Chương 12: Exploring

Alex found his dad's tent early, before the sun had climbed past the treeline. He'd made up his mind on the walk over. After everything his dad had said the night before, just disappearing into the dungeon again without a word would be exactly the kind of thing that proved Chris's point for him. So he stopped outside the tent flap and decided to do the decent thing for once.

On the way, he passed Liam sitting cross-legged in the grass, a small ball of mana rotating slowly between his palms, growing, shrinking, growing again. The guy was going to run himself dry before breakfast at this rate. Alex watched him for a second, thought about saying something, then figured Liam wouldn't hear him anyway. He kept walking. His mom was up too, already starting something near the fire.

He greeted her quickly, got a look that said she already knew what he was planning, and kept moving before she could add anything to the look. Some conversations were better left for after. He ducked inside his dad's tent. Chris was sitting up on his cot, cup of something in his hand, looking like a man who had already decided what he was going to say before Alex opened his mouth.

"I know you're going back in," his dad said. Not a question.

"Yeah." Alex paused.

"I wanted to tell you first." Chris looked at him for a long moment.

"I won't tell you not to go. What I said last night still stands, I won't bury you before me, but me telling you to stay out of there clearly isn't doing much." He set the cup down on his knee.

"So here's what I want instead. Take a team of five. People who are willing, not people you talked into it. Get them stronger and make sure every single one of them walks back out." Alex felt the weight of that settle on him immediately, heavier than he'd expected. He'd gone in alone twice now and hadn't worried much about his own survival, he'd be fine, he was almost certain of that. But five people was different.

Five people meant five ways for something to go wrong that had nothing to do with his own ability to take a hit.

"You sure about that?" he said.

"If I go alone and something happens, you still have everyone else. You send five people in with me and none of them come back, that's a different kind of loss."

"It would be," his dad said.

"But you said yourself we can't survive the long game doing nothing but practicing in a field. You were right about that. We haven't done anything special yet, nothing that says we're better positioned than the next group of people trying to get through sixty days of this. So I'm not going to keep pretending the safe option is actually safe." He looked down at the cup.

"Form the group. Make them ready enough that they can handle what's in there. And Alex." He waited until Alex met his eyes.

"Don't let your drive get someone else killed." Alex didn't answer right away. He just nodded, because there wasn't much else to say to that. He took the same four from the scouting trip, Liam, Mia, and Jeremy, and then asked Ace. That last one he'd known was coming the moment his dad said five people, and he'd been quietly dreading it since. Jeremy's reaction was immediate and predictable.

"No."

"We need a healer," Alex said.

"Then bring someone else. Katelin. One of the nurses. Anyone other than Ace."

"Katelin is fifteen. The nurses are keeping the rest of the camp covered. Ace is the strongest healer we have and she knows it." Jeremy opened his mouth again, and Ace put a hand on his back before he could get the words out. She'd been standing there the whole time, quiet, watching Jeremy try to argue on her behalf.

"Jeremy." Her voice was calm, the way it got when she'd already made a decision and was giving him the chance to catch up to it.

"They need a healer. And even if they didn't, a single snake bite can turn into a real problem without someone there to manage it. You've all been going in and coming out with cuts and bruises and acting like that's fine, and it is fine, until it isn't." She rubbed a slow circle on his back.

"I'm coming."

"What about Jake and John if we don't-""We will." She said it flat and certain, no room in it for debate.

"And if something goes wrong, which it won't, this family will take care of them. You know that." This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon. Jeremy looked at her for a long moment, the kind of look that had an entire argument packed inside it, and then he looked away and said, "Okay."

They hugged, and then they did something significantly worse than hugging, right there in front of Alex, who had done absolutely nothing to deserve that kind of punishment this early in the morning. He turned away on principle. He was genuinely reconsidering the whole healer idea. Smh. Walking into the dungeon with five of them felt different from the first two times.

The first solo run had been scary in a way Alex hadn't fully admitted to himself until now, not because he'd doubted his ability to survive it, but because the silence in there had a particular quality that pressed in harder the deeper he went. The scouting party had been loose and cautious, always one eye on a way back. This felt like something else. Five people with actual combat experience, most of them already tested, moving with a purpose they hadn't had a week ago.

Alex let himself feel good about that for a second before filing it away. The first group came into view almost immediately, seven level 2 Tainted Pythons fanned out in the grass, and behind them, trailing at the back, one level 5 with its red eyes picking up the light even from a distance. They ran through it fast. Mia had been putting in real time with the bow since the scouting trip, and it showed.

Her first shot took one of the level 2s clean through the head, the kind of shot that a week ago had been luck and was now something closer to skill. Her second arrow was already moving before the first one landed, hitting another snake in the neck and dropping it. Seven down to five before the formation had even started moving. Alex and Jeremy held the front line until the snakes reached them, shields up, and then Alex made a choice he'd been thinking about since he first held the glaive.

He set the shield down in the grass. Two hands on the weapon, the way it was built to be used. He swept the first snake that reached him with a wide arc that took its head off cleanly, the glaive's sharpened edge doing exactly what it was supposed to do. The next one came over the top of the first and he caught it on the backswing, not a killing blow but enough to send it tumbling sideways.

Mana bolts from Liam streaked past him into the level 5, hitting it in two quick bursts that staggered it and drew an ugly, frustrated sound out of it. Jeremy moved to his left and drove his spear into one of the remaining smaller snakes, and then the level 5 was moving, fast, head low, tail already sweeping before Alex had fully registered the attack. He caught the tail strike on the glaive's haft and felt it in both arms all the way to the shoulder, staggering a half step back despite bracing for it. No shield.

That mattered. He was going to have to be better about not eating hits like that. He came back in immediately, not giving the snake time to reset. His first cut opened a deep gash along its side, the sharpness enhancement doing work he could see plainly, and he felt the glaive's connection in his grip, the weapon responding in a way that kept catching him off guard, like it understood what he wanted before his wrists fully committed to the motion. Mia put an arrow into the snake's flank.

Liam hit it again with a mana bolt. And then Alex brought the glaive through the same wound he'd already opened, putting everything behind it, and split the snake in two in one motion. The essence that followed was less than he'd earned solo, spread across five people now, but the feeling that came with it was different in a way he hadn't expected.

He actually felt the team around him as part of it, the way Mia's arrows had set up his finishing cut, the way Liam's bolts had bought him the opening to step back in clean. Alone he'd been fighting through problems. This felt like something else. Ace appeared beside him, hands glowing green before he'd even turned around.

"You put the shield down."

"Glaive's two-handed."

"You had the spear yesterday."

"The glaive's better."

"The glaive doesn't block anything." Her healing light moved across the cut on his arm from the tail swipe, the skin knitting together in a way that still amazed him every time he watched it.

"You're going to need to be a lot faster if you're not blocking."

"I know."

"You don't look like you know."

"Ace."

"I'm just saying." She finished the healing and moved back to give him room, muttering something he chose not to hear. He picked the glaive back up and felt it settle in his hands exactly where it belonged. They ran more encounters after that, working through the dungeon in a loose formation that was already starting to feel natural, everyone adjusting to everyone else's range and rhythm without much discussion. Liam kept the level 5 snakes slowed and staggered from range while Mia peeled off the smaller ones.

Jeremy was getting genuinely good with the spear, moving with his whole body behind the thrusts in a way that had been shaky and uncertain during the first wave. Alex found himself doing less carrying and more finishing, which was different, and which he was still deciding how he felt about. By the time they walked back out into the afternoon light, everyone in the group had leveled up. Alex checked his own status, already knowing what he'd find. Still Level 3.

He stood there for a second, more annoyed than he wanted to admit. The others were picking up levels from encounters he was contributing to, and he was stuck, the higher his level got, the more essence he seemed to need, and clearing dungeon rooms full of level 2s wasn't providing it fast enough anymore. He needed something bigger to fight. He filed that problem away for later.

What he actually wanted to think about, standing outside the dungeon with tired legs and the familiar hollow feeling of low mana, was Mana Manipulation. He hadn't stopped turning it over since Liam had shown him what it could do. Tonight, one way or another, he was going to figure out how to unlock it himself.