บท 11: Tutorial
Cassian and Nico spent half a day down in the dungeon hunting monsters. The low spawn rate and their already high power meant they spent more time looking for monsters than fighting them. Not a hard task since finding monsters was easy thanks to Cassian's senses but still an annoyance. They had to go deeper.
For now, they were coming back up the stairs to Babel's first floor, to head to the Guild and cash in their earnings.
The guild had many branch departments all over the city. Their two biggest departments were the Guild Headquarters, the Pantheon, in the northwest, and the Pagoda, directly inside the Babel and taking up a small chunk of the first 3 floors.
Their roles were divided, the Pantheon dealt with more bureaucratic matters such as adventurer registrations, management, complaints, and advising, as well as the city and familia management. Meanwhile, Pagoda dealt with daily magic stone and drop item exchanges, so as to take the majority of the burden off the pantheon.
Exchanges could still be done at the Pantheon but most adventurers did it at the Pagoda due to direct availability after exiting the dungeon.
The brothers were going to do their exchange at the Pantheon due to needing to speak with their advisor, as was common with most newbies.
Arriving at the building they quickly found Rose, but she was currently busy registering an adventurer, so they went to exchange their loot first.
"Hello, please pour your magic stones into the trey so I can count their value." Called out the receptionist behind the glass frame.
Cassian did as told and emptied their bags into the tray, which was quickly pulled back by the receptionist. After a couple of minutes, she reported their earnings and deposited the Valis into the tray.
"58 Goblin and 54 Kobold magic stones. Along with 4 Goblin Fangs and 5 Kobold Nails, quite lucky to get this many drops. In total 7,400 Valis. Have a nice day!" The two thanked the receptionist and walked away.
"7,400 Valis huh, considering goblin and kobold magic stones and drops have equal worth that's 50 valis per magic stone and 200 valis per drop. Not a bad haul." Cassian was pleased with their income, especially since it was their first day and they already earned enough to cover the daily inn fee.
"That's great! Tomorrow we'll get even more. And you said making money was hard." Replied Nico, making Cassian's eye twitch and making him want to bash the ignorant fool's head in.
Fortunately for Nico's continued health, that was when Rose approached them after finishing her business.
"Hmm, I take it your first trip down the dungeon went well?" Asked Rose nonchalantly, though secretly she felt a burden fall off her shoulders. The first day was always the most dangerous.
"It was good, we managed to kill quite a lot of monsters. Oh, can we talk privately by the way? We need more info on the dungeon." Replied Cassian with a polite smile.
Rose was a little confused, since she had given them everything they would need on the first 3 floors of the dungeon, but took them to a private room regardless.
"What do you wish to know?"
"Everything about floors 6 to 9. We're planning on heading down there tomorrow." As soon as the words left his mouth, he could see the agitation on Rose's face.
"What? I thought I told you that I didn't want suicidal adventurers as my charges. Why the hell would you want to go down to the 6th floor on your second day, when you only just got to the 3rd floor?!" The words got considerably more heated as they continued coming out of Rose. Cassian got a bit nervous at the 3rd floor remark, knowing they went down to the 5th, but knew he had to trudge on since Nico was looking anywhere but their upset advisor.
"Actually, we went down to the 5th floor." As soon as he got it out he winced seeing the clear anger on Rose's face, so he quickly continued. "Rose, we're not suicidal. I'm not blindly throwing myself in danger. Even when we were on those floors, we barely faced any danger and had to spend more time looking for monsters than actually killing them, because we are quite a bit more powerful than anything there."
Rose stared at him for a moment with furrowed brows but relaxed slightly when she saw that he was sincere.
"Adventurers have no obligation to reveal their abilities to anyone and I know I'm overstepping my bounds here, but can you tell me what you are capable of, so that we can cooperate more efficiently?" Rose knew she was being rude by asking about their status, but that was the only way she could assure herself that she was not sending two young boys to their deaths. She had to know.
"Can you promise that what I tell you won't leave the three of us?" Cassian thought about revealing some of their abilities and decided it was best to reveal some details. 'To be fair, I don't really care about keeping our abilities secret in the long run, at higher levels even if the whole city knows them it won't matter. I just have to keep them hidden while we are still weak to prevent us from being targeted. And Rose and the Guild itself is trustworthy.'
"I swear that none of what you tell me will become known to anyone from me." That she could easily swear. She was just glad he decided it was ok to share.
"Well, I have a skill that enhances my physical prowess to be on par with an adventurer with A rank in all basic abilities, as well as several chantless magic spells." That was enough. It would give Rose a good measure of what he could handle, while also not revealing too much. Physical prowess and Spells would never stay secrets anyway. Anyone who saw him fighting would instantly know about it and he was not going to pretend to be weak just to hide his abilities, as that would impede his growth.
"And I can cast a bunch of different magic spells that have short chants plus a skill that increases the overall potency of my magic." Nico just followed his brother's lead. Since he deemed it was okay to reveal some stuff, then he must have thought everything out. Although he didn't reveal Guardian's Child as they agreed.
Rose sat there with wide eyes processing the information. Skills and Magic were rare, especially for fresh adventurers, to get them from the beginning meant they had great potential. And it was not just a skill, it was a unique skill that gave a huge status boost permanently as it sounded and a boosted collection of quick-chant spells. She underestimated just how desired they would be by every god out there.
But now that she roughly knew their capabilities, she didn't need to hold back and could earnestly teach them without feeling like she was signing their death warrants.
"Very well, thank you for trusting me, I will do my best to assist you. Let's start the lessons then. There are three monsters that you must watch out for the most due to their danger. War Shadows, Killer Ants, and Purple Moths. The first two are known as newbie killers, and for good reason too…"
And so continued their lessons for several hours before Rose deemed that they knew enough not to get themselves killed and let them go.
— Hecate's House —
After finishing their lessons, the brothers went to Hecate's abode to tell her about their day and get a Falna update.
"So, how was your first day?" She asked with curiosity. She was worried sick throughout the day. She knew it was unlikely for them to run into difficulties in the beginning floors but the dungeon was unpredictable and should never be taken lightly.
"Pretty good! We went down to the 5th floor, killed a bunch of monsters, and earned good money!" Answered Nico chipperly, although with a hint of exhaustion from the diving and then lectures. Meanwhile, Cassian just went to the bathroom to wash his hands and face after asking for directions. All the blood on him was starting to grate him.
"That's good, no close calls I hope."
"Nah, it was pretty easy, Cassian practically knows when monsters are coming at us from miles away with his hearing and smell."
"Phew, well that's good to know, I won't be so worried anymore then. You boys can handle yourselves." Said Hecate with a sigh of relief. Now that she knew that they were more than capable of handling stuff down there, she could rest easier.
"Hey Hecate I bought some ingredients on the way to make some food, can I use your kitchen?" Cassian called out while setting down his bag. Both he and Nico were starving. They hadn't eaten anything all day. Next time he will remember to bring lunch down into the dungeon.
"Sure! But don't you want a status update first?"
"No I'm hungry enough to eat a horse, do Nico first before I prepare supper, we can do mine after eating."
With that Cassian got to cooking pasta. He wasn't an expert but he was good enough. Meanwhile, Hecate started updating Nico's Falna.
—-----------------------
Nikolaos Suncrest
Strength ~ I-2
Endurance ~ I-4
Dexterity ~ I-1
Agility ~ I-5
Magic ~ I-23
—-----------------------
"Impressive, pretty good of an increase for one day." Hecate whistled at the stat increase. It was comfortably in the upper ends of an increase compared to adventurers in general.
"Holy crap! That's 35 points raised in total, I thought basic abilities increased a lot slower?!" Nico was surprised, they didn't have an ability that accelerated their Excelia gain so he thought it would be much smaller.
"That's because you're only just starting out from 0 points. The lower you are the easier it is to increase stats but it gets much harder after reaching higher stats until at some point it becomes tortuous just to raise them even a little. At that point, it's more efficient to level up. That's why even the best adventurers only have one or two basic abilities at most raised to rank S." Answered Hecate.
As one of the gods participating in the creation of Falna, she knew a great deal about it even without ever having a familia of her own. Although she didn't know everything due to the mysteries and unpredictable nature of Falna, as well as a primordial being involved in the creation process and adding aspects of their own, that none of the other gods could figure out.
"Dinners ready!" Cassian brought food to the table and everyone started digging in. After finishing up, it was Cassian's turn to get an update.
—--------------------
Cassian Suncrest
Strength ~ I-7
Endurance ~ I-4
Dexterity ~ I-6
Agility ~ I-12
Magic ~ I-8
—--------------------
"37 point increase. It seems I've struck gold with you boys, hahaha." Hecate laughed, how many gods would eat their hearts out if they knew how talented these two were? She was looking forward to bragging about them when the time came.
Cassian meanwhile was contemplating his status. The increase was good, yes, but it was because their basic abilities were still low. On the other hand, they didn't face much challenge anyway so tomorrow with the added difficulties of lower floors they would get plenty more Excelia, so that would help keep the growth steady.
But that presented a future problem. He was not going to level up until he maxed out all his stats, but without a growth accelerator, it would be a very slow progress. He did not plan on spending years at the same level, growing his basic abilities like Ottar.
'That means I will have to think of ways to accelerate our growth in other ways. Loopholes in the normal adventurer growth process that I can exploit. To maximize our gains. Hmmm.' Cassian started pondering on what to do in the future. He would also coordinate this with Hecate. As one of Falna's creators, her expertise would be invaluable.
'But before that, we need to achieve economic security. As we are now, we have very little money, so unless we want to be kicked out of our fancy inn and forced into a crappy one, we need to earn quite a lot of money.'
After that, the trio shared a pleasant conversation for a while, before the brothers left and went back to their inn to get some sleep in preparation for tomorrow.
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