Kate: Into The Dungeon

"What great luck," Barin said. Though, since his words were laced with palpable sarcasm and his face was deadpanning, it was obvious that he was not happy.

He turned to me and said, "Kate, would you please do the honors?"

I ignored his exaggerated hand waving and bow gestures and pointed my staff towards the skies. "Tier 3 Earth Magic: Earthen Arrows," I chanted. Following the activation of my Magic, the white gem at the end of my Staff lit up like a lantern before four Magic Circles instantaneously formed and fired.

As expected, the flock of Ice Geese heading in our direction were utterly decimated by the rapid-fire deployment of my Earthen Arrows.

I sighed, seeing no survivors from my assault, but what could I do? After reaching the Ganjier Tundra the Ice Geese had harassed us enough times for me to know that only a preemptive strike would lessen our troubles.

Well, at least this meant a greater yield of Monster Cores for me. On average, Ice Geese had impressive Ice Cores for their D Rank, not to mention their meat was also tasty enough to warrant using up some of the space in my Cosmic Bag. Alas, for all my magical prowess, it was next to impossible for me to store them myself.

Fortunately, I always had Barin, our insanely strong Warrior, volunteer for the position of filling up my Cosmic Bag. His physical strength and speed made short work of collecting the Ice Geese, so we were back to traveling across the ice plains soon enough.

We'd already been traversing the Ganjier Tundra for five days and only now could we start to see the site of our destination. To a non-adventurer looking in, it would simply look like a cave, an otherwise meaningless hole among the Tundra's rolling hills. However, our party of four knew from experience that this was the entrance to a dungeon. It was the Ice themed dungeon we had accepted the responsibility for clearing.

Before entering it, however, the four of us had preparations to complete. At the very least, we would rest for an hour to recover from walking around all day. But I, as the party's Mage, would also work with Puck, our Rogue, to probe the dungeon personally.

According to the Seamstreak Guild's information, the dungeon was estimated to be High C Rank, but it always paid well to confirm things personally and not just blindly trust another's word.

Puck would use his stealth and speed to check the strength of the first few Monsters within the Dungeon and I would use Appraisal Magic to determine the Quality of Magic Energy emanating from the Dungeon's Core.

Appraisal Magic was easy enough for me to cast. As non-elemental Auxiliary Magic, its cost was negligible and only the depth of my knowledge and experience would determine its degree of accuracy.

Thus, after Puck returned to the camp that Stella and Barin had set up, we quickly confirmed that the Dungeon was aptly Ranked by the Guild.

...

"Alright, party people," Stella said after we picked our things up and stood ready to enter the dungeon. "Let's see if we can beat our best clearing time of five hours in today's run!"

"You want us to speed through an Ice Dungeon in this god-forsaken tundra?" Barin asked as he looked at Stella oddly.

"What's the matter? Can't handle it, chump?" Stella taunted him.

"Yeah," Barin rolled his eyes good-naturedly at her as he played along and sarcastically said, "The guy in our party who hails from Crystlec — you know, the one on the northern continent of Frigseal. Obviously, he's the one who can't handle a bit of the cold."

"Well, if it ain't the cold, what's your problem with us speedrunning this job?" Stella asked with a quirked brow.

"Gee, I don't know," Barin snorted, "Maybe it'd be in our best interest to take things a little slower and harvest some of the natural resources? I mean, this is one of the most obscure dungeons in the southern continent. It took 'us,' he emphasized exaggeratedly, "over a week just to get here for crying out loud!"

Instead of retorting at Barin, Stella just looked at me and said, "Well?"

"What?"

"What do you mean 'what?' You're the one with the Appraisal and Earth Magic. You decide whether it's worth it or not to stick around for a little longer and pick up some ores or herbs," Stella said.

"Uh… I don't know. Maybe?" I shrunk as everyone gave me their undivided attention. "I'll keep an eye out, though."

With that, we entered the dungeon.

Barin and Stella took the vanguard, while Puck watched our backs. I stuck to the middle of our triangle formation and for the first couple hours, my job revolving around using Earth Magic to survey our immediate area for traps and ambushes. That, and using the same technique of Earth Sensing to probe around for any rare natural resources that might have been hidden in cave walls or ground around us.

As always, I was bored out of my mind. The hours would just pass by, and though there was plenty of action, none of it fell on me. I was the group's Mage, after all. I had to keep my Magic reserves near full by only casting my Earth Sensing and Appraisal spells until we approached the dungeon's core.

Yeah, the journey through the dungeon wasn't exactly a walk in the park, and watching the others massacre any hostile Wild or Demonic Beasts that charged was enough to keep me on my toes. But, I could only watch my friends insta-kill everything that came at us a certain number of times before it became mundane.

Honestly, I was more excited every time my Earth Sensing picked up some hidden magical herb or enriched ore. At least then, I would be pleasantly surprised by whatever it was that I found.

"Say, uh..." Puck suddenly spoke up. When I turned to him, he stood up from a crouching position with some ice-blue grass in his hands and asked me, "Can't you feed these lower E and D rank herbs to your new summon? I know it's just a common Eaglet at this point, but those can evolve into ice variant Eagles, right?"

"I… I don't really know," I admitted, flushed with embarrassment. "I really should have asked Uncle Tebolt for some of his books on Eagle-type Monsters before he left for his own mission."

"Well, for now," Barin interjected, his smugness amplified as he said, "I would keep the low-rank herbs on me if I were you. I can't say which may or may not be toxic to the common Eaglet, but I have heard of a couple Ice Eagle variants that thrive in my homeland. I mean, even you guys must have heard about legends like the Black Death."

"You think I can raise Nova into an S Rank Legendary Beast?"

"No," Barin facepalmed, "I was just saying there's a chance your pet might mutate into an ice variant if it gets exposed to enough Ice-type resources. You know, like the Black Death which was supposedly an A Rank Darkness Luan that transformed into an S Rank Death God."

As I just stood there not knowing what to say or do, Barin shook his head and said, "Just take the Frostbite Grass for now. Keep picking up more lower-rank herbs you find until we finish clearing the dungeon. Once we're out of this relatively dangerous place, you can either summon your pet and see if it'll eat the herbs, or talk to your uncle, or even sell the herbs if you'd like for your eagle to evolve into a different elemental variant."

"But wouldn't Ice work well with your Earth, Kate?" Stella asked.

"I guess… It's at least better than something like Lightning or Water." I paused to think for a moment before adding, "I'll just follow Barin's advice for now and ask my uncle what he would do after we're done here."

And with that, we went back to work. Only now that I wasn't ignoring the lower-ranked herbs around us, I had a bit more work cut out for me. As expected from a C Rank Dungeon, there were only a few C Rank resources to harvest. Yet there were twice as many D Rank resources and five times as many E Rank resources.

Soon we had been inside the dungeon for around six hours and about halfway down to the core. I wasn't exactly tired; being a C+ Rank Mage without casting so much as casting a Tier 2 spell explained that. But, the same could not be said for my friends.

They hadn't exactly pushed themselves to their limits either, but they had been killing monsters and working nonstop for almost six hours straight at this point. When they weren't clearing the dungeon's inhabitants, they were helping me dig into the walls or the floor to get some resources.

Barin in particular did most of the heavy lifting as he stored away all the things the rest of us literally couldn't pick up into our Cosmic Bags. He and Stella were the strongest physically among us, but Stella had built herself up to take more force than she could ever put out. She could probably block a shell projectile shot from a normal tank without so much as staggering, but Barin would be the closest one between them to throwing something near that level of power.

Of course, despite Barin and Stella's impressive strength and defense respectively, none of us could hold a candle to Puck when it came to sheer speed. In fact, even though he had been entrusted with the responsibility of guarding our backs while we delved into the dungeon, he had probably killed more than both of the others combined.

All I had to do was give him the signal that there were no enemies near us from behind and he would stick to the shadows, assassinating all the monsters that were attracted to the commotion Barin and Stella would create as they fought.

Yeah, he didn't have to deal with dragging around our spoils of war, or carrying heavy weapons and armor, or even helping me with resource harvesting. But there was never any doubt that he was the most active of the four of us while fighting in the dungeon.

All in all, the three of them had earned their rest, while I… I was as useless as always. I mean, maybe not completely useless and worthless; I was, after all, our group's enemy and treasure scanner. But, like always, I didn't contribute much to the fighting.

At most I would occasionally find the chance to stop a monster from blindsiding either Barin or Stella with a Tier 1 or Tier 0 Earth Spell. But, I know everyone would just get mad at me if I used anything stronger and didn't conserve my magic. I was supposed to be our hidden ace, the trump card we could pull if ever we got overrun by a sudden dungeon break or a rogue high-rank monster randomly appeared. But, that never happened.

I could tell everyone genuinely appreciated my position and respected what I brought to our party. But it was discouraging most of the time, seeing as I would get a full third of all our guild-issued jobs when I barely did anything strenuous. It was fun to travel around and adventure with my friends, but I felt like I was conning them by getting paid so much for doing virtually nothing.

Hopefully, I smiled as I ate a pre-packed sandwich, now that I have Nova as a Contracted Beast, I'll be able to train him up to the point where he'll be helpful to our group. He's just a D Rank baby eagle right now, but if I work hard and dedicate half my time to developing as a Beast Tamer, Nova might be strong enough to help us in just a couple of months.

That is, I frowned, unless he dies out of my watch first. Uncle seems to think he's just a couple-day-old infant despite already having evolved once, so chances are he might die if he recklessly takes on the Black Swamp like I told him to. Although, he seemed intelligent enough to me to understand the threat of B Rank apex predators in the Black Swamp.

I just hope he doesn't do anything too rash before I can summon him once more after we finish clearing out this dungeon...