wouldn't know I was watching. Mist would be obvious, and so wasn't a perfect fit. Mana was the thing that immediately sprung to mind, but how would that be different from my active mana scanning? Besides, these days she could see mana.

Wait—didn't that imply she knew when I used an active mana scan?

Never mind. Forget mana. What if I arranged for the dust to form words? A detailed description of the Law. That would certainly stop anyone other than me from seeing it, but that was not, alas, the same as it having no effect on Cluma.

Mist should work as a first attempt, if only because it would be easy to do. All it would take was a chain of fire, water and air crystals. Maybe it wouldn't even need the fire crystal, if I could aerosolise the water through some method other than evaporation. A high pressure spray, perhaps.

... But not too high pressure, or I'd just be making another deterrent. If I was going that route, I might as well just squirt her with a water bottle whenever she surprised me.

"Anyone home?" asked Cluma, poking me in the face. Or at least, I felt a poke shortly after I heard her voice, so I assumed it was her.

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"Sorry. Got lost in thought."

"Yes, I could tell. I swear, if your mind wandered any further I'd need to take [Tracking] just to hunt it down."

A brief conversation with a guild receptionist revealed that the original settlements held the only fifty floor dungeons. Out of them, the Sapphire Peaks were out because we didn't have wings, and the Sapphire Depths because they were underwater. The Obsidian Spires was a possibility, but its lack of respect for proper geometry and, on the deeper floors, physics, tended to put people off. That left the Emerald Sea, the Emerald Caverns, the Emerald Nest and the Ruby Plains.

We dropped the Ruby Plains immediately. Apparently the dungeon was full of wide, open fields, each one miles across. After Serpent Isle, I wanted smaller floors. The Emerald Sea got dropped for a similar reason; the monsters were all plant based, and there were trees and mud aplenty. I'd had my fill of mud already. That left the Emerald Caverns and the Emerald Nest, which were more conventional, and either seemed like a reasonable choice.

... Although in both cases I intended to look over the monster lists very carefully, to check that the bug quotient was acceptable.

"Any preference?" I asked Cluma.

"Obsidian Spires, obviously," came her disembodied voice, causing the receptionist much shock. She hadn't realised I wasn't alone.

Damn it, she did it again! Why did she keep picking options other than the obviously correct ones? "Why that one?" I probed.

"Because whichever dungeon we move to next will be our base for years. We don't want something boring."

Well, yes. No-one could accuse a dungeon of being boring when it contained the likes of randomly shifting gravity, corridors that were longer walking in one direction than the other, or rooms with more entrances than exits.

"We don't have to stay in one place until we clear it, you know. Besides, none of these dungeons are quite as homogeneous as Serpent Isle. It's not like we'll get nothing but snakes again."

"Whichever one we start in will end up being the one we know best, and hence the one we'll want to use to get [Expert Delver]. According to the information we've just read, the Obsidian Spires dungeon is shortest from end to end, and it has safe spaces on every floor."

That was true. It was the shortest, if you went straight from entrance to exit. And the Emerald Nest and Emerald Caverns were shorter on safe spaces, both being more akin to Dawnhold. The entrance room of each floor was usually safe in both of them, but would I want to risk it on a real run? If we picked our next dungeon on the basis that it would be the one we earned [Expert Delver] in, then the Obsidian Spires probably was the best choice.

And I'm sure the fact that it was in the demon capital, which was likely full of restaurants selling nothing but monster cores and booze, didn't factor into Cluma's thinking at all.

If we looked for our next dungeon without factoring in [Expert Delver], then why pick a fifty floor dungeon at all? We might as well go for a thirty or forty floor place.

Putting the long-term goals aside, perhaps the Obsidian Spires did have advantages. I had spatial affinity, and perhaps my [Expert Mana Control] would let me disrupt its weird spatial anomalies.

"Okay, sure," I shrugged. "Let's go with that."

There came no response.

"If you're emoting at me, remember you're invisible," I added.

"You obviously had a different idea. I know you still think we should have taken Bloodrock over Serpent Isle, so don't just go along with me without saying anything."

"Nah. Your point about Bloodrock being less suited for [Stealth] was a good one. The size of Serpent Isle did grate on me, and I wished it was as short as Bloodrock, but had we gone there, who's to say I wouldn't have ended up thinking the opposite? We could have had real issues there."

I frowned as a realised the implications of that.

"Wait, then why aren't you asking for the Ruby Plains?"

A disembodied giggle echoed strangely around the guild reception. "I have more new skills than [Non-detection], you know."

Once again, I felt arms wrap around me from behind, but this time she swiftly detached, only for the receptionist to squeak a moment later, arm impressions clearly visible on her uniform. Far faster than Cluma could have moved...

"You have teleportation?" How? None of her skill names suggested that, even if I included the ones she hadn't bought.

The giggle started back up. "Narrow corridors aren't going to stop me any more."

Scary. "Anyway, as I was saying, you weren't wrong about Serpent Isle, and you aren't wrong here. I agree Obsidian Spires has the best dungeon for us to run solo. But that's so far off, I wasn't really basing my choice on it. So yes to Obsidian Spires, and we'll switch around if we get bored."

In fact, the information we'd been given included a note about splitting up parties, so in some ways, it must be designed for solo running. That was actually slightly worrying, and I was surprised it didn't give more info, but we were both used to running solo, and I could leave a chunk of myself with Cluma in order to get back to her at any time, so it wasn't as much of a threat to us as it might be to others.

"Yay!" agreed Cluma. "By the way, do you think the Obsidian Spires has monster core restaurants?"