We are slowly falling apart.
I had noticed it the day that Hanah disappeared into the Abyssal Descent. The entire mood shifted in a way that would have been unthinkable just a day prior.
For the first time ever, we realized what it actually meant to fight. What kind of risk all of this carried. We had romanticized it too much, basking in imagined glory we might never achieve. And now, that dream got shattered only days after it was created. With Hanah's presumed death came a dreadful realization.
She won't be the only one.
It was inevitable, really. Humans make mistakes, and we were no exceptions. Even a slight mistake could already doom you in ways you never expected, causing serious injuries at best or death at worst. It hasn't happened yet, but sooner or later it will. I was convinced of that.
In the first month after Hanah fell, we were all incredibly careful, taking no risks that weren't absolutely needed. Those that hadn't completely stopped for one reason or another continued with their training. We continued diving into the dungeon, slaying stronger monsters as we dove a bit deeper every day.
This also marked the first split among the class. It weren't many that opted out completely, but it wasn't like no one did either. Bronya, Zane, and Aurelia were gone. Whitney, our [Vivomancer], was gone as well, off to do whatever healer stuff she did. With that, our class of fifteen shrunk to a group of active fighters of only ten, already including Ms. Edelwei?.
Inside those ten, there was another split. While that one wasn't as apparent as the first one, I noticed the way that Blake and his friends disassociated themselves from the rest of us. We didn't dive to level up together, and we didn't speak much with them either. Contact between us seven and those three was very limited.
For diving and leveling, we split our group of seven in half, forming two separate parties. As it happened to be in the end, one party consisted of only girls and the other party of only boys. Who could have guessed?
My party was obviously the girl one. It was me as [Swordmaster], Mary the [Storm Archer], and Dahlia the [Pyromancer]. While Ms. Edelwei? wasn't always with us, she also occasionally supported the other group, but she mainly functioned as our tank with her [Guardian] class.
All in all, we were quite the balanced group. The same could almost be said for the group of boys. While they were missing a tank when Ms. Edelwei? wasn't with them, they still had a physical, a magical, and a hybrid class among them. The hybrid, Leyvin the [Windwalker], functioned like a ranged support that could also support Yakov the rogue in a close combat fight when it came down to it.
Yakov was actually the only person among all of us whose exact class nobody knew. The only thing he told us was that he was functionally a rogue. A bit suspicious, but I didn't think much of it. Let him keep his secret if he wants to.
Apart from that, the last person of that party was Carl the [Electromancer]. While he really struggled to get his lightning under control at first, he's by far the most powerful mage we have now, only barely followed by the pyromaniac Dahlia.
Unlike Blake, who acquired the [Hero] class through some unknown miracle, Carl was actually a good guy and a great asset to have along for the future. I hoped that he could work alongside me to somehow keep our resident [Hero] in check. He hasn't tried anything untoward yet, but you never know with that guy.
Unfortunately for us, he already reached tier two some days ago, which means that he is already ahead of us in pure power. I hoped that I would also reach it today, but that was a bit up to luck. Yesterday, I successfully reached level 25, the peak of tier one. If we were lucky and found some suitable monsters today, I could very well make it to tier two.
We were currently making our way down into the Great Labyrinth, just as we had many days before. It was almost routine at this point. I swiftly cut down another weak spider monster that jumped at us before I pulled up my status again.
[Name: Jane Aubrie
Race: Human
Level: 25 (max)
Mana: 506/580
Achievements: [Hero Candidate]
Class: Swordmaster (Epic)
Active Skills:
[Sword Aura Lv. 7]
[Flash Step Lv. 3]
[Perfect Parry Lv. 4]
Passive Skills:
[Enhanced Reflexes]
[Danger Sense Lv. 5]
[Sharp Edge]
General Skills:
[Identify]
[Mana Sense Lv. 2]]
Nothing I hadn't seen before. Of my skills, as is evident by its level, [Sword Aura] was the best skill I had. It created some sort of glow around my sword that greatly enhanced its reach and cutting power. Additionally, it also greatly strengthened the sword to keep it from breaking or turning dull. The latter was not something that mattered much for me, though. Further enhanced by the passive skill [Sharp Edge], carrying a sharp or a dull sword made almost no difference to me.
While it wasn't an offensive skill, [Danger Sense] was almost more useful than even [Sword Aura] was. It was almost precognitive in the way that it told me of danger I would have no way of knowing otherwise. The caverns of the Great Labyrinth were full of monsters that survived purely based on ambush tactics. With [Danger Sense], however, those tactics were pretty useless against me.
If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.
Mana was also pretty interesting. At level 25, I sat at an odd number of 580. Through observation, I noticed that I seem to receive exactly 20 mana per level. Weirdly, though, that amount is equal to the amount of mana that Dahlia receives each level, even though my class is epic and hers is rare. However, while Mary's class is also only rare, she only receives 16 mana per level and not twenty like Dahlia does.
Through cross-referencing with the others, we concluded that every physically based class receives a bit less maximum mana per level than a purely magical one does. Every physical rare class receives 16 per level, while every magical rare class receives 20. Physical epic classes, like mine, receive 20. In contrast, magical epic classes, at least according to Leyvin, who surprisingly does fall under that category in the system, each receive 25 mana per level. If you calculate the ratio of those, it seems to be an even 80% of mana gained per level for physical classes if the magical ones receive the corresponding 100% of mana.
We did ask instructor Wyn if he could confirm our guesses, but he told us that they had no data for anything but common grade tier one classes. However, he did tell us that common classes respectively received 10 or 8 mana per level, which did pretty much confirm what we thought.
This also served to reveal another interesting pattern, as the mana gained increases by a flat 5 per grade of the class. Uncommon classes should by extension receive 15 per level, while rare and epic classes get 20 and 25, respectively. This fits our observations perfectly, at least if magical classes are treated as the 100%.
If this pattern continues for the legendary grade as well, then Blake should receive 30 mana per level. Unfortunately, he wasn't willing to tell us whether or not we were correct, so we'll have to leave it as an assumption for now. Well, the expression he had at that moment did strongly indicate that we had guessed correctly.
Suddenly, I sensed a surprisingly strong but vague feeling of danger in front of us.
"Stop, there's something here!" I called out to my party to make them aware. I had long since taken over the role of the scout, so they listened immediately when I gave a warning. After all, in situations like these, every second could decide between life or death.
Preparing for an ambush, we slowly slid forwards. As we passed a section in the passage that widened a bit, my senses flared. I swiftly turned around and parried a blade flying at my neck with my own. I routinely used [Inspect] on the creature and was surprised to see [Nightstalker, Lv. ?], a tier two variant of a particularly nasty creature. They hid in the shadows and crevices of the natural rock and ambushed their victims with their blade-like arms, intending to end the fight as soon as it started.
Despite that, I grinned. I was a very bad matchup for them. Their ambush tactic was practically useless, and there was no class better suited for handling blades than my class was. Especially my skill [Perfect Parry] made sure of that. The skill itself was very finicky but incredibly powerful when used correctly. If I parry my opponent's attack in the perfect moment, it basically gets nullified completely, no matter what kind of attack it was. However, while it didn't matter for the skill, I personally found it hard to parry magic attacks. They had a kind of unintuitiveness and unpredictability to them that made it hard to judge the perfect timing.
On the other hand, I found physical attacks with blades like swords the easiest to parry effectively. I was already intimately familiar with swords, and my class provided me a sort of intuition for everything that has to do with blades, even if it did not explicitly state that.
As the creature swung its blade arms at me again, I intercepted its swing with a well-timed parry. At the moment of collision, a satisfying ringing sound arose, which indicated the success of [Perfect Parry]. The creature stumbled back as if my swing had carried an unstoppable force with it.
Not wanting to waste the opportunity, I lunged in with an attack myself. The creature was still reeling to regain its balance as I struck. A well-placed swing at its neck, and its head went flying. It was just that easy.
Must have been a weak tier two creature, maybe it just ascended a couple of days ago. All in all, not much of a challenge.
"Great job, Jane. I just love how you fight, it's so satisfying to watch. You're so elegant with your sword!" Mary remarked from the sidelines, and I giggled a bit. "Thank you, Mary, though you wield your bow just as elegantly as I do my sword."
"Oh, is that so?" She looked at me sheepishly. "Anyways, that was a tier two creature, right? Then that should have easily been enough for you to reach tier two as well. Did you check yet?"
"Not yet. Should I do it now? We don't know if it's instant or takes some time to do. Shouldn't I wait until we're out again?"
"No, don't wait. If you can do it, then do it now. Even if it takes some time, we're not in a hurry and can protect you if any new creatures come here.
"Okay, fine then, I'll check."
With a slight hesitation, I pulled up my status screen again. My skills didn't change, but the upper part of the screen was different.
[Name: Jane Aubrie
Level: 25 (max)
Mana: 492/580
Achievements: [Hero Candidate] [Predator I]
Class: Swordmaster (Epic) (evolution available)
...]
A new achievement called [Predator I], and 'evolution available'. Both were interesting, though the achievement I already knew about. Instructor Wyn had told us about a couple of commonly known achievements not too long ago, and this was one of them. They guessed that the continuations [Predator II] and [Predator III] also existed, but no one had ever recordedly achieved such a feat. The bonus was fine but nothing special, just a slight increase to experience gained for higher-tiered kills. However, that didn't happen too often, so its usability remained questionable for now.
The evolutions were very interesting, though, as each was unique to the wielder, even if similar or identical names were recorded by others in the past.
Apprehensively, I tapped on the evolution available text in the window, and a second floating window appeared. Not unexpected but still surprising. This was the list from which I could now pick the class I would have to wield for the rest of tier two. I hope they're good.
[Class evolutions for: T1 Swordmaster (Epic)
T2 | Swordmaster (Epic)
T2 | Flaming Warblade (Epic)
T2 | Master Blade Dancer (Epic+)
T2 | Sword Grandmaster (Epic+)
T2 | Master of the Timed Sword (Epic+)