Time until floor collapse: 5 days 17 hours 34 minutes

The next morning, most of us gathered in the inn for breakfast. The place smelled sweaty and grimy with the clientele here. Mostly orcs and other unsavoury-looking types wearing thug-like clothes, almost as if we walked into a biker club. We ignored them as we waited for Elise to show up.

“Alright. You guys have some good new items to work on, and two of you are still at a level where you’ll want to grind some more. So you should go out and improve your skills.” Livia said. “Remember what I told you yesterday; ectoplasm is extremely valuable. That alone would make grinding these haunted mobs worth it, just remember that Elise and Tatiana have to kill the spectres after they leave the bodies. Be careful, some of them will already be several levels higher than the norm. There’s always a few good combinations of randomised powers and the host's original powers and body.”

“Sounds like a plan.” Ben said.

“I don’t believe anyone has a Desperado Club Pass?” Livia asked, looking around to see everyone shaking their head. “Shame. It’s a lot easier to get quests in the two clubs, and they’re usually better too. Stick to the silver quests, and just grind haunted mobs on the way there.

“But this is fine too. Start with the outskirts of town. The haunted mobs fled at sunrise to avoid the guards, but they’ll be nearby. The outskirts are where some of the strongest haunted mobs will be, and we’ll want to take care of those as quickly as possible.

“Alexa, practice your singing. I think we both know that Mana Bubble isn’t going to work for you, unless you have the focus to put several more hours into grinding it.”

“On it! Now that I have my guitar and a kick-ass outfit to go along with it, you can’t stop me from being a rockstar!” Alexa said, having opened her loot boxes just a few moments ago and squealing in delight all the while. “And why would I want to use Mana Bubble when I can insult mobs to death!? Nasty Tongue is awesome!”

“Just be sure to never talk ill or make fun of the AI. Damaging them is sufficient ground for acceleration, even if you deal so little that they regenerate in a split second.” Livia said. “That ability doesn’t have a range, only the requirement that the target can hear you.”

“Eep!” Alexa said, turning pale so quickly she must’ve talked shit about the AI several times but just never out loud by sheer happenstance.

“For our new member…” Livia said, turning to Tatiana.

“Right. I’m an Arcane Archer, and my race is a black swan person. Or a Shadow Cygnues, as the system calls it.” Tatiana said.

“A fairly basic class.” Livia said. “Better than regular archer and it has good versatility, but it’s not too hard to unlock. Your race is decent, but nothing to write home about. It’s more meant for ninja-classes. It’s all about stealth and fast unseen parkour, and making fancy wide dodge actions that mesmerise your enemies as you try to shiv them and/or run away.”

“We didn’t get that many options, no. We tried stealth on the first two floors, but unfortunately we had more failures than successes.” Tatiana admitted. “Poor luck and at times just bad coordination. We missed out on the better achievements for stealth classes, and our loot boxes didn’t really work with us in the beginning.

“My class is mostly about being able to imbue special effects on arrows. I get to choose a new addition to my arsenal every floor, and an additional one or two when I pick my subclass. I started with Ignition, Demolition, Speed, Seeking and Spectral arrows. I also have an ability called Conjure Quiver, which gives me 30 arrows that exist for about a minute and automatically appear in my hand if I draw without holding an arrow. I can’t imbue a special effect on those arrows, but they make sure I don’t have to be stingy with arrows in the regular battles. I’ve got like 200 real arrows in my inventory for the imbuing.

“Ignition is self-explanatory. My arrow burns. Demolition arrows are meant to damage objects, structures and heavy armours with their bludgeoning damage. Speed arrows just go faster, and they go a bit further with things like the wind affecting them less. Seeking means I can shoot an arrow into a foe, and all my arrows will curve towards that arrow for a minute. Not the great choice I thought it would be: I can’t turn it off and if I miss that arrow then the others are still drawn to it. So not as useful against evasive mobs as I thought it would be. And you’ve seen Spectral in action.”

“A good spread.” Livia said. “You’re right, Seeking is one of those deceptively bad choices that people pick because the downside isn’t mentioned in the description. How about your stats?”

Crawler # 6,292,532. “Tatiana Volkov”

Level 19.

Race: Shadow Cygnues.

Class: Arcane Archer.

Strength: 5 + 0

Dexterity: 40 + 11

Constitution: 12 + 2

Intelligence: 21 + 3

Charisma: 9 + 1

“They were not this good yesterday, because I levelled so much all of a sudden.” Tatiana sheepishly said. “And I’m probably going to be a lot stronger now that I’ve got this Platinum Box bow instead of the silver one I was using before.”

“You should try to find yourself a Fletcher Workbench to make more arrows and maybe get some more intelligence so that you can churn out enhanced arrows constantly during boss battles, but otherwise you’re doing fine.” Livia said. “Miho, we should also see if you can find an Herbalism Workbench somewhere, if possible.”

“We have a massive party. Even if we can’t find anything in the shops here, maybe someone else can find what we need elsewhere.” I said.

“Maybe.” Livia seemed doubtful.

“Right, that sounds like a plan for today. Now we just have to wait for Elise, and then we’ll leave.” I said.

___ ___ ___ ___

An hour later, we were still sitting at the table. Miho went to check on Elise, and returned to us with the news that she wouldn’t even get out of bed. She seemed broken, for a lack of a better term. Just lacking the motivation to keep on fighting.

We discussed it, and eventually decided that the others could go ahead farming the haunted mobs while Ben and I stayed behind. We didn’t need the experience any more, though Tatiana was needed to harvest the ectoplasm.

After another hour, Ben told me that he was going to ‘check out’ the stores around here. He left our party so that the guards wouldn’t become hostile towards us if he got caught, and headed out.

And thus, I was left in the bar to sit and wait. I wasn’t paralysed thanks to the presence of the other customers, but I had no real drive to do anything. Livia was completely focused on her CCTV skill and the people here didn’t seem inclined to talk with me, so I didn’t even bother. I found it very easy to just shut off my brain and do nothing as time passed.

___ ___ ___ ___

Time left until level collapse: 4 days 19 hours 12 minutes.

Elise didn’t get out of bed today, either. I heard sobbing through the door, but it stopped when I knocked and she opened up for me.

I didn’t say anything.

Nothing needed to be said. We both knew what happened, what was going on with her. What she was dealing with. We were both tanks, we both knew what it was like. No need to say it out loud.

But I could see in her eyes that I wasn’t going to convince her. That I couldn’t help her through this. Not yet. That trying, that forcing the issue, was only going to make things worse in the long run.

Maybe we could get her to descend to the next floor with us, but she wasn’t going to come out of this room to grind and get hurt a little a hundred times for a few skills and maybe a level. Right now she either needed time to collect herself and mourn Thomas and Cuddles, or be in a do or die situation where she had to man up and soldier through it.

“Nobody blames you.” I softly said. “Nobody expects you to be perfect. I haven’t succeeded protecting you guys all the time either.”

“But nobody died while you were around.” Elise muttered.

I didn’t say anything. This wasn’t the time to argue with her.

“Take your time.” I said, and turned around.

“Darryl.” Elise whispered.

I turned around.

Elise pushed her bat into my hands and closed the door.

She was right. Right now we needed the bat, not the one wielding it. I put it in my inventory and returned to the others.

“No luck?” Alexa asked.

“She gave me her bat, so we can kill the spectres twice as fast now.” I said.

“Good.” Livia nodded. “Tatiana has been taking care of them pretty well thus far, with several minutes between most encounters she regenerates her mana fast enough. But there’s already a few higher levelled mobs around that you should clobber with that bat instead of forcing them out. Kill them along with their host, because I don’t want to run the risk that they’re higher levelled than one of you and possesses you. Instead, just beat them to death with that bat.”

“Got it.” I said.

“Nice! We had to avoid a few ‘stronger’ mobs yesterday, and of course they chased us so that was just annoying and humiliating. But now we can take care of those bastards!” Alexa cheered. “And you’re going to hear me play the guitar, Darryl! I’m pretty good, if I say so myself~.”

“She was pretty terrible in the beginning.” Tatiana said.

“Hey! I got better!” Alexa said, comedically shocked and appalled that the others would speak ill of her.

“Yes, she did. When she remembered that her Schoolgirl outfit improves her singing and guitar skill proficiencies to lvl5. She tried it with her new rockstar outfit first, and she sounded like a mewling cat trapped in a piano.” Tatiana laughed.

Alexa wanted to say something, but then decided against it and just pouted.

“You should keep on your schoolgirl outfit for the time being, dear. You’ll soon have the skills to no longer need it.” Livia said. “Unless you switch to new weapons and skills. Again.”

“Darryl, everyone’s bullying me!” Alexa joked, fluttering to my shoulder.

“No bullying.” I deadpanned. “Ben, did you get anything interesting yesterday?”

“Not really. Most of these shops just had a bunch of worthless junk. Literally just random stuff from our world, with the shopkeeper adding useless descriptions and a ridiculously high price tag. All of those general stores were pretty much the same, too. I still stole everything that the shopkeeper couldn’t see from the counter, but it’s nothing to write home about.” Ben said, taking out a Tamagotchi and giving it to Alexa. She frowned at the unknown gadget in front of her, shrugged that she didn’t want it. Miho quickly snatched it away.

“No one caught you?” Tatiana asked.

“Shadow form. It’s really hard to spot me if I’m careful.” Ben shrugged. “Almost too easy, and even if I’m spotted the NPCs have no description to give to the guards. As long as those clunking heaps of metal don’t see me themselves, stealing from these stores is easy.”

“Damn. We’ve picked stealth races too, but we haven’t been that lucky.” A jealous swan said. “You should take me with you sometime. I have some stealth skills I really need to grind.”

“My pleasure.” Ben said. “How could I say no to a beautiful lady?”

“Such a gentleman.” Tatiana played along.

“Yesterday was pretty easy, so I think we can split up.” Ben said. “You guys no longer need Tatiana now that Darryl has the bat, so how about Tatiana and I go sneaking around, and you guys grind more openly elsewhere?”

“Oh ho~, do you two want some alone time?” Livia teased him.

“If both groups stay close enough that we can find each other back, sure.” I said, saving a slightly blushing Ben from having to respond to that.

“I can sneak too, but I guess it’s better that I stick with Darryl. I don’t want to alert the mobs with my lesser stealth skill.” Miho looked up from her Tamagotchi. “Plus, I guess I shouldn’t grind stealth skills when we already have two people better at it.”

“Nice! Guess it’ll be just me and you, Tatiana!” Ben said, throwing her a wink.

“He’s fourteen.” I told Tatiana.

“Hey! Cockblocker!” Ben said, half-kidding.

“That’s okay. I’m fifteen myself.” Tatiana said, smiling at Ben.

Our rogue grew wide-eyed like a deer in the spotlights, and the black on white polka-dots around his cheeks grew a little. He didn’t know what to say and almost shrunk in on himself, but then collected himself. “Nice!” His voice stammered, but he managed to smile.

“Well, then let’s go out there and sneak around, shall we?” Tatiana said, teasingly putting emphasis on ‘sneak’. Ben’s dots grew a bit bigger yet.

“R-Right. Yeah, let’s go. I’ll see you guys later.” Ben said, and the two of them walked out of the bar.

I threw a glance at the others. Miho shrugged with a smile on her face and Livia didn’t seem to care, and I was pretty sure Alexa only understood about half of what just transpired.

“Well, whatever.” I said. “Let’s go kill some ghosts.”