After lying down for a bit to recover her stamina while waiting for her teammates to catch up, Sera had to admit that the still warm but not hot floor felt quite nice. Not as nice as an ice water shower to finally get rid of her overheated status, but, at least until her sister was here, she would have to be content with what she had.
However just lying around got boring fast, so she opened up her log and looked over her achievements. At first she had ignored them to get a bigger surprise later, but with the much harder second and third stage of the boss fight she didn’t have much time to pay attention to the non-essential system messages.
[Your Insanity skill has reached Lv 3.]
It was kind of what she had expected, after going into the fight without any preparations. Looking a bit further down the log to the newer entries she even spotted the skill reaching level 4. Her last action had probably pushed it over the edge.
Next up was…
[Your Body Enhancement has reached Lv 6.]
Also not really anything shocking as she had been using that skill basically permanently. It was more surprising that it hadn’t leveled up until now. Or maybe that leveling speed was more normal and the faster leveling skills were just due to not yet accounted for capabilities.
Then… “Ah, screw it!”
She could be patient in certain circumstances, but more often than not, she wasn’t. So why did she have to wait to see her own status?
[Sera Goldschmidt
Age: 3
Species: Human Lv 11 -> 18
Classes:
Maid Lv 2 -> 7
Swordsman Lv 11 -> 17
Assassin Lv 2 -> 10
Gladiator Lv 9 -> 12
Warrior Lv 11 -> 18
Tailor Lv 0
Artisan Lv 0 -> 7
Idol Lv 0 -> 5
Bodyguard Lv 11 -> 15
Blade Dancer Lv 0 -> 15 (new)
##### Lv 0 Ex
Affinity:
Fire Lv 10 -> 17
#####
Condition: Overheated
Titles:
Genius of Body
Unpredictable
Walking Disaster
Idol
Sword Master
Monster
World Invader
Attributes:
Hlth 53/690
Stmn 41/700
Snty 220/220
Mana 199/240
Vit 51 -> 69
End 54 -> 70
Str 52 -> 68
Agi 60 -> 76
Dex 60 -> 76
Wil 18 -> 22
Sol 21 -> 24
Int 14 -> 16
Prc 16 -> 19
Mnd 14 -> 17
Skills:
Aura 3 -> 6
Body Enhancement 5 -> 6
Insanity 1 -> 4
Perfect Intuition –
Mana Efficiency 2 -> 5
Mana Siphon 5 -> 7
Spell Casting 1 (new)
Stealth 2 -> 3
Soulbond 3 -> 4
Soul-binding Aura 1 -> 2 (new)
]
“Tsk…”
The changes weren’t unforeseen, but she had expected something new after fighting the boss alone, aside from a few levels in some of her classes. Also why did she have maxed out sanity even though she had the insanity skill? Probably an issue with the translation or something…
Maybe she should for once not kill stuff and work on her creative and supportive skill? The gold and silver her sister had conjured had allowed the warrior to level her artisan class when she had been tasked with keeping the scientist safe, but even after that she still had two classes at level 0 and three others below ten, a fact she wanted to change as soon as possible.
If having few classes was advantageous, then having a lot must have their own benefits.
Anyway, regretting for a few seconds that she had looked directly on her status and not wasted more time by going over the log, Sera continued to lie on her back and look around for anything interesting. A potion was still slowly recovering her health, so she couldn’t even use that to pass her time.
A while later her sister finally showed up and released her from her boredom, though the latter was contributed more to their guide following the mage.
“I see you killed the boss. Now, i’m a bit interested in how you achieved that. Based on your current condition, i doubt you managed to find the heart during the second stage, before the boss killed itself. So did you throw down debris to lure it out of the lava and attack it from a distance or did you overturn the pillars yourself to get closer to the surface of the lava and strike when it showed itself?” Too many words were thrown at Sera by Nia, however as it was a welcome change from simply lying around, she did listen to most of them for once.
“Wait, that is how you were supposed to handle the fight?” The warrior responded after a few moments of processing the information.
Holding her head as if she had a headache, their guide then asked a question she likely dreaded to get answered. “… how did you fight it?”
“At first i tried to kill the avatar, after failing that, i kinda spotted the heart as it destroyed the pillar i was on…” Sera abridged her fight and skipped over a few of her more suicidal stunts.
“So you didn’t read the books, didn’t think that a ‘Knight’ could be protecting something and an ‘Avatar’ had a being it represented? Didn’t you have video games in your old world?” Nia replied, stunned and surprised about how little the girl sometimes seemed to value her own life.
“Hey you could have warned me!”
“How would i do that, when you suddenly run away without any prior warning and only shout back that i should protect your sister?!” Not taking that accusation without fighting, Nia argued.
“Urg… fine!” Sera conceded. The distraction was welcome, but now Nia started to come with sound arguments and she couldn’t handle those in her current condition. “Anyway, sis, can you fill that hole over there with water? I could need something to cool down and we hadn’t had a bath for a few days by now…”
Looking up from whatever the girl was doing and glancing in the direction of the hole, after a short “sure”, water suddenly appeared above it from an appendage of the mages mana construct. The liquid quickly flooded the circular stone pocket created by the now missing and from the dungeon reclaimed corpse of the boss-sphere. As a bit too much water was supplied, it also submerged the surrounding area, though the cracks in the floor quickly drained the excess element. A few moments later steam started to appear in the area, likely from the remaining heat in deeper areas.
“Hm… thanks, but could you maybe also add some cooling? I mean a hot spring isn’t bad, but if there are alternatives…” Sera tried to convince her sister, who however just threw her recycled arrowheads in. Guided by spheres of water they reached their intended position. Then even more mana flooded the area and soon ice formed around the areas where the items landed.
It was quite the wondrous sight. An area of pure and cold white in the otherwise hot, dry and dark labyrinth.
Not wasting any time, the warrior rolled into the bath. Ignoring her still self-repairing clothing, she only ditched her weapons before submerging herself into the coldness.
And cold it was!
Maybe her sister did her job here even a bit too well. Fortunately Sera had already a bit of experience with cold water, otherwise it could have been dangerous, especially with how low her stamina was… Actually, no, it wouldn’t have mattered here, as the girl just remembered. Breathing was optional in the Realms!
A quick look at her status also confirmed that her conditionwas back to normal.
Getting out of the water, now more than half an hour after the warrior had managed to coerce Sarah to continue whatever she was doing in the liquid, Nia had to disrupt their feeling of just being out of the water. “You are aware that with all the mana around one basically can’t get dirty and sweating also doesn’t exist here, which makes baths pretty much pointless? Sarah could have probably cooled you down more efficiently.”
“Yes, yes, we just wanted to enjoy the bath!” Sera replied aggressively.
“… well, just don’t let others know that. Bathing is usually only done by someone from another world or used as a slang for certain adult activities in the slums.” The guide warned the twins.
“But you were also in the bath with us and seemed to enjoy it?” Sera for once tried to use a valid argument herself.
Looking away, seemingly embarrassed Nia answered. “… that doesn’t mean that one can’t enjoy it! Though it’s still a waste of time!”
An awkward pause followed. “Anyway, let’s get going!”
Passing through the light, the dark last chamber of the dungeon greeted them again. This time instead of a staff an assortment of flasks had been placed on the altar. Potions, likely to compensate for Sera’s reckless fighting style, as a closer look indicated. Though looking closer, there was also another item among the consumables.
[Necklace of the Phoenix
Quality: excellent
Effects:
Slightly increases regeneration. When infused with the fire-affinity mana of its wearer, spawns a healing flame which will heal the owner of this item. The same is true for derived elements, however depending on the exact affinity the effect may be degraded or enhanced.
Description:
A golden accessory adorned with red gem stones with a rare effect which increases the survivability of its wearer, if certain conditions are met.
]
