One thing was for sure: Teaching Niedz and his friends was a good learning opportunity for me too. It allowed me to review my fundamentals, and to my surprise some of the potential improvements I saw in their movements made me rethink my own.
Still, I couldn’t just stand back and pick at their faults. While the trio knew that Diego and I could handle ourselves, since we’d beaten them so thoroughly in a fight, they could be forgiven for thinking we were simply using them to clear out the chaff as we advanced deeper into the dungeon.
That wasn’t entirely wrong, but if that was all we were doing, they’d gradually come to feel resentful. Even though they knew we didn’t have ill intentions, as the trio grew more tired, they’d inevitably begin to wonder if we considered them no better than our slaves. Suspicions like that were entirely natural.
“We can’t have that,” Capitan said as we stood before a massive stone door. “So I suppose it’s about time we do some fighting. I doubt they’d be able to manage on their own from this point on anyway.”
“This is the boss chamber between the upper and middle layers,” Diego observed, nodding. “It’s been a while since I’ve seen it. Still, between us three, we should be fine.”
“So you have been here before?” I asked.
“A long time ago. Back then, though, I...” Diego trailed off. “Well, It doesn’t matter. Let’s just focus on what’s in front of us. You know what the monster in that chamber is, right?”
Diego was obviously avoiding the topic, but I let it slide. Everyone had things they’d rather not talk about. If someone had asked me if I was human, I’d have had to hem and haw my way out of the conversation too. The idea of scaring the daylights out of people by pretending to be a sideshow act who could rotate all his joints around was amusing to toy with, but unfortunately that also came with the possibility that I’d be marked for extermination on the spot.
“Yeah. I’ve done some info gathering,” I answered. “Capitan?”
“I know it. Opened this door once to take a peek inside. I think I could handle it on my own, but I wanted to wait until I’d searched all of the upper levels for the herbs first. Guess that makes this good timing.”
“Is that right?” Diego said. “Let’s head in then, I suppose. The door will close itself behind us, right?”
“It will,” Capitan confirmed. “So the trainees will have to come in with us. We could also have them wait here, but as I’m sure you know, we’re a long way from the last safe area.”
Leaving Niedz and the others out here alone would be a death sentence. Given how exhausted they were, they wouldn’t be able to make it back to the safe area, especially since some of the lesser sahagin they’d killed would have respawned by now.
“Hey, hey—don’t even think about it!” Niedz yelled, panicked. “We’re coming with you, all right?! Just, uh, don’t expect us to be much help in the fight or anything...”
As alarmed as he sounded, it seemed he was rational enough to recognize the situation at hand. It hadn’t been that long ago that he would’ve swaggered about trying to insist he’d be fine. Now, I was fairly confident he’d be able to stay alert and keep out of our way as Capitan, Diego, and I handled the more dangerous areas ahead.
What’s that? What would I have done if he hadn’t seemed capable of that? Well, I’d have left him behind as we headed farther in.
Just kidding. If I hadn’t thought Niedz capable of maintaining his calm, I would’ve called it quits for the day. We weren’t in that much of a hurry, so turning back was always an option. I did have the Silver-class Ascension Exam on the horizon, but a day or two wouldn’t make much of a difference, so I could easily spare a handful of extra days making sure the trio were up to snuff.
I didn’t think the exam was going to be easy by any means, but all things considered, I already felt pretty decent about my chances. Augurey had called my skills Silver-class back when we’d worked together in the capital. I’d come here for additional training, sure, but only to be thorough—it wouldn’t be too big of a blow if I didn’t achieve everything I wanted.
“Niedz, Lukas, Gahedd—once we’re inside, you should try to stay at the chamber’s edges as much as possible,” Diego said. “The boss will periodically summon lesser sahagin, so focus on them. Rentt, Capitan and I will deal with the boss itself, so don’t let it distract you. Understood?”
The trainees nodded obediently. Once Capitan was confident that everyone was on the same page, he placed his hand on the door. It creaked loudly as it shifted aside, creating a gap large enough for several people to pass through.
My instinctual reaction was to grumble that he should’ve opened the door the whole way, since a high-firepower mage like Lorraine could’ve blasted the boss with a potent spell from outside. Sure, the hallways between boss chambers and their doors usually had invisible antimagic barriers to prevent that, but they weren’t impenetrable. They became more durable the deeper you went, but I was confident the barrier of an upper-level boss chamber in the Dungeon of the Sea God’s Daughters would be nothing to a mage of Lorraine’s caliber.
I’d never seen her do it before, but it seemed likely that she’d at least tried it. I’d have to remember to ask her.
I followed after Capitan as he went inside, and Diego led the trainees in after me. We all had our weapons out, ready for a surprise attack, but it seemed that this wasn’t one of those kinds of boss chambers. Instead, there was a massive creature floating in the chamber’s center, its presence overwhelming as it quietly watched us.
The Greater Armorfish, as it was called, was a monster true to its name, measuring at around five meters tall with its body covered entirely in metallic scales. While it was originally an aquatic monster and thus required water to even survive, much less move about, dungeons breaking the laws of nature weren’t anything new. Evidently there was something about the space in this chamber that allowed the monster to “swim” in midair.
That, or perhaps the dungeon had granted the Greater Armorfish—and it was definitely a Greater Armorfish, given how many times it had been hunted in the past—the ability to levitate and breathe oxygen. No organs that would grant it those abilities had ever been discovered inside it, but it might have been achievable with mana.
Still, according to the information we’d gathered, it wouldn’t be much different from just fighting it in the water, so I was confident about our chances. It wasn’t all that powerful to begin with.
Of course, I was speaking from the perspective of my current self. A Greater Armorfish would have been able to crush the old Rentt in two seconds flat, so I couldn’t let my guard down.
Capitan bellowed the signal. “Right, let’s do this!”
Diego and I split up across the room.