Hi Ho to the Mines We Go

"Smith, got any iron I can use? I'm gonna forge a sword and clear the mine of the spiders. you can then hire people to mine mythril and other ores and send stone to Mason."

"Go ahead Iskandor, make yourself some armor and be careful down there." Smith replies.

"Thanks, time to get forging." 'Jarvis, play an epic soundtrack or something.'

*-Plays some intense music and initiates a forging timelapse-*

After several hours of forging it is now 8 PM and Iskandor has a solid iron pauldren with leather armor beneath the strap and chainmail over the other shoulder and a basic longsword with a slightly elongated hilt, also forged from iron, just to act as starter gear.

"I'm ready to kick some ass!" Iskandor exclaims enthusiastically and heads to the mines, only to have an unexpected tail. "Hikari, do you know how to fight?"

"It's never too late to learn right? And anyways I may know how from muscle memory." she responds.

"I hope you aren't afraid of spiders, try to go for range as I don't have time to make you armor."

"Kitsune are a race with latent magical power, I'll be fine."

"What magic do you use?"

"Spiritual fire I believe, but I may be wrong..."

"Do you know the mechanics of magic? I've theorized how it may work on Earth and most settings seem to have the same inner workings of magic from my observations..."

"Not sure, how do you think it works?" Hikari asks.

"Spread out your senses, try to feel the latent mana in the air. Try moving the mana into a ball and see how that works." Iskandor instructs, trying it himself. Both of them create a small ball of light visible to the naked eye, Hikari's mana ball is about the size of a golf ball while Iskandor managed to get to the size of a tennis ball.

"Wow! It's so pretty!" Hikari exclaims.

"Now the part with the most variation is how to attune the mana to the element you wish to use, sometimes it seems to be intent and other times it seems to be determined by internal mana or elemental mana from the air. However the mana in the air seems to be undetermined, so try searching inside yourself for mana and slowly transfer it to the ball of mana." Iskandor continues. Iskandor senses little mana within himself, but notices that it is also undetermined but can bend to his will and shift to a determined element, if he has the attunement.

"The mana within myself has no element?" Hikari inquires.

"Try shifting it through the elements that are usually considered the primary elements, wind, fire, earth and water. I have fire and earth."

"I have fire and wind." Hikari informs.

"Let's try fire, it's possible that we have different sub-elements of fire, like cold fire, although that would make the most sense if you have an attunement to water, or rather ice..." Iskandor elaborates, creating a standard red-orange flame while Hikari creates a purple-blue flame. "Perhaps you have a dark attunement too, but let's try something, try visualizing HOW a fire starts, see if that makes a difference" he continues, creating a larger ball of fire, much hotter than before.

"I can't seem to be capable of that..." Hikari responds.

"It's fine, let's take out the spiders." he says, stopping at the enterance of the mine. "Try throwing your flame into the mine, just to validate the ranged properties of noob magic."

"I know I should be mad... but here we go!" Hikari yells, throwing the ball of fire into the mine, nailing an unseen spider in the head.

"You must have a high luck stat to nail a spider concealed in the dark..." Iskandor states, charging in with his sword drawn and magic at the ready. The flames illuminating the path ahead.

"Maybe we should have ran through battle formations or something." Hikari suggests.

"I would rather improvise at first to see how we work together, so I know what plans to make. One can tell a lot about someone based on how they fight."

"Now I know you have at least a little bloodlust..." Hikari mutters.

"Nope, just observant, there are correlations between nearly everything." He corrects, slashing at a spider that just emerged from the shadows.

"And just how observant would that be?" Hikari inquires in a testing manor.

"If it's within my field of perception and isn't in a strong stealth I am almost certain nothing gets past me, and I do you a photographic memory so I won't be forgetting anything anytime soon." Iskandor replies, oblivious to the hidden meaning of her words.

"Y- you... saw it all?" She stammers embarrassed.

"Saw what?" Iskandor replies, heading deeper into the cave, dense as ever. Only to result to a weak fireball to the back of the head. "Oi, I may be a dragon but watch where you're throwing those things!" He retorts, only to receive a tsundere esque 'hmph' in response. "We can talk about whatever that was about later, for now let's just take care of this final 'room' and get some mythril." Iskandor says, stealthily entering the room, spotting 3 spiders, 1 much larger than the others.

"You wanna deal with big Bertha while I get the others?" Hikari inquires.

"Yup, watch your 6." Iskandor responds quietly. He starts climbing the cave wall, calculating his jump before he makes it. While Iskandor is on the wall Hikari charges up a small yet powerful fireball, aiming at the furthest of her 2 targets. As she hurls the fireball Iskandor makes his jump, grabbing onto a stalagtite and uses his momentum to break it off and fall onto his target. The queen spider notices the attack to late to dodge completely and loses a leg but is otherwise unscathed.

"Damn!" Exclaims Iskandor. Luckily Hikari hit her mark killing it. Iskandor takes a risk and throws his sword to Hikari who will need it as she doesnt have time to charge up a fireball against the rapidly approaching spider. Iskandor takes the tip of the stalagtite that is suprisingly still intact and charges. The spider queen shoots venom at Iskandor who manages to sidestep. Hikari grabs the sword now at her feet and slashes, blinding the spider nearly atop of her and thrusts the blade into its skull. A web is thrown at Iskandor, who burns it with his breath, creating a hole for him to get through. The spider queen takes a few steps forward and tries to bite Iskandor, but that was part of the plan. Iskandor shoves the stalagtite into its gaping maw and spartan kicks it down the spider's throat.

"Death by giving deep throat to a rock... Who woulda thunk?" Hikari concludes...