Invitation

The fight lasted probably half an hour. Foster and Octer had tried interrupting them a couple of times, but whenever they did, the animosity seemed to be turned toward either of them for some reason. So, they just chose to stay out of it for now and wait for the two of them to just finish their fight.

"I lived around some of the worst criminals you could ever imagine for even a decade, but even I never heard some of that..." Foster muttered with a wry smile on his face, and Octer slowly nodded in agreemnet.

"I never thought such words could come out of such a litlte frame... Kyla really is hardcore..." He added. Octer slowly turned around, noticing that both Lynol and Kyla finally sat back down on the logs, "Let's go, I think they're done..."

"Let's hope so..." Foster said with a slight shudder, as the two of them quickly returned to the pair. They practically seemed out of breath at this point, "You done?" Foster asked, and Lynol slowly nodded his head while he kept staring down at the ground.

"I think so." He grumbled, and Kyla turned around with a huff, "He might be, but I'm not!"

"Please, let's just... let's just be done..." Foster said with a wry smile, "Listen, I know there's some animosity between you two, but could we avoid this in the future?"

Lynol shuddered as he looked up, "What do you mean, 'in the future'? We're done here, right..?"

Octer scratched the back of his head as he nervously looked at his friend, "While you two were... discussing all of that, Foster and I were talking for a while as well. Kyla, would you want to join our party, maybe?"

"You can not be serious!" Lynol jumped up angrily. Today, Octer and Foster had seen him show the most emotion ever since they had first met him, but Foster quickly interrupted what he was going to say next.

"No Lynol, you can't be serious. She's a cleric. I know you might not be happy with that, but we need someone with her skill-set, right? I mean, at least I think so, Octer said so... but most importantly... she fucking knows about a huge fucking secret of mine, so I definitely am not going to let her out of my sight anytime soon. Cool? Yeah, figured so." Foster pointed out, and Lynol really wasn't able to fight against that.

Since Kyla knew that Foster was immune to damage from necromancy, if she were to share that information, it could really backfire on Foster.

"Honestly, I expected her to blackmail me with it to begin with, but she doesn't seem like that kinda person, you know? I just wanna make sure that – and no disrespect toward you Kyla – she won't fucking snitch." Foster explained, "So, what do you say? Will you join us, or not?"

Kyla slowly turned her head toward Foster, and locked eyes with him for a few moments, "You want me to be a member of your party?"

"If you'd like to be, you're welcome to join us, at least. And again, it would really put my mind at ease." Foster pointed out, and Kyla slightly glanced at Lynol, "I'll think about it... under one condition... Lynol stops insulting clerics."

"And why would I do that?" The swordsman asked bluntly, before Foster stared back at him, "Dude, I'm not a huge fan of religion either, but just... let's just talk about this later, alright?" He asked, not sure what to say since he had no idea what exactly Lynol's issue with clerics was in the first place.

Lynol rolled his eyes and sighed, "Fine. For now, I'm going to agree to a 'trial' phase for her to join us. The 'miracles' she can cast are sort of useful, after all."

"...Thanks." Kyla replied, "I'll try my best to be useful to you guys, then. But does that mean that we're going to try and clear the dungeon..?" She asked curiously, and Foster slowly turned his head to look at Octer, who simply shrugged.

"We're considering it, at least. We were talking about trying to get through the first floor for now... Kyla, being a cleric, you must have some kind of miracle in your arsenal that lets you do first aid or somethin' in case something happens, right?" Octer asked, and Kyla thought about it for a moment, "I heard 'cure' can help against it, but it's not like I ever had the chance to try that out... And honestly, it would be best if it didn't happen in the first place..."

"This is Arcadum, so if something happens, it shouldn't be too hard to find someone that can help us." Lynol figured with a sigh. Foster looked at him with a light smile, "Changed your opinion on this all of a sudden, huh?"

"...You guys are going to do it anyway, and I will not let you go in there alone. So no, I did not change my opinion, I just have to babysit a few children." He replied immediately, not even having to think about what he wanted to say.

"Lynol, you're literally the youngest one here, bud." Octer laughed a bit, but Lynol just rolled his eyes, "I know, I'm very aware. But Foster is just a few years older, you're an old man stuck in a young person's body, and Kyla is probably a hundred years older than me. Meaning there's one guy that's barely more mature than me, as well as two senile people. Hence, my point still stands."

Kyla glared back at Lynol and squinted strongly, "And I was just starting to like you a little..."

"Well, that's your own fault." Lynol replied, "But again, let's think about some tactics for this dungeon, alright? It is still incredibly dangerous. If Foster can somehow manage to destroy that... crystal orb thing, then it's definitely going to decrease the amount of these monsters there. As long as we manage to reach the safe room at the end of the floor, we can figure out what to do next after that, but I doubt that the creation of these slimes works too much different in the other floors."

"...That's usually how it works, yeah. There's patterns like this in most dungeons, and there are similar crossed-out areas in the parts of the map here for the deeper floors." Kyla explained, and placed her hand in front of her mouth as she started to think, "How about... we have Foster lure them all into one place, and then I try to kill them all at once with a miracle?"

Lynol crossed his arms in thought, "That would work, but it could be rather risky. Dungeons aren't dumb, right? They react to the actions of the people within them quite often. Especially a dungeon with nobody within it for such a long time will pay attention to someone completely immune to someone utterly immune to its attacks." He pointed out, "Could we try to lure them to the exit, maybe? Dungeon Monsters can't leave the dungeon, so..."

"Ah, actually... that's not always true... Some monsters can, so we shouldn't be too sure..." Kyla added. Lynol and Kyla both started thinking deeply about a tactic, while Foster slowly looked up into the sky.

"Oh, I have an even better idea." He muttered, as a certain concept popped up in his mind, "Kyla, don't you have that 'Holy Aura' blessing thing?" Foster asked, and Kyla slowly shrugged.

"I do, but it's one of my weakest blessings... rather, one of my weakest miracles, period. It's only real useful for high-level clerics."

"Well, I'm not so sure about that." Foster pointed out with a light grin, "I think we can use it to create an undead-devouring black hole."