Phil sheathed the daggers, “I’m triple-S now. So, let’s return to the guild, eh? There’s something I have to do.” He was leading us out before we could properly congratulate him. “By now you realise, dungeons in this world that are unique or especially difficult are branded with a name. I’d like for us to try Floating Horsemen.”

Scadia flinched a little, showing a clear irritation at the mention of the dungeon.

“I’ve heard about it before, but never really paid it any attention.” I rubbed my chin, “Sure, let’s go check it out.” We returned to the guild. August, Freya, and Scarlet had yet to come back. Since we were short on members and other usual groups were in the same boat, we managed to snag Trevor, the sorcerer, and a couple healers.

“Hi!” A twin introduced herself, “I’m Claire, a healer! But I suck in combat so I’ll be as far away from the group as I can be! This is my brother,”

“Clarence,” the other twin continued her statement, “and I’m a healer too but double as an off-tank. My healing spells are more effective”

“at close range,” Claire continued.

Hydra’s ass, this is confusing! They both had an arm around the other’s shoulder. It was like two halves that made a whole.

Claire beamed proudly, “We’re both A-ranks,”

“but I hope we’ll suffice,” Clarence finished, knowing the dungeon we wanted to attempt. Phil welcomed the twins and Trevor aboard.

Just as we were about to leave, Scarlet came back. “Oh, doing a dungeon without me?” she joked.

“I would never. I’m merely relieving you of having to form a group,” he smooth-talked. As if sensing our moment of departure, Freya, Shem, and August came back in as well.

“You guys were leavin’ without me, weren’t you?” August immediately interrogated. Despite his glare being focused on me, I still expected Phil to smooth-talk him over as well. But August was my friend after all, so Phil didn’t utter a word.

My face contorted, “Well, I wanted Freya and Shem, not you. You’re the most useless person in the guild, man.”

“Ever had a longsword up the ass?” he questioned with a smile on his face.

“No, but I’ve had one through the waist…” we stared at each other for a long time then simultaneously broke out in laughter. Freya shook her head, unable to extinguish her urge to laugh as well. Shem was just plain confused, as was the twins.

“So,” August turned to Freya and Shem, “you guys comin’?”

“Where?” Shem asked, so August looked around at me, then I looked to Phil.

He pulled himself together after we had a bit of a stare-down at each other. “Well, with the abilities of the people in this group, we were going to Floating Horsemen.”

“Cool,” August shrugged it off, knowing nothing of the place. Freya gasped, Shem’s eyes widened, Scarlet raised an eyebrow. “Let’s go, shall we?” August said, ready to leave the moment he arrived. Maybe our calm of the situation left a trusting feeling over the group. They didn’t question our choice of dungeons much.

Finally, we arrived at the place located at the foot of a mountain. The swirling portal took us to a dark, but rather wide and outrageously long hallway. At the end of the hallway were three painted portraits. Each person was seated on a warhorse. Two of those portraits were men and the other, a woman.

She didn’t wear armour at all; in fact, she donned the garments of a mage. The men were clad in armour. One had a sword and shield, whilst the other wielded a huge two-handed sword a bit similar to August’s. There was a small fence no more than a metre tall, blocking us off from viewing the paintings at a closer distance.

As I stood in the back of the group, Scarlet’s demeanour was clear as day. Her mind was dwelling on her family, as was Freya. Shem on the other hand, became focused once he entered the dungeon. Perhaps that was the experience of a seasoned dungeoneer who fought his way up to S-rank.

“Alright everyone!” Phil clapped once and the echoing pulled everyone’s attention to him, “Focus now, because I’m going to start! Freya, defend against the warrior the most. Sorcerers, take out the horsewoman first, then we can focus on the warrior. Keep the tank for last! We ready?!”

Who knew he could lead too?

“I know, right?” Donna agreed. “Full of surprises.”

Dawn, even in my mind, was a bit nervous. The place was pretty dark and eerie, only lit by a few torches along the walls. Phil flung something at one of the pictures, and the ink literally melted off the canvas and formed one of the horsemen. The other two followed and formed soon after.

The sorceress’ eyes snapped open, a ghastly fire-like gas following them as she walked forward. I put on Avatar of Lightning as the other horsemen perambulated forward as well. They stopped at the fence and looked at us, their flaming eyes touching on all of us.

These horsemen had enough height to call themselves elves, projecting a threatening aura onto us. The tank and warrior’s weapons began glowing a faint blue as they unsheathed it. The sorceress summoned a wooden staff to her hand and it clunked on the ground. Right then, the fence fell. She disappeared, reappearing behind me. I knew that because I felt the brunt of her staff smacking me aside. I slammed against the wall, almost knocking out if not for a quick Renew.

Divergence gave her much of the same result, slamming her into the wall opposite me. Trevor, Scadia and Claire jumped back. Scadia let loose a Phoenix Wave and my jaw almost hit the ground, but there wasn’t time to think about how she came to learn the spell. Celosia reacted heavily to it and my hand lit up, but I urged her to calm down. Trevor then used some stone bindings to keep the monster’s hands cemented within the wall.

The clash of metal began sounding at the forefront. Shem was flying through the air, doing so many flips I couldn’t possibly imagine the world from his point of view. The horseman tank had knocked him away. They were ridiculously strong, and the only two people capable of standing their ground against them were Freya and August. But August, like me, didn’t do too much.

Scadia and Trevor were having issues keeping up with the sorceress, as she had long teleported out of the binding and regular spells didn’t seem to work. Any time they attempted to use the bigger, more sluggish spells, they would be interrupted. Freya, without August’s help was totally preoccupied with defending against the tank’s slow but strong attacks and the warrior’s fast, yet powerful swings. Phil, unable to pierce the ridiculous armour of the tank without some sort of dirty trick, instead focused his attention on the warrior. Scarlet focused on dodging the most, with her claymore slung over her shoulder.

Shem, as fast as he flew past me, sprinted back after being healed by Claire. His spear was on a warpath to the warrior, but the tank intercepted. He would’ve been bashed again by the tank’s shield had he not skated below the shield with a great show of athleticism. He stood up seamlessly and placed his bodyweight and rotation into a strike, piercing the chest armour of the warrior and actually injuring the monster.

Phil, not long after, cast Invisibility so I cast Life Perception to see his movements. He ran up a nearby wall and pounced off it, making his way to the nape of the warrior’s neck and slamming his dagger into it. The warrior’s body seized up and fell from the poison on the dagger.

Scarlet took that opportunity and ran in, but the tank was on his way to stop her. Luckily, Freya stopped the tank with Frost Nova even if he quickly broke out of it. Still, it gave her more than enough time to get in the way of the huge tank and Scarlet. Our carmine-maned guild master put her all in her strike and damaged the warrior’s armour.

Earth Wall after Earth Wall sprung up from the ground to assist Freya. Her training as a defensive sorceress was paying off, but she still kept her sword and shield. She realised the key to keeping the tank off of her guildmates was to minimise his movement as much as she could. If he had the freedom to fully swing an arm, it would have much of the same effect that befell Shem when he flew through the air.

On our end of the hallway, the sorceress had our mages hot on their heels. She didn’t give them much time to cast powerful spells. Phil shouted for us to kill her, as she was the one who buffed her allies to be as strong as they were. If we wanted to kill the tank and warrior, we’d have to get rid of the sorceress first.

Trevor and Scadia were breathing hard after some minutes of casting a multitude of small spells just to stay alive. Clarence would help them out a lot by swallowing a lot of the sorceress’ attacks then healing himself, but even he began running out of mana.

Our close-combat dungeoneers were handling themselves great against the tank and warrior monsters. But our ranged dungeoneers was another story.

“Why don’t you help them?!” Dawn lost her patience with me just looking on apathetically. Because of mine and August’s inaction, the monsters didn’t focus on us. Donna began somewhat squirming too.

Well, if you two are so worried, why don’t you go out and help them?

Dawn formed immediately, as if she was just waiting to get permission. A small mass of dense water slammed the teleporting sorceress up to the ceiling. Hydrotendrils then formed from the mass of water and kept the mage there. Most of the water disappeared but the Hydrotendrils remained.

Scadia and Trevor used that time to scrape whatever mana they had remaining to fry the sorceress to a crisp with lightning spells. Trevor slumped down and Scadia was barely standing. She let loose one last Phoenix Wave at the injured warrior. The spell severely damaged him because the buff that the sorceress cast before the fight began had worn off. He was pushed back and fell, using his longsword to somewhat pick himself back up. However, he only had the pleasure of getting on one knee. Before he could stand, Phil and Shem decimated him.

Now, the entire group’s eyes were turned to the tank. He didn’t even flinch at the death of his partners; it made me wonder if monsters could feel fear. He was difficult to beat, even without the others to help him, but with enough persistence, he was overpowered. He didn’t have much offensive power without the buff from the sorceress. Once he was dead, the gate appeared and we left.

“Was that so hard?” Dawn tried to guilt trip me. Well, she might’ve been right. After all, August and I were taking up a couple spaces where other dungeoneers would fill. And others surely wouldn’t sit back and watch the fight. Just as we were ready to go back in, Scarlet opted out, as did Freya. It wasn’t the best time to farm dungeons surely.

I had to Riftshear everyone back to the guild whilst August and I simply sat around the entrance of the dungeon. “I’ve been meaning to ask, dude…” I drew a couple circles in the dirt. “This whole guild attack thing. What are you going to do about it?”

He leaned off the tree and gave me an aloof look, then rubbed his hair. “Argh!” he grunted. “Hell, man!” a sigh came after. “I’m thinking the best thing to do is nothing, honestly. At first, I was literally going to slaughter the other guilds, but that would just be plain stupid. Freya and I had a long talk about it,” he leaned onto the trunk of a tree again, “I think we really should leave it to Nine Skies. We really should do what the spirit lords wanted us to do and what Emily wanted us to do. So, that’s clearing Earth-Sky Tower.” He got even more serious than he was already, “Eric…”

“You wanna attempt it,” I concluded, “don’t you?”

He answered with nothing but a smile.

“Well,” I got up and dusted my pants, “why not?”

~

A couple weeks of sparse dungeon work after and our guild was beginning to come along nicely. We focused on getting all the B-ranks to at least A-rank which was little to no issue. Our only real problem was broken morale from the loss of loved ones. A few of our members had disappeared without a trace after the attack, even when we confirmed their safety. We were in a rut.

“…and that’s why we’re going to Earth-Sky Tower,” I told Scarlet.

“You’re going to Earth-Sky?!” Scarlet retorted, allowing everyone to overhear.

“Sheesh,” I rolled my eyes, “way to keep a secret. You’re not getting any more sweets.”

“W-wait. Please,” she begged, “I’m sorry!”

I dangled a piece of chocolate with some void magic over her. But a thud on the ground broke my attention from the puppy-like Scarlet. Shem knelt down before me, a fist touching the wooden floor. “It takes twenty-five S-rank dungeoneers to attempt Earth-Sky Tower,” he announced. “I know First Flight has those members, but if there’s a chance I can go, I implore that you consider making me a part of the raid!”

Freya came to his side, asking that he not kneel, but he refused to budge until he got an answer from us.

Interesting, I thought. “Buddy, we’re going alone. Once we see what it’s like, then we’ll come and take whoever wants to go.”

He looked up, finding my answer unsatisfactory. His eyes glued to Scadia, as if asking her to tell us how crazy we are. She sighed, “Right, you haven’t seen them get serious. Well,” she rubbed her neck and muttered, “neither did we, really.”

“Brother, there’s a reason the RC made them X-ranks,” Freya pointed out, dismissing his disbelief that we couldn’t do it on our own.

“Exactly, man,” I nodded in agreeance. “By the way, did you know that August got literally twice as strong when we left to go home a few months back? There’s nothing to worry about once he’s here!” I tapped him on the shoulder proudly. I could just picture him giving me a glare of death for putting him through the crystal shard transformation.

“So,” August pushed his thoughts of malice to the side, “who wants to show us where the entrance is?” Shem immediately volunteered. We wondered why he seemed so obsessed with the dungeon, but shrugged it off.

Once we got the well-wishes of First Flight, we were off to the next half of Yunaris. We ended up floating over a beautiful and scenic fjord. On a gentle slope right on the banks, was the portal to Earth-Sky Tower. Shem gave us a recall stone each. Apparently, all you had to do was pass your mana through it to teleport out of a dungeon. Most returned you to the RC building, according to Shem.

I left a clone for him to get back but he stopped us before we entered. “Just, one more thing, guys.” Despite talking to us, he focused a lot more on August. “Freya is obsessed about finding Frozen Tear in that dungeon,” he sighed, “and I’m afraid you guys will end up finding it.”

“You’re afraid?” August questioned. “Don’t you need the item to cure your mother?”

“Yeah, but no. The first time I went to Earth-Sky Tower, I actually found a Frozen Tear. I could hardly believe it. My life’s goal had just randomly jumped into my inventory. But,” he looked down and rubbed his forehead stressfully, “life isn’t that easy. I gave the Frozen Tear to mother years ago. Nothing happened. It didn’t cure anything,” he admitted dejectedly. “The only thing I got from that damned dungeon was a bunch of dead friends. It was hell in every sense. Thinking back, maybe it would’ve been better if I didn’t survive.”

“So,” August walked closer and grabbed the man by his collar, lifting him into the air, “you’re telling me that you pretend the Frozen Tear is the answer? You’re telling me that you let Freya believe a fallacy?”

Shem chuckled weakly, “You’ve got a daughter, right? Freya told me. Imagine your daughter dedicating her entire life – risking it even – to that one cause. Would you have the heart to tell her the cause is a fallacy? I don’t know how strong you two are, but you better be stronger than twenty-five S-ranks combined if you want to clear this dungeon,” he proclaimed, somewhat calmly.

August let him go, understanding his perspective on the matter. He looked right at me.

I threw a hand up, “Alright, alright. I’ll see what I can do,” I said. “Let’s go.” I turned around and entered the place.