Kaladin was barely inside the storming tunnels, and already he hated them. The problem wasn't their size, because yes, a spear swung wrong could hit a wall if you weren't careful to keep track of your spear, your surroundings, and where you were, but Kaladin had fought in Amaram's army for years, and had worked very hard learn to not cut open the throat of one of his own men in that time.
No, the reason Kaladin hated them was the echos. The sounds of fights just around every corner, or so it seemed at least, with screams or yells reaching his ears with only the strength of whispers every so often. Telling him that someone out there was maybe dying to whatever was in this hole. And yet far too echoed and distant for him to reach them.
Kaladin's scowl deepened, and his grip on the rotted storming spear tightened. It would break before long, that much was obvious by how his grip already compressed the spear, so much of it rotting away that it was porous and light, but he had few other options. He needed it to hold together one last time.
He felt a strange sensation, of the storm in his veins - the storm that was telling him to move to run to save his friend in a rush of action like it was the pent up instincts of a man who had died with his men to a shardbearer finally released - ebbing away slightly, almost surging through his spearhand into the decrepit old thing.
He didn't understand it, or really care. After all, there was already a strange blue glow from nowhere in these tunnels. It didn't exactly seem important right then that his storming spear had decided to join in on the glowing.
Besides. It only made it easier to move along as people got out of his storming way, rather than try and stop him as he sprinted through the dungeon.
If there was one thing being a bridgeman made you good at, after all, it was running for long times with a heavy burden and little else.
Still, he finally came across the supposed "monsters", of the dungeon. Some little green man and a man with the head of some sort of mink.
Kaladin grit his teeth. They didn't seem very monstrous. Just the wrong color to fit in with the other adult tiny people, and slightly more mink-like than the other mink-people.
They looked just as wretched as he did in his pants, really, and he'd been running bridges in them for months.
Were these the few below darkeyes of this world? Were these the-
They turned around, their mouths and maws opening into screams of frenzied fury, as they ran towards him, practically scrabbling across the stone floor to brain him with their bone club or sink their teeth into him.
Maybe they were just monsters.
He was a surgeon, after all.
He recognized a human femur.
He went forward, and killed the beasts as quickly as he could. It was… strange, fighting them. They only feared death to the extent that it would clearly stop them from killing him. If there was a chance they might hurt him, they jumped in head first.
It was easy, too, given just how tiny and frail they were, even for this strange world full of small shin people.
But they would slow him down from searching.
He looked to Syl, floating beside him. She was back, and beaming at him even down here.
"Syl, can you go ahead of me to find the old man? If you can't, if the distance weakens you again, then just watch my back. I'll fight my way deeper, and ask if anyone has seen him here, but it might be too slow if I have to search every side tunnel." Kaladin asked, his voice still strange from lack of use. It wouldn't be too hard, because how large could the dungeon really be, but it would still save time.
"Sure thing, Kal! I'm on it!" she said, still grinning, before flitting off as a leaf on the wind.
Kaladin looked over to the man who looked like a pudgy lighteyes boy stuffed in a suit his father had made for a stronger man, worse-armored darkeyes beside him included. Even a darkeyes woman barely dressed in anything, nevermind something to cover her safehand, armed with a sword. Some sick lighteyes delight, probably. He'd have to look into that later.
"You." Kaladin said, pointing at the lighteyes boy.
The boy squeaked out a "Y-Yes?", and Kaladin couldn't help but want to scoff. This place, he was already sure, wasn't meant for the soft. Had his storming lighteyes of a father forced him into this pit, to toughen him up?
Storming lighteyes.
"Have you seen an old man. Homeless. White, unkempt beard and hair. Wears an old dusty coat and was probably swinging a club around like a greenhorn?"
The boy shook his head, and Kaladin dismissed him from his mind. There were other things to take care of, and one far more urgent than investigating whatever depraved clusterfuck of a party some brightlord had made to raise his son instead of him.
He ran, deeper into the depths.
Old Man Alam felt the weight of the few magic stones he'd scraped together. He supposed it wasn't bad, getting to the third floor on his very first day, but other people would probably say it only counted if you made it back.
Oh, what did he care what other people thought? He was probably running towards a dead end, and away from five Goblins and two Kobolds, so he wasn't exactly going to make either way, but he was going to certainly going to die as an adventurer of the third floor.
A laugh tried to force it's way out of his wheezing lungs, and it made him fall over as his chest convulsed trying to both gasp down air and laugh it out. He didn't even really mind, though. After all, he'd been running after a mysterious ribbon of light in the dungeon because it was his best option, not because there was any chance at all that the ribbon wasn't also a trap.
And even more than the fact that he was screwed either way, he was alright with falling, because it was just that funny.
Fifty-three years, and he had to bend the rules as far as he could to get his most impressive achievement to be the third darn floor.
It really was an incredible joke.
The small horde following after him stopped, just a bit away. He'd have thought they were confused, if they weren't a fair bit too dumb for that. Then the walls started breaking open, and his chest only spasmed harder trying to laugh his ass off at the dungeon trying this hard to kill an old man.
The now thirteen strong monsters moved slowly to stand above him in a circle, staring down at him. It was an eerie sight, with how they'd practically thrown themselves on his axe earlier to get a hit on him. He supposed there maybe was some truth to the dungeon hating all their guts, then.
He'd sort of hoped it didn't. Made the rest of his life a lot scarier, now that he knew it did.
Bah, what was he complaining about? There wouldn't exactly be much life left to be scarier either way.
More monsters came from the halls he'd run through, slowly walking over to him. Could be them just following the noise. Seemed to him, though, that the Dungeon was preparing one of them monster parties. That was a bit sobering. He'd never wanted to screw over his whole quarter of the floor. Just to get good old grunty back on his feet again.
The lad was too young and had too much potential to have already given up.
Then he heard it. Well, he didn't, but the darn dog-heads did as they turned to look where he was running to, and he could just barely peek between a few skinny goblin legs.
A glowing light was growing closer and closer, forming into the shape of a man he'd been getting to know for weeks as the sound of feet on stone grew louder, and as he came upon the small hoard Alam had managed to build up, he roared into his charge.
And by all the gods, he fought like a storm. He glowed with inner light, his spear burning with radiance, eyes blue full of light and fire like a sapphire held before the sun, his unkempt beard seemingly that of an exhausted warrior, where days before it was the beard of a vagrant, even as his long hair flowed and streamed behind him as he danced through the beasts with otherworldly skill and grace, killing them with slashes and stabs, his muscles tight and flexing with the quick, almost easy fluidity of a man born for the fight, and seeming more like a god of war than any Alam had seen before.
Still, seemed not all the little cridders had abandoned him for Kaladin, as was clear by the sharp sting of a goblin's knife in his leg where the little beast had jumped on him, and started stabbing his calf.
Alam drew his dagger again, and stabbed the wretch, wincing at the pain as he dragged himself to sit against the wall and watch, dagger in hand now. Well, he thought as he grinned through the pain, at least he had done his part, little as it was.
Oh well. Maybe he should try to stand and help with the fighting, but… well, Kaladin seemed to have things well in hand, going by how he just impaled a goblin, grabbed the knife flung into the air, and threw it into the chest of some Kobold in passing. Barely seemed fair, really.
Then again, there sure was a lot of blood coming out of his leg, so some of his pity was probably leaking out with all that blood.
A darn shame neither of them had a potion, and that no one would lend one to a pair of hobos.
At least he wouldn't be there when the lad saw that he had wasted his time on him, but he was sure he'd feel that regret right until heaven let him reincarnate.
The fight was over before too long, but luckily, he had enough time to just barely plan out his dramatic farewell. He hoped it'd keep the lad's head straight, at least for long enough that he could get to know his brand knew familia, and they could take over watching him.
The boy came over to him after a few moments of standing still, but Alam kept his eyes shut. He needed to be at peace with his demise, and that'd be a fair bit harder if he had to be looking old grumpy face in the eye while he did it.
Grumpy didn't say a word, though, he just started… poking his darn wounds!
"Ow, lad! You seem magic alright, but I'm still feeling the pain, which means you don't have healing hands, which means you don't have a reason to be poking around in those!" He said, trying the swat away the lads hands, only to be stunned at his reply.
"I'm a surgeon, now stop struggling and let me save you."
And Alam was baffled. What the hell sort of surgeon fought like that, and what the hell sort of surgeon ended up a bum? Still, it wasn't much good when all they had between them was a glowing spear, a knife, and a few bits of clothes.
He was about to say exactly that, and get on with dying, when he looked at the boy and saw him in deep concentration. He was staring at his own spear, and his eyes flitted to something right above it, before looking contemplative.
Then he the lad turned back to his leaky leg, and pushed the two sides of one of his wounds together with an even deeper scowl on his face and… well darn. He did have healing hands. All that was left was a thin rift of light where the wound was, as Kaladin's glow waned the slightest bit for a moment, before returning.
He really ought to stop speaking about what Kaladin couldn't do. Seemed there was no such thing, after all. What was next? Would Kaladin begin flying? He chuckled at the thought, even as Kal slung him over his shoulders like a long sack of potatoes, holding his leg in his elbow, with a the hand of the same arm gripping his wrist to keep him from falling off his shoulders, leaving his spear-hand free to fight.
Then he started running back to the surface. Like he wasn't carrying a whole man on his shoulders.
Misha was still arguing with the guild head, even as more and more of a crowd gathered to look at the spectacle, but it was only going on so long because he was bizarrely focused on the wrong things.
"So, you let an unregistered homeless man stumble his way into the dungeon to die? Is that what you are telling me?" He said, his snooty face looking really punchable, even though Misha really wasn't a violent person.
"No! I'm telling you that a homeless man came in, manifested a falna with the help of some sort of spirit, starte glowing, and then, yes, went into the dungeon because he was some sort of freak giant and I'm just a worker!"
Mr. Mardeel rubbed his temples, then, like she was the one being unreasonable here!
"Falnas do not simply manifest, Ms. Flott. And spirits do not follow around men like ducklings after their mother. I understand that you are young, and I do not expect you to be perfect, but to lie and embellish in order to minimize your mistakes and then insist on the lie is unacceptable for a member of the guild. Now, I will let you off with a warning, but-"
"There he is!"
Misha's quiet seething at the prideful old bucket of lard and bones came to a stop, as she spotted the man in question over Mr. Mardeel's shoulder.
And sure enough, she was right, he was glowing, he even had the friend in question, and while the fairy had been replaced with his spear having started to glow since he left, she thought she was still close enough.
The crowd, of course, also saw him, and split in front of him like he was walking through pigeons, rather than adventurers.
She didn't really blame them, of course, given how he was stupid tall, glowing, scowling like a storm, and carrying a glowing, if still wretched, spear. The fact that he was only wearing raggedy pants would have been more of a take-away from his appearance, if not for the fact that he was muscled like he loved fighting for work, and running around with boulders in his free time.
He slung the man off his shoulder and down onto a guild couch as the silent crowd of level ones and twos watched.
Then the glow left him like someone had turned off the faucet to the magic glowy fog, his friend's leg started bleeding all over the couch, and the man's spear practically disintegrated into mulch, splinters, bits of old wood and dust as the glow left it, and only a rusty, chipped and bent spearhead fell to the stone floor with a clatter.
Then the man fell backwards, smacked into the coffee table behind him, and was out like a light from a classic mind down.
Which, to be clear, wasn't supposed to work like adrenaline and drop when you could finally relax. It was supposed to just run out whenever it felt like it, combat or no combat.
Misha, reasonably, decided to ask her earlier question once more.
"Okay, what the hell is this guy!?" Misha yelled once more into a brand-new silence within the guild hall.
The spirit-lady then reappeared, flitting around asking people to help the two men in a seeming panic.
Misha threw up her hands and walked away.
A/N:
Danmachi: Our magic has rules and makes sense. It's a bit finicky, but there are incantations, and magic is a resource that isn't tied to emotions.
Lol, said the surgebinder. Lmao.
(This is accurate to neither, I know, but it is sort of funny)
