Walking into the dungeon we didn't get as many weird glances as I expected. Everyone around us most likely just thought that the 7 year-old Ais was just a pallum and didn't bother to look into it too far. Although they were confused as to why she only had a dress on.
Walking down the dreary steps to the first floor, Sadari and I step back to let Aiz take the lead. As Aiz steps foot onto the first floor for the first time she tenses up and scans her surroundings.
I lightly speak up behind her,"Although it is good to be vigilant in the dungeon there will almost never be monsters in the first room of the first floor. There are constantly adventures going in and out of the dungeon. Being vigilant all the time will only make you mentally tired."
Aiz's small frame then visibly relaxed but not fully, after all it is her first time and she is rightfully nervous. Seeing this Sadari now chips in," If you want to find some monsters you should go down a side path to get away from the beaten trail others had already cleared."
Aiz nods and attempts to walk forward but freezes and starts looking unsurely left, center and right. It only took me a second to figure out why. "You don't know the layout of the first floor do you?" To which Aiz turns and gives me a pout but doesn't refute me.
It's not bad now because she will always have someone with her for now. But in the future when she comes down herself this will become a problem," Hey Aiz I'm changing our deal, I will take you down into the dungeon 10 times for every floor you memorize the 3 most trailed paths of." I see her whip around and look at me in betrayal.
"Hold on and wait a second, there's more, in turn for me changing our deal, I will get you Jyaga Maru Kun after every dungeon run we go on." and all the dissatisfaction on her face had poofed into smoke." for today we will lead you into an area where you can fight without being interrupted. And we have done just that.
Walking into a room that was quite far off the main paths we saw a small green creature, roughly about the same height as Aiz if only a little shorter, luckily it hadn't noticed us by now. Crouching down I lean next to our fighter's ear so I can talk to Aiz without alerting the goblin," We will only interfere if you can't handle it. Take a second and think about how you're going to take it down, but always remember, plans often don't tend to go well… as planned."
We let Aiz take full control and step back so the goblin won't notice us, I lean in close to Sadari and whisper "Get ready to step in, I don't know how she'll react to something going for her life." People have a tendency to do one of three things when their life is threatened: fight, flee or freeze. But it seemed as though my worries were for not.
Aiz stared at the monster for about a minute. At this moment we were behind her or we would have seen the extreme hatred on her normally expressionless face. Or the dark flames of pure anger raging in her eyes as she stared at the little green goblin.
Aiz gripped her sword hard and started to walk towards the monster in front of her. As she got about halfway in between the monsters and us, the goblin seemed to notice something and turned around, but at the same time Aiz started running and brought her sword up high. The goblin attempts to swing its left hand to scratch her with its nails, but Aiz's sword comes down, cleaving deep into the goblin's left upper arm.
The goblins opens its mouth to scream, but it's cut off once again, as Aiz uses the sword buried in the goblins' own limb arm as a pivot, she pushes down on it and starts brings her left leg up quickly, striking the goblin right in the jaw. And as a crunching sound as an indicator, the jaw bone is now broken. And the goblin was greatly dazed.
Aiz quickly pulls the sword out and swings again, but this time aimed at its neck.*slice* The goblins neck is cut open and it falls forward choking on its own blood in death, unable to react. Aiz watches as the body hits the floor then turns around and looks at us
"Wow! Ok that was pretty impressive, did someone teach you to fight?" I walked up to her.
"No, I just watched them train." came my reply as I got close to her. Although she talks little, it was pretty easy to understand that she had watched the Loki Familia train and, tried copying their style, but I don't know of anyone from the Loki Familia who uses kicks often
"Well that was really impressive for your first monster." I praise the little girl. And rub her golden soft hair.
"Hmm" she nods a thanks ever so slightly leaning into the head rub. I feel an icy stare cold enough to even chill me to the bone and look over to see my elven companion staring at me with murder in her eyes.
I chuckle and use my other hand to rub the jealous elf's head as well. Making the Chilling stare to stop.
After I stopped and pulled both my hands back, I said "Lets go fight some more then maybe you can go down to the second floor today."
"Hmm" once again a small nod which I take for acceptance.
We start walking around and Ais takes out any goblins she sees. Since we are only on the first floor she only has to worry about single goblins coming at her. In the next hour or two Aiz had managed to kill 13 goblins. Without any injuries, the most she got was a bruise on her foot from a misplaced kick.
Each kill had been brutal and efficient. Like it was her life's work to kill monsters. I couldn't help but marvel at her fighting ability. Despite being a fresh level one and only being 7, she moves with purpose and a goal in mind every time.
Giving the sword a few yanks, the golden girl frees it from the 13th goblin with a sicking *Sprut* to which she remained unaffected. With the sword now free, she looks back at us to know where to find the next goblin. But we are already a step ahead, running across the room Aiz looked at us in what I assume to be confusion, that is until she hears 3 screeches from where we had just come from. Following the screeches are 3 green figures identical to the ones from earlier.
Yup, we just pass paraded 3 goblins onto Aiz. Why? We want to see if she can handle more than one monster at once before she moves onto the second floor where goblins spawn in 2's or 3's and also dungeon lizards.
— P.O.V: Aiz
Seeing the three figures running at me, I raise my sword and also run at them. As I approach the first one, I raise my sword high, but this time not over my head I can't let my weapon get stuck like last one I had eliminated as there are two more this time… Two more monsters to rid this world off. I don't care if they'll spawn again. If they keep spawning, I'll just keep slaughtering them!
As the goblin enters my range I swing diagonally down to the left hard making the sword bite into the shoulder of the green monster. Along with the sound of its collarbone shattering and sword shrinking into flesh the goblin screams in pain.
The scream doesn't make me stop for one second as I push my free left hand into the goblin and pull my sword from the crippled goblin. These things don't deserve pity, no, they deserve to die for all the pain and anguish they cause. For what that did to mother and father. Thinking about my parents, my anger at these creatures grows even higher than before.
I feel the air around me tremble as if to warn me of danger. So I look to my left and see the second goblin swing its filthy claw at me. I step left and back to get out of its reach and as I step hard on my left foot, I feel a burning pain on my back. The third goblin had dug its claws into my back and torn off some disgusting monsters are just causing more pain.
I flee to the left and away from the goblins to regroup. Putting a few meters between us, I raise my sword again as I see them continuing to run at me, but the searing pain in my back makes me wince.
The goblins hadn't stopped and the left one was the first to reach me and it had swung at me again. I duck under the swing of the arm and lock onto the third goblin. I put all my weight into an upward diagonal slash, to which the green menace couldn't react. But unfortunately the cut wasn't deep enough to be instantly fatal. But I follow up by yanking my sword arm back and using that movement to spin and leap off my planted left foot. I spin as quickly as I could to the left, making my raised right heel strike the goblins temple, Hard.
Using the force of the impact I push off as much as I can to create space. I then turn around to see the second goblin swing at me once more. I take a step left to be slightly out of range of the wild strike and also swing my sword with my step. The sideway slash buries itself into the goblins neck making it choke and gurgle on its blood, as I pull the metal stopper out.
I hear a step behind me and turn quickly to see the fist goblin that I had crippled with my first attack, but the goblin had its claw centimeters from my head, trying with all its power to take me down with it. But more importantly a sword is now stuck through its head, causing the arm to limply drop to the floor along with the rest of the body. Looking up the blade, I see a tall and mostly black haired guy standing in front of me
" Not too bad for your first time Aiz, show me your back so I can apply a potion." Only after I heard him speak did I remember the burning pain in my back and that I wasn't alone, but with someone who I found out to be similar to me, someone I believe I can trust, someone to buy me Jyaga Maru Kun, but most importantly right now, someone who will help me get strong enough to save mother..
—P.O.V: Third person
Aiz nodded at Kanin and turned around to show her injured back," Oh, that's a pretty bad one." On Aiz's back was a gash from her right shoulder blade to her lower left back. It wasn't a deep cut per say, but the length of it must have made it extremely painful. Although Aiz had this gash she only frowned slightly but didn't let out a noise.
Seeing her lack of reaction Kanin frowned and thought, 'She is a tough girl.'. With a light splash of the potion, the wound started to sizzle and mend itself back together.
" Alright, that wasn't bad for your first time against multiple enemies. Although you did seem to tunnel vision on whatever was in front of you, most people do. It's nothing you can't fix." Kanin tries to give her some tips that could help, but he doesn't want to teach her anything that those from the Loki Familia could teach better.
" But you did seem to have a good instinct to dodge, almost like you were being warned to. Like the air around you was telling you to dodge" Kanin narrowed his eyes at her suspiciously.
She averted her eyes slightly. "No." she mutters out.
" Hey, hey what are you two talking about?" Sadari asks in confusion.
"*Sigh* Something I'll tell you about later" Kanin replied while going through his bag. "Let's eat some lunch before going down to the second floor. Sadari, can you crave up some of the walls so nothing spawns in our lunch break?" Kanin asks while pulling out some food and drink.
"Aye ye, Captain!" The energetic elf then unsheathes her knife from her waistband and starts to carve out some of the walls. Kanin looks up to see Aiz looking at Sadari while tilting her head.
"Do you not know why she is damaging the walls? I thought the Loki Familia would have told you that." Kanin asks with a raised eyebrow
"Hmm" she shakes her head.
"Oh, wel-" Kanin starts to explain but is cut off.
"It's because those dumb monsters can't spawn out of the damaged walls! So whenever we need to take a break in the dungeon we just chop up the walls. The dungeon always prioritizes fixing the walls over spawning." Sadari bounds over after destroying some of the walls.
Aiz looks at Sadari for a few seconds then nods. "Hmm"
"Hmph" Sadari pouts" I'll get you to talk to me one day, little goldy!" Sadari turns her pout towards Kanin.
"Aiz." 'little goldy' says, bringing the elf's attention back to her.
"Aiz?" Sadari repeats.
"May name is Aiz not 'little goldy'" she says in what most would call indifference, but I could tell she was slightly upset at not being called by her name.
Sadari looked genuinely taken aback for a bit, before a wide grin splits her face." Ok, then Aiz, I hope we can be friends!"
Aiz returns Sadari's enthusiastic shout with a few second stare before, "Hmm" she nods her head a little.
"Hehe, Kanin did you see, did you see, she said we can be friends hehe." she runs over and practically starts vibrating in place in front of Kanin.
Kanin returns her beaming smile with a simple one of his own." yes, yes I am proud of you Sadari." He shakes his head as Sadari bounces away with two sandwiches and some water, right over to Ais.
"Here you go Ais, unfortunately they're pretty bland because someone didn't feel like packing anything good." She shoots Kanin a dirty glance to which he returns a helpless smile.
"It's ok" replied the golden girl as he took small bites out of her sandwich.
They sit around and chat for a bit as they finish their lunches. Kanin And Sadari explain dungeon lizards and the higher spawning of goblins, so Aiz can know what to expect out of the second floor. And once everyone was done Kanin stood up with a stretch
" Ok, since we have some food in us, let's head down and give Aiz a shot at the second floor. Also Aiz don't be afraid to admit if you can't handle something. That's why we're here, to make sure you make it back safely." Kanin states as he starts to repack his bag
"Hmm" Aiz nods back to his words.
And with that Kanin led the way to the second floor stairs with Aiz and Sadari following behind. Along the way they ran into another goblin which Aiz swiftly dispatched. They had also seen another group of adventurers, what seemed to be new adventures hunting on the first a short walk they arrived at the stairs down to the next floor and walked in.
The second floor was nearly identical to the first with blue crystals illuminating brown cavern walls. And no real defining features otherwise. After about 10 steps into the floor both Sadari and Kanin both stop. Aiz followed suit shortly after and stared at their backs in confusion.
They stand there for a few moments before Kanin grabs one of his swords and steps to the side. As he does so, he turns and swings the sword where he used to be, beheading a lizard that had suddenly dropped from the ceiling.
Aiz had jumped back and drawn her weapon after Kanin had already slashed down," A perfect example of how dungeon lizards like to ambush their prey. They like to wait on the walls or the ceiling without moving to blend in." Kanin said while digging out the lizard's magic stone.
Aiz looked at the now disappearing monster and nodded with furrowed brows.
"How about it Aiz, wanna take the lead?" Sadari questioned while smiling mischievously at the little girl.
"Hmm" and with a nod the little girl with her blade still drawn walked out in front and started to lead their little group.
"Just go anywhere Aiz, we know this floor very well." Kanin said while falling in stride after putting the magic stone away. They walked for a few minutes with Aiz taking out a few goblins and even a dungeon lizard she managed to spot beforehand. All was going well, Aiz ws getting more comfortable fighting goblins and starting to spot the dungeon lizards more often.
Kanin looked down at his portable watch and noticed it was roughly 5:00 p.m." Do you guys want to go back up? I think you made some good progress today Aiz, I'm proud of you." He smiles down at the little golden girl and rubs her head. Aiz does nothing to stop him and just closes her eyes
But suddenly Kanin stopped and snapped his head back and drew one of his swords, as if something was staring at him. He frowned but suddenly looked back in front with a normal expression and started speaking," Ah nevermind, We're alone Sadari."
Hearing this, there was no visible reaction on Sadari's face but her hands tensed slightly and moved a little towards her weapons. While this happened Aiz was none the wiser and kept moving forward.
"Aiz, let's hurry up and meet with our teammates. We should meet up with them and go back up." Kanin said in a completely natural tone. While keeping his sword that he had drawn, out."I'll take the lead for now so we can move faster. Sadari stay behind Aiz and make sure nothing drops down on her."
Although Aiz was an airhead she could definitely tell something was wrong. If the air-headed Aiz could tell, then so could whatever, or whoever was following them. Kanin knew he couldn't keep up pretenses for long so he said they should meet up with their teammate to try and act like they weren't alone down alas, not everything goes to plan.
Sadari suddenly pulls Aiz to the left as an arrow wizzes by where she had stood. Getting a glance of the arrow head, I could see some sort of liquid on it, undoubtedly some sort of poison."Sadari, I'll cover. Aiz stand in between us, Call it a hunch but I think they're after you, AIz." was all Kanin said as he then stood in front of the two.
With a nod, Sadari got ready to chant her spell whenever she thought she should. While Aiz unsurely gripped her weapon, still confused as to what's happening.
"Give us the girl and you two can leave." Came a voice neither male nor female from around a corner, most likely using an artifact.
"still not showing yourselves, damn is your face that bad?" Kanin threw out a taunt. Trying the oldest trick in the book. To get them to come out. But these didn't seem like amateurs.
"We only want the girl, we do not care for your games, Kanin Yuki." Hearing his name, Kanin stopped trying to get a reaction out of them. After all they seemed to be trained professionals and had done their homework of who their supposed target was with.
"Can we work out a deal? Surely this isn't do or die." Kanin tried to bargain with the hidden individual.
"We will give you 5 seconds to decide." The individual didn't even amuse the suggestion.
" Sadari, we are going to push towards the one speaking." Kanin whispered to the elf.
"Ok I'll trust you, Aiz stay right behind Kanin and right in front of me." Sadari whispered back and to the little girl in between them.
"Hmm" was her response.
And as soon as the speaker hit "1" Kanin and subsequently the other two had started running towards the th corner the voice was coming from. Which was luckily the best idea as on the other side of the tunnel three black cloaked figures rounded the corner, most likely guessing that the target would try to run away.
Although they weren't fully unprepared as before the group could round the corner they were running towards, two individuals came out swinging, two nearly identical and bland swords.
Kanin unsheathed his other sword and met the two slashes head on. Although he blocked the one from the left with little to no difficulty the one on the right smashed through his swing effortlessly. Almost slashing his throat in the process.
'Level two, undoubtedly level two' Kanin thought in his head. He didn't hesitate a second before casting his new magic as it was most likely his only chance at survival
"White out, Blizzard" he immediately made the blizzard very dense but not that large, as the tunnels were not that large in the first place. The snow storm was only about 2 and a half meters in diameter but it was nearly opaque. The ground below his feet started to freeze over almost immediately and the headache came almost immediately, but it wasn't too bad as to make him incapable of fighting.
Kanin replanted his feet and swung again, once more meeting the sword of the mysterious level two.*Clack!* This time his blade was not so effortlessly pushed back. But in the end he simply could not match the power that a level two brought to the table, even if this one seemed to be on the lower end.
As Kanin started to worry, he heard a singing-like voice behind him, "-,Arrow of lightning" As he had started to fight Sadari had immediately started to chant. Although she had not mastered concurrent chanting enough to fight and dodge attacks, she could run in a straight line and chant at the same time. So while running following Aiz she had started her chant and just finished.
Kanin didn't flinch in the slightest as the bolt of lightning flew past his right side, through the basically solid sphere of whirling snow and right towards the level two. Sadari unfortunately couldn't see through the storm like he could but she could remember the level two's last position before it had started.
The level two cloaked figure didn't have enough time to react before the bolt of lightning came right through the solid white wall and hit his right arm and with a loud explosion, blew it clean off.
"Aggghhhhh!" they screamed and grabbed at the nub of their dominant arm.
Instead of trying to finish off the level two, Sadari runs by while practically dragging Aiz along, with Kanin immediately chasing behind them. They didn't know if the cloaked figures had another level two or even three and they weren't willing to figure out.
As they were running, Kanin made his storm focused mostly on the ground to make the way behind them incredibly slippery, making it incredibly hard for the cloaked figures to follow them. But in turn make it easier for him to be seen
As they were running, *Fwoosh* *Blurt* *Fwoosh* Kanin suddenly got struck in the lower left back by an arrow traveling at least three times the speed of the first. Neither Kanin or Sadari had felt or seen the arrow coming. It went right through his lower left back and cleaned out the front. Leaving a two finger wide gap in his stomach. That was causing fast and large amounts of blood loss.
"Ugh." Was the onlly sound Kanin managed to get out as his vision nearly went black from the pain of getting a hole blown straight through him. but the cooling sensation of the blizzard raging around him, managed to calm his mind enough to keep him conscious.
Thinking quickly, he focused as much of the cold from the blizzard in his gaping stomach and it quickly showed results as frost started to form from the surroundings onto the wound, keeping the blood inside the gravely injured half-spirit. Although not a perfect fix, it would do for now. The potions he brought would undoubtedly not be strong enough for a wound of this size.
Through all of this Sadari had finished another spell and quickly pointed the staff in her left hand back and yelled,"Arrow of lightning" But the elf didn't send the bolt at the hooded figures, but at the ceiling causing a large explosion of dust to scatter, completely blocking the view of their pursuers.
Aiz through all of this didn't make a sound and simply followed the two more experienced adventurers. Running with all the might her two little legs could manage. Hearing Kanin's grunt she turned to see Kanin with a hole in his gut and ice now crystallizing overtop of it. And thoughts of revenge started to fly around her head,' they hurt Kanin, they almost killed Kanin, and because he protected me, he almost died because he was protecting my weak self. Just, just like Father-'
But Aiz was cut from her internal monologue, as an ice cold hand landed on her shoulder," Well this is a good lesson on the monsters *cough* *cough* that don't come from the dungeon." Aiz looked up to see Kanin with a now bloody shirt smiling at her while they were still running.
"Ya *wheeze* see, sometimes you will get into fights with other *cough* humans down here. Adventures don't only kill the monsters from the dungeon, but they also *wheeze* have to deal with the monsters that wear human skin*cough*. But we'll talk about those ones later, right now, I need to go and get healed hehe*cough*hehe." Kanin turned his smile away from the girl that was now at his side after he caught up to her and focused on just running.
Sadari, seeing the critically injured Kanin, comforting the young Aiz, shook her head with a wry and sad smile, thinking, 'dummy is always getting hurt.'
— P.O.V Kanin
"-,yes –'- be —ight, it — very –art of him to —-diately seal the wound or -lse he would have most likely died." I awake to the sound of a middle aged man's voice.
My eyes flutter open to see a new white ceiling, with light made specifically to not hurt one's eyes when waking up.'ah I've seen this before'. I look around with my blurry vision and see three silhouettes talking, with two of them being nearly identical. The first being a man that appears to be in his late 40's and a white lab coat on. And the other two are the two royal Alf sisters.
"*Sigh* Thank you again Sadari, without you two, Aiz might have had a much worse fate in the dungeon. I can't imagine if she ran off on her own down into the dungeon." I see the shorter and older of the two sisters talk in a regretful tone to the taller but younger one.
"It's…It's fine, I can't say that Kanin getting seriously injured doesn't bother me, but I'm glad that Aiz is ok…" Sadari utters out tiredly " And besides he's real tough, I'm sure he'll open his eyes any moment… now…" her voice dies down as she turns around to see me staring right at her.
"H-Hi." I managed to croak out." got any water?" My throat was extremely dry.
"I'll go get your water, kid just stay still for now." The doctor chuckled when he heard me and walked out of the room.
I smile up at the tall elf now standing over me with an unreadable face. "How long was I out?" I ask to get some of my voice back.
"Little over 7 hours" she replies with no change in her tone.
"H-how's*Cough* Aiz?" my itchy throat getting to me I coughed a little in my question
"She's perfectly fine, thank you for getting her out safely, Mr. Yuki.'' This time it wasn't even Sadari but Riveria who answered.
Hearing the response I nod and turn to look at Sadari again. "Sorry for making you worry." It was all I could manage to say before eyes started to stream from the purple eyed elf.
"Dummy! Dummy! Dummy! Why-why-why are you always getting hurt?! Why do you always make me so worried! You almost died! And yesterday too! What, are you going to get yourself almost killed tomorrow too!?" The young teary elf leaps at me and starts shaking me around.
As I'm being flung around, the pain from my injuries is almost non-existent, meaning some good healing or potions must have been used on me. I also see Riveria, as I'm being whipped about. Her face is utterly dumbstruck. Most likely because of the change from the before calm and collected Sadari and the now openly weeping girl.
I grab her hands to stop my violent movement and ask " I mean… sure why not?" And oh boy did that get the shaking going again.
"Dummy, Dummy you can't die, you are supposed to make me happy, not make me sad! Take it back! Take it back! We haven't even gotten properly married yet. So you can't leave me! Absolutely not!" My eyes look behind Sadari to see Rivera now absolutely flabbergasted.
"Haha, I was*Cough* just joking. But you might want to turn around." Sadari keeps staring at me until her expression goes ghostly white.
Sadari slowly turns her head to she Riveria staring right at her.. While she was talking about getting married.""B-B-Big S-Sis, I can explain!".
"She's only 16… But I'm already 90… My own little sis… Beat me in love." We both her Riveria mutter to herself and without another word Riveria, the ever dignified high elf and executive of the loki familia. Walked out like her soul was sucked out of her body.
We sat there in silence until the door opened again and a nurse walked in with some water." I have brought some water for you" We don't say anything, so the nurse just puts the water down on a table and also leaves.
With that as the queue, I burst out laughing, while Sadari's face turns crimson from the tips of her ears to the tip of her nose.