Intense Training
- At Twilight Manor -
After lunch, Freya and Ottar went to meet with the Loki executives to discuss mission planning for finding the 2nd dungeon entrance. They discussed the logic behind searching Daedalius street area.
The conversation then evolved to the risks involved. In particular, Freya got very curious when Finn mentioned the trump card that was not played by Ishtar.
Freya "A trump card that was not played. So Ishtar did not have the trump card at that time?"
Finn "That could well be the case"
Ottar "That means that the trump card could be reasonably located near the Entertainment district."
Finn "That would be logical and Daedalius is not far from the Entertainment district."
Freya "Well what could the trump card be?"
Loki "We have thinking about that also. Well, monster or monsters, magic item would be the logical guesses"
Finn "If it is a monster, the most powerful ones we have encountered are the demi spirits"
Loki "Magic item wise, most magic items could probably remain in the possession of Ishtar"
Ottar "So the most logic guess would be one or more demi spirits"
Riveria "That would seem to be the case"
Finn "Last time there were 2 of those demi spirits, and even with all of the Loki members, Ottar and Allen, we could easily have lost. Bell's 2 argonaut cannon blasts were the difference between victory and defeat."
Freya "If another pivotal battle is upcoming, we will have to push all of our assets into the battle."
Finn "That would seem to be prudent. The enemy would have learned from the last battle also, whatever the trump card is..."
Having agreed to work together, the Loki familia would continue to search for an entrance, before another joint mission would take place. Whatever it is, it would not be simply adding Bell and the Gulliver brothers to the mission.
- At the City Walls -
Having agreed to a short dungeon mission the next day, Bell, Ais and the twins continued to train together. After training, Bell and Ais finally had some private time together with the twins needing to go shopping with Lefiya.
- At the Simulation Training Facility -
Haruhime's training for the afternoon would be physical fighting. It allowed her magic to recover while teaching her self-defense and fighting techniques. Being physically weaker and having a kind personality, it was slow going for Haruhime. Having Aisha's assistance was really helpful.
Lili and Welf both also received training for physical fighting with lots of sparring. At the end of the day, both were beaten up pretty badly. However, both agreed they had to get stronger so they were happy for the training.
- That Evening at Folkvangr -
Bell and Ais went to discuss the short mission to hunt the goliath. Freya was agreeable, but she did assigned one of the Gulliver Brothers to go along.
- The Next Day -
At the Babel, Bell and a Gulliver brother met Ais and the twins at the dungeon entrance. Many adventurers were jealously staring at the group. The 1st class adventurers were not interested in the level 1 monsters, so Bell was the lone vanguard who took care of the monsters. When they reached the mid levels, Bell still got the great majority of the excelia. When the number of monsters got to be unreasonable, Ais and Tiona did help out. Tione and the Gulliver brother mostly sat back and allowed the others to fight.
By lunchtime, they had reached the 17th floor. Right on time, the Goliath showed up. They did allow Bell the first cut at the monster as they wanted his argonaut cannon at level 3. Bell delivered quite a few physical hits in the first couple minutes. Ais and Tiona then jumped in to buy Bell some time for charging his cannon. After a 2 minute charge, Bell fired his argonaut firebolt as his 2 friends cleared the area. Amazingly, the monster was reduced to a magic stone!
Ais "Your magic has gotten more powerful"
Tiona "Wow little argonaut is amazing!"
Tione again thrusted her assets at the innocent Bell "So argonaut, are you going to share your secrets? I will show you my secrets if you show me yours", making Bell beet red and Ais furious.
As the sword princess chased the crazy amazon sisters in ariel towards the 18th floor, Bell and the Gulliver brother laughed and walked in the same direction...
- At the Simulation Facility -
Ottar continued to be focused on Haruhime's training. They repeated the same tests as yesterday.
They wanted to see if practicing the magic would allow Haruhime to boost Ottar for longer than 10 minutes. The first test again stopped at 10 minutes. After recovery potion and 30 minutes of rest, the second test also stopped at 10 minutes. The third test after more potion and another 30 minutes ended at 7 minutes before Haruhime again got very tired. That was 1 minute longer than yesterday but it did not achieve the desired result of extending the initial boost period to more than 10 minutes.
Freya focused on Welf and his Will-o-Wisp magic. Yesterday, they determined that his magic range was at least 600 feet. Today, they went outside to see if it would work from even longer distances. After testing with some level 1 mages, they were able to use Will-o-Wisp from a distance of more than 1200 feet. They then successfully repeated the same test with level 2, level 3 and level 4 mages.
Lili's training included lessons in more and more difficult scenarios. They also taught her more about the demi spirit threat as well as the new species so she could make informed decisions.
- On the 18th Floor of the Dungeon -
Bell and his group were pretty hungry. After Ais sufficiently punished the twins, they went to Rivira for lunch. They already achieved their goal to see how Bell would handle the goliath at level 3, and thus they headed back to the surface after lunch. The trip back was pretty uneventful. The toughest fight Bell encountered was an one-versus five situation against minotaurs. With a 10 second charged physical attack, he wiped out 3 of the minotaurs...
- At the Simulation Training Facility -
Just like yesterday, Haruhime, Welf and Lili trained in physical attacks and defenses for the afternoon.
- Over the Next Several Days -
The training continued for Bell, Lily, Welf and Haruhime for the rest of the week.
By the end of the week, Haruhime was able to increase her boosting time from 10 minutes to 11 minutes for the first 2 boost periods.
Bell had also gained quite a bit of experience during the week. His final update showed that he was almost 1/3 of the way through level 3.
level 3
strength: 310
endurance: 301
agility: 348
dexterity: 293
magic: 324
skill: argonaut
magic: firebolt
development ability: luck, abnormal resistance
While training was ongoing, Freya and Ottar coordinated with Loki. It appears they are closed to pinpointing several locations for the second dungeon entrance...