We spent a few days practicing and honing our skills, producing some good results for all of us. I was able to level up all of my skills with the training regimen I used for Vulcan and Pim. By creating floating, glowing targets for each of them to try to hit while sparring, I leveled up my newest skill, ‘Mana Projection’. The higher it's gotten, the farther I’ve been able to project mana, with increased quality and quantity. The only tangible difference is that I can make each orb brighter, but not as bright as I can make myself. Either way, I was able to improve all of my skills a bit, while increasing my mana capacity a few points without increasing my overall level.

  ?

  Pim and Vulcan, on the other hand, produced much more visible results with their training. Sparring against each other let them improve their technical fighting abilities, enough for even Vulcan to have speed comparable to a less agile dungeon delver. Plus, his regeneration rate increased with the more damage he recovered over time. As far as I can tell, he’s regenerating about three hp per second, but my ‘Identify’ skill can’t see the details. That skill has been really slow with leveling, even though I’m constantly using it to monitor their conditions, so no one accidentally dies. Vulcan managed to acquire two new martial skills at the end of the training, ‘Martial Arts Mastery’ and ‘Club Mastery’. I had him train with and without a weapon to see how he would progress under different fighting styles. At first, his main method of fighting was just swinging at his enemies with as much force as he could muster. That would work on anyone not skilled enough to dodge his attacks or use his momentum against him, so I thought that working on this would better help him take on stronger people. Having him spar against the speedy Pim and keep his situational awareness of my floating orbs allowed him to improve his fighting tactics. He seems to be able to choose his timing and awareness without overextending himself.

  ?

  Pim’s training focused mostly on improving his spear mastery and fighting ability against physically stronger opponents. His durability was a little harder to train, as any good hit from Vulcan would put him on the verge of death. By the end, his agility and weapon level had improved. I helped him learn to make tighter flight maneuvers by setting up my glowing orbs in a sort of flight training course. He isn’t able to turn on a dime, so any reckless moves could still result in a lethal injury. As long as he focuses on hit-and-run tactics like before, it should be hard for distracted dungeon delvers to land a hit on him.

  ?

  While we focused on training for those few days, we did see a group of dungeon delvers pass by, but we chose not to engage them. They were a group of five and were equipped with a lot of camping supplies. They even had a person dedicated to just carrying bags, but even he was strong. I was able to use ‘Identify’ on them, and the results confirmed my hesitation against them. They boasted a lot of utility and offensive skills, so they must have had a lot of experience to gain that many. They were probably aiming for the deeper parts of the dungeon, and nothing up top, including us, would be able to stop them. Coming to that decision, I went over to the stone golem in the corner that De’gon, the dungeon master, set up for this situation. After signaling it, the golem walked to the center of the room, ready for the incoming intruders, while I gave my condolences to the stone golem. As expected, the group had no trouble in dispatching the stone golem. A man equipped with a mace and a belt full of weapons stepped up to the challenge alone, then, when the stone golem swung down to crush the man, he simply stepped to the side and pushed the golem’s arm away from it on the downward swing. Stone shards from the golem’s arm flew through the air, and the man raised his mace and quickly swung down, shattering the rest of the golem. As quickly as it started, the fight was over, and the group had free rein to continue to the next floor, but before they left, the man said something that caught my attention.

  ?

  “Hey, boss, the stairs are up ahead. The notice said the kids should’ve been training somewhere on the first floor. Should we double back?”

  ?

  Another man with a scar across his eye, the boss, responded. “Nah, they just wanted us to be on the lookout for them if possible. There isn’t even a reward, so the most we could expect is good standing with the mayor, not like that would be worth much. If we haven’t seen them yet, then they’re either outside the dungeon or somewhere below. The slimes haven’t had enough time to get rid of them completely, so we’ll keep going.”

  ?

  The first man nodded, and then they continued on their way down. I wondered if the kids they were referring to were the group of three I had encountered and fought. I considered following them, but had thought better of it. Even if they were looking for those kids, there isn’t much that could be done now except letting the people who loved them know their fate. There must be someone worrying about them if delvers are being notified about them, so hopefully, they can find peace in the future, but what’s done is done. There is no way to bring back the dead, no matter how much those left behind may wish for it. About an hour after that group had passed, I noticed one of their members was using some sort of stealth skill to conceal his presence from the rest of the monsters. I noticed him with my mana, but he was moving too fast for me to capitalize on the opportunity, so he quickly ran past and out of the dungeon. A day later, towards the end of our training, he was already back in the dungeon and down the stairs when I noticed him again in the middle of our training. I don’t know why he left and came back, but I think those kids mentioned a trip to their town being about a day’s travel from the dungeon, so it must have been urgent. Maybe something happened down below, but I didn’t have the time to find out, so I put it to the back of my mind and continued with our training.

  ?

  Dungeon Delver POV:

  ?

  The dungeon delving group that Willow described was, in a word, strong. They had formed a party with an assortment of skills well-suited for traversing the various depths of dungeons all over the continent. They originated from the west, where dungeons were much more prominent in the smaller kingdoms. They had spent the majority of their years exploring and gathering riches in those western dungeons, but as with the rest of their ilk, they could never have enough. So, they made their way east until they eventually reached the town closest to ‘The Hill-Valley Depths’. The dungeon itself hadn’t been fully explored, as mostly mid-level and younger dungeon delvers visited it to train and make decent coins, rarely venturing to the bottommost layer. This group, however, made it their goal to comb through dungeons for the most valuable materials and loot at the bottom of dungeons. They didn’t know what was at the bottom of this dungeon, but that gamble was part of the thrill of being a dungeon delver.

  ?

  It was the leader of this group who noticed the parchment asking for delvers to look for a group of three young delvers in the dungeon. However, there wasn’t a listed reward, so nobody who saw the notice would actively pursue it. At best, groups already going to the dungeon would keep it in the back of their mind and report any news if they happened to stumble on the kids; it’s just another victim of the dungeon, an everyday occurrence in this line of work. The leader, knowing this, quickly filed it away in his mind as he still had to prepare for his group’s next expedition.

  ?

  Within the next day, his group had made all of their preparations and set off for the dungeon. The journey was relatively simple, just having to follow the curve of the hills and a river, so they made pretty good time, much quicker than the mountainous terrain in the west. The first floor of the dungeon, like the walk there, was just as easy. For them, simple traps and low-level monsters weren’t even a consideration in their mind. The best possible materials that could be found in the first floor would just be pocket change for them, so they continued on without stopping to the final room on the floor. They then had the conservation that Willow was able to observe, going down the stairs immediately after. Just before they descended, the scout of the group looked behind him, to the far corner of the dark room. He could sense the presence of an imp and a stone golem trying to hide in the shadows. They were stronger than the rest of the monsters on the floor, but hadn’t attacked them, even when they were fighting the last monster before the stairs. These two monsters were interesting to the scout, but he knew there wasn’t any point in finding out more, so he took the lead of the group and led them down to the second floor.

  ?

  The second floor's danger from monsters and traps increased, but to veterans of the dungeons of the west, this floor was still a cakewalk. Eventually, they progressed roughly twenty-five percent of the way through the floor when they stumbled upon something. Strewn around one of the connecting tunnels, in front of a spike trap, were the bodies of three young delvers, dead and half-dissolved by slimes. The kids had been found, but it was far too late.