Chapter 3 - Acting like Finn and Riveria
After Ais joined the Hestia familia, their new team structure makes adventuring complicated. Bell and Ais need to face powerful monsters for advancement and keeping themselves sharp. However, it would be too dangerous for level 3 adventurers to be involved with adventures meant for Bell and Ais. After some thought, Ais and Bell went to talk to Loki, who agreed to having some practices together when they are in Oraria. This arrangement solves Bell/Ais' problem as they can stay sharp by practicing against the Loki familia and practicing against each other. Welf, Lili and Haruhime will also gain valuable experience against powerful opponents in a safe controlled fashion. For Loki, this also makes sense because she wanted her familia to practice against Bell and Ais in Aerial. Loki also wanted to keep tabs on Bell's progress now that he is a level 6. Of course, they all missed spending time with each other, though Bete and Leifya will not admit they missed Bell. Thus the first practice was set in 3 days' time.
With the practices agreed to, the Hestia familia will temporarily avoid the more dangerous quests. Because they lack a mage with overwhelming spells like Leifya and Riveria, they will also avoid going below level 19 due to swarms of flying monsters. Fortunately they found an ideal quest that needed bodyguards for transporting valuables back from Rivira.
They headed down the dungeon after having some Jagamarukun. There was little resistance in the beginner levels. At level 10, they used monster baits to attract a huge amount of orcs and other monsters. As Haruhime is not used to fighting, she needed Bell to save her after a couple battles. When they reached the mid-levels, Haruhime leveled up Lili so she could play a larger role against the minotaurs, silverbacks, almiraj and hell hounds. Bell and Ais took turns protecting the dizzy Haruhime while the other joined in on the fight. While watching over Haruhime, Ais smiled thinking that she can better appreciate what Riveria, Finn and Gareth went through.
When they got to the 18th floor, they met with the party that needed bodyguards. Having agreed to start off in 3 hours, they had time for a quick meal and a bath at the same river where Bell peeked. This time there was no peeking by Bell, but some adventurers came by so the ladies ran off to hide. 3 hours later, they started the trip back to the surface. It turned out that the valuables they were protecting included cadmus hides and many drop items found in the deep floors. Ais was curious about who defeated the Cadmus but she did not pry. On the return trip, there was one significant battle that Bell and Ais needed to take action when a huge group of silverbacks attacked. However, Mikoto actually did a good job crushing several with Futsunomitama and Welf got a lot of practice with his new shockwave slash attack. Unfortunately Lili overdid her use of firebolt and had to be carried back the rest of the way. After reaching the surface, they collected their reward that included a good collection of elixirs and potions.
The next day, they met the Loki familia in their practice games at the abandoned castle grounds. While the practice games would have seemed like a total mismatch before the war, the familas are now better matched. This is obviously due to Ais' transfer and the retirement of Gareth and Riveria. The practice allowed Bell and Ais to have a good battle against Finn and Bete. Mokoto, Welf and Lili also gained some good experience even though they were overpowered. After the practice, everyone went for dinner, but Bete had to be restrained again after getting drunk.
The next day, Lili found a quest for finding a missing adventuring group. They quickly set off for the dungeon and sped down towards the 15th floor where the missing group was last seen. It turns out that the group was involved in a monster parade and suffered bad injuries. They were really thankful for the rescue. As time passed, the Hestia team got involved in more quests for finding missing people, bodyguard missions as well as a mission to retrieve some special herbs for the Dian Cecht familia in the mountains with numerous monsters. With additional adventures, Mikoto, Lili and Haruhime showed good steady progress. Mikoto has gotten used to her Via Grande defense and Futsunomitama has clearly powered up with her level up. Welf has learned when to best use his shockwave slash attack, and actually never had to use his magic sword. Lili is now used to firebolt and figured how to avoid going mind zero. Haruhime also gained valuable experience in physical battles with monsters and became more adept at taking advantage of Mikoto's Via Grande shield and Ais' Aerial protection.
After a month passed, Hestia noticed the slowdown in Bell's progress. After Bell explained the current adventuring strategy, Hestia approved but told Bell that he should consider joining in on some tougher adventures at least once per month. Practice is just not the same as real adventuring. Bell agreed and they then proceeded to talk about the latest gossip involving Welf and Heptaestus as well as Mikoto and Takemikazuchi.
When Bell returned, they discussed Hestia's concerns and Haruhime urged Bell and Ais to join in on some of Loki familia's adventures. She did not want to be a liability all the time and felt Bell and Ais need to keep progressing. Bell agreed, but wanted to support his teammates a bit longer. After the discussion, they did relax the safety rules a bit. Instead of limiting themselves to floors 1-19, they expanded their range to floor 25. With the month of experience in fighting together, they felt they are ready to handle a swarm of flying monster.
The other members also had the Falna updated. Ais' progress was quite slow also due to the current adventuring strategy. The other members showed improvement compared to their typical rate prior to the war.
On their first trip together to the 23rd floor, they did have to fight off 20 angry hornets. Mikoto's Dio Grail spell provided Haruhime and Welf a good defense, and they did defeat at least 5 hornets themselves. Ais and Bell though did do most of the work in Ariel.
With this successful adventure, the team took on several more quests to these mid-level floors. In their last quest, they ran into the Loki familia at Rivira, and a second joint practice was set in a 3 days' time. On the way back up, they had the good fortune of running into the 17th floor goliath. This was more than they planned for, but it gave them a good opportunity to test themselves. Bell and Ais allowed their colleague to take the initiative. After Welf launched several slash attacks and Lili fired off several firebolts, Mikoto used Futsunomitama. While the goliath was not completely defeated, it was severely injured. This allowed the team to launch several more slashes and firebolts before jumping in with their swords. Extremely satisfied with the defeat of the goliath, they had a celebration at the Hostess of Fertility after returning to the surface.