At the end of her first day of exterminating every warg she could find, Astrid had a bag that looked more like it was for luggage than anything else filled with ears from wargs. Her thick leather gloves were nearly soaked through with sweat from the day, even though she'd taken them off when she'd had her short breaks through the day. Grom had kept an eye on her on the fourth floor after she'd killed the Boss, and had needed to bail her out when she'd been attacked by six wargs at the same time.
"I think you'd be fine in that situation," he'd said, "but it'd be better for all of us if you don't have any serious wounds that need tending so early in the day. Maybe not quite ready for the full clear by yourself."
"Yeah," Astrid grunted as she caught her breath, "it's just reminding me how much I need a full party. If the wargs were a little bit tougher, a little bit stronger, a little bit faster, anything, then I'd just be getting myself killed doing this. This is probably the best Dungeon available to me for this specifically. But I don't think I'll ever be able to do it again, unless we're talking about an entrance that's at the bottom of a tier while I'm at the top."
"Ehhh." Grom's tone showed his disbelief. "I don't think so, not past maybe Iron. Even at Steel, the monsters are so much more clever that it'd be risky for you then, even if you're a level 86 in a level 51 dungeon. Mind you, I've never been in a Steel entrance, but I've heard stories. I'm sure you could clear a floor or two all by yourself before you needed to rest. The main issue is that higher tiers of the Dungeon are so much longer and more complicated that's where the bulk of the danger shows up—" Grom caught himself.
"Actually, maybe you could. Damn Quick Recovery. I've never met anyone with it, so I don't know how it scales. Do you?"
"My dad knew someone, but we can't really trust them to have told the truth. Plus, he wasn't told the specifics. But at Steel tier, he could shrug off the ambush of an Assassin of the same tier, use the Skill to get back to fighting condition, and kill the enemy."
"Duchess bless me." Grom chuckled. "I hope I get to see you in your prime. It'll be a privilege. Now, I'll get going. Make sure to practice to get a good fourth Skill option, we wanna make sure that you get that Great One's blessing at level 16. "
"Yeah, I know." Astrid waved him off, and he disappeared while she sat on the stairs from the fourth to the third floor. After getting back to peak condition, she went up to the third floor and systematically slew every monster she came across. After months of slaughtering wargs specifically, Astrid found herself hitting their exposed, weakest points with ease. She never hit a glancing blow across one's thick shoulders or neglected to crack bones and cripple with every hit. Alone, against three wargs, she never struggled, able to dispatch them so quickly.
Strangely, it became a chore. As she continued killing them, it was easy to forget how dangerous this had been for her just a couple levels before. The thought of where she would go next propelled her, and before she knew it, she'd made a second pass through all three of the lower levels to catch any stragglers or newly spawned monsters. When she stumbled across Frederick's party fighting a pair of wargs, carefully harrying them down as they sought killing blows, Astrid let herself stop and watch for a minute. She leaned against a tree to evaluate their progress.
Elpheah held the front easily, driving the monsters back with her shield. She still didn't use her poleaxe as much as she should, but that was just her nature by now. Maybe she'd get over it as she continued to practice. It wasn't Astrid's problem any longer. Frederick and Lyra danced around the sides, wounding the monsters as Elpeah's frontlining Skill kept the bulk of the monsters' attention on her. Quintus, surprisingly, twisted his hands as he uttered the Skill necessary to shoot a stone the size of a fist around Elpeah. It smashed into the warg's head, and it went down. The fight ended right after, and Astrid smiled. They would do well.
Before they collected the trophies, Lyra called out, "Something's coming over there! Ready!"
She was pointing in Astrid's direction. Looking, Astrid realized she was mostly hidden, her armor in total shadow and not shining enough to give her away as a person. For a split second, she considered smashing through the bushes and trying to terrify the fledgling party, but in a moment of maturity, she figured getting the antsy Earthmage thinking that a massive monster was attacking was a good way to get a rock in the face. Instead, she called back while raising her hands.
"It's just me! On my way back for the day."
"Oh, it's Astrid." Lyra signed in relief before perking up. "Are you ok? It's earlier than expected."
"Make quicker progress than we'd planned on." Astrid replied as she walked out into an easy view of the other delvers. "Figured I'd get back early enough to have a hot meal."
"We can walk with you." Elpeah said, her face visibly happy behind her faceless helmet.
"I don't want to interrupt your delving." Astrid shook her head. "Don't leave on my account."
"Nah, that's not the case." Frederick waved her off as he bent down and cut the two ears free. "Today's our slow day. We have a two day cycle, one half day and one full day. The full day is practicing in the morning, delving before lunch, and eating down here so we can get back to town for dinner. Half days… we just wing it."
Somehow, he looked embarrassed about it, and Astrid smiled. Then, realizing they couldn't see it, she pulled her helmet on and fastened it to her belt, hanging behind her. "That's more than most other delvers do. Every other day is normal."
"That's what people say…" Gustave said, looking at her in disbelief. "I think you've proven that to be untrue."
Astrid laughed. Genuinely laughed. She strode towards the Medic, shaking her head. "I… I'm a special case. Everything else forgotten, I have a specific, nearly impossible goal. I'm not doing this because I wanna be rich or because my Class just happens to be well suited for delving. No, this is what I've always dreamed of doing, and, frankly, I'm crazy enough to think that I might have a chance to get there in the long run."
"And…" Elpeah trailed off as she said it. Then, she met Astrid's gaze and squared her shoulders as she asked, "And what's your goal?"
"I want to get at least to Mithril tier, but my goal is Adamantium." Astrid paused, ready for, if not ridicule, disbelief. Instead, she got a couple severe nods, a Vanguard's wide eyes, and a look from Frederick that said, "I can see it."
"I believe you." Frederick said, his words matching his posture. "You've been here only twice as long as we have, we're barely getting into level 2. How much experience did you get today?"
That was the real bounty of the day, and Astrid had forced herself to keep from checking her total experience amount through her delving. She knew she'd killed something like 160 wargs today, so…
"It's…" she trailed off as she checked. She'd come into the day with 17/5,000.
1,199/5,000.
"Duchess above." Astrid breathed the curse instead of answering the question. While the new delvers waited for any response, she realized that a week was too long. Less than four more days. The fourth Skill, the first watershed of Bronze tier, was four days away. As she shook her head, Astrid looked up.
"I got almost 1,200 experience today." She couldn't keep the slight quiver from her voice, and the party in front of her stopped walking as the words settled in.
"That… would be almost 250 experience each." Quintus couldn't keep the awe from his voice. "And you're going to do this every day?"
"For four more days. And then… I'll be done."
Saying the words made it real, and Astrid had to blink back the emotion. What emotion it was, she couldn't say for sure, but it was good.
***
Stark didn't say anything as Astrid had explained her day to him, but he'd evaluated the cargo sack of ears she'd nearly thrown on the bar and shook his head. Instead, she let it fall to the ground and smiled. Then, once she'd said the number of experience, he blinked twice. Then he nodded, and offered another bowl of stew as she devoured her early dinner.
Astrid appreciated Stark.
Once she was fed, she wanted to get in the bath, but it was more important that she get to Moira to get the few repairs necessary the maximum amount of time possible to be completed. After all, there were a couple of the links in her chain shirt that'd been damaged and needed to be pressed back together, as well as a couple buckles on her greaves that just needed some attention. And Moira would be happy to see her, wouldn't she?
"You're already done and you're here." Moira's deadpan voice greeted Astrid as she pushed her way through the doors. Even so, her eyes creased at the corner with the subtle real smile that Astrid had gotten to know over the past months, the smile that she preferred to Moira's customer service smile. The Smith wiped her hands on her thick apron as she walked over to the counter. "I hope you're alright?"
"Yeah." Astrid grinned. "Good, actually. Just tired. It was a busy day, and I have four more in front of me.
Moira nodded, gesturing for Astrid to put her armor on the shop's counter so she could check it out. The Smith was actively checking the armor when what Astrid's words meant sunk in. Then she slowly raised her head to meet Astrid's eyes. The Warrior grinned as she shrugged.
"Not a week, then." was her immediate response.
"No. Quicker than that." Astrid nodded.
"Well, I'll see what I can rush order, then." Moira grinned. "I will tell you that, for no reason in particular, I'll be charging the actual rush order price for this. One silver."
"Makes sense." Astrid nodded. "I made enough money today for that not to hurt too much."
"I figured." Moira said dryly. "I'm happy to talk to you in the time that I'm not actively working, but this repair work will take me a while. If you'd give me enough time to finish all this, I'll be over to Guinevere's for dinner?"
"Sounds good. I'll bring some of Stark's for us all." Even though she'd already eaten, Astrid didn't mind having another go of it. She walked out, poked her head into Guinevere's shop and called out, "See you in an hour or so for dinner! I'm bringing something from the inn. Just have the table ready and I'll feed you!"
She didn't wait for the response that she knew was coming, and Guinevere shouted something that Astrid knew was a variation of, "Ok, fine."
Over the past months, Astrid had taken a large pot of whatever Stark was making to dinner with Guinevere and Moira, so when she'd asked for it, he took the request in stride. By the time she was ready, so was the pot. The baths had been divine, and once she was clean and she'd pumped another Quick Recovery into herself, she grabbed the pot. Holding her prize, Astrid was ready to kinda limp back to Moira's smithy.
"You ready?"
"Gimme a sec." Moira grunted as she came out. She'd changed into regular clothes, and she sighed as she slammed the heavy, misshapen door closed. It ground against the frame, but settled into its position when Astrid reached out and pulled it completely closed.
"Thanks." Moira nodded. "Shall we?"
***
The night passed quickly, and Astrid, carrying her armor in her arms, found herself back in the inn, where Grom waited for her.
"Here, for that monstrosity of a bag you've given me." He shook his head. "It's terrible, really. Tomorrow, you don't need to collect them. Just come to me after you've cleared everything and just… I'll pay you. Got it?"
Astrid laughed. "If that's what you want, I can oblige. But I thought you made the carpet outta the ears."
Grom shuddered in jest. "No. It's to keep people honest. You're clearing the Dungeon. You'll probably get a little less than that tomorrow, but then the day after it'll be more. Fully clearing the Dungeon like this pricks its pride, and it usually starts overproducing if it keeps happening."
She nodded in acknowledgement. That was relatively common knowledge in the Guild.
"Just another problem you'll leave in your wake." Grom sighed in exaggeration.
"And you'll deal with it happily, because that's something you gave me explicit permission to do."
He waved her off. "See you bright and early, Astrid."
"Goodnight, Grom. Thanks for all the help."
Up in her room, after pupping her armor on its mannequin, Astrid changed into her nightclothes and threw herself into bed. There, looking up at the ceiling, she finished the first day of truly grinding for the next level.. Then, with an excited smile and giggle to herself, she rolled over and let sleep find her. It didn't take long.
***
2,138/5,000
Astrid waved at the party of rookies as she walked past them up to the entrance out of the Dungeon. Not carrying a burgeoning bag of ears was nice, since it wasn't a kilo that swung around behind her and threw her strikes off balance. Even so, Astrid was thinking she should figure something out about these gloves. They'd been permanently darkened by the wetness of sweat and blood. They… were pretty rank.
That night, she asked around to learn how to really care for the leather. Hopefully the gloves would survive. Only time would tell.
***
3,582/5,000
"Just get out!" Astrid shouted as Frederick's party tried to hold their ground. As she dismissed them, they broke from their frantic movements attempting to keep themselves alive and retreated. Astrid roared as she deliberately opened herself up to attack from one of the wargs that seemed to be considering chasing down the weaker delvers. At this point, most of the Dungeon's floors were fully cleared, but Astrid hadn't thought about the surge in warg population on the first floor. Sure, she'd killed a handful that wouldn't leave her alone on her descent, but she'd deliberately moved quietly through the area and left them alone.
That was a mistake.
Fortunately, she'd arrived in time to ensure that the fledgling party wasn't overwhelmed by nine wargs at the same time. With her assistance, Lyra and Frederick escaped being swarmed, but her quick approach had drawn another two packs. Still reeling, most of them wounded, and all of them out of mana, the young party had panicked. Astrid, despite everything, was pretty close to at her peak, and she could shrug off a couple attacks from level 1 and 2 wargs.
As their teeth scraped off her armor and struggled to pierce her flesh, Astrid swung her shield and hammer alike as she killed the eight wargs without too much effort. Once done, she'd picked up another 42 experience, and Frederick's party walked back after Gustave'd healed them as best as the Medic could. She waved them off as she helped them cut off the warg ears. She offered apologies for her own responsibility in their dire situation. They, fortunately, didn't seem to mind too much, though Gustave especially was frustrated with his inability to contribute as much as he'd like.
***
4,978/5,000
There were still a couple wargs left on each of the floors, but Astrid decided to leave some, to let the Dungeon think that it'd won for a time. After all, she could let a couple more spawn in, and, in four more kills, reach level 6. She waited in the staircase between the second and third floors, knowing that night had fallen outside. Even so, there was time to kill. When two wargs wandered into the staircase, unable to move past the bottom half to ascend to the second floor, Astrid considered that to be her call to action. Those two provided 7 and 6 experience. 9 left. Astrid found two more wargs on the second floor as she made her "escape."
Warg slain. 5 Experience gained.
Warg slain. 6 Experience gained.
Total Level: 5 (4,978/5,000) => 6 (2/10,000)
A light descended on her, and Astrid grunted as the Great One offered her new Skills to choose from.