Pinky and Micky were walking down the tunnel having an informative discussion about their circumstances.

“This is all your fault!” Micky

“No it’s your fault it always has been.” Pinky

“For what standing there? Being alive? If that’s your problem that’ll be solved soon!” Micky.

As you can hear (read) it is very informative. Turning the volume down, ignoring the children in the back seat, there we are, now we can get on with the story. Micky and Pinky had been discussing like this for hours. We know because at one point Micky had said: “Stop arguing!”

to which Pinky had said: “I’m not arguing we’re discussing! Is there a problem with discussion?” which had lead to more discussion. Which is exactly why we are tuning the children out and continuing on with the story.

As one might expect their discussion attracts monsters. But it wasn’t always like this. I mean they were much more quiet, in the beginning. But their first battle went something like this;

“Shh!” said Micky, after Pinky had stumbled over a rock for the uncountable numbereth time. Micky couldn’t believe that Pinky who had been in ‘The Forest’ was so loud. As a [Pink mage] the first thing he did was learn how to be stealthy like a rogue. Well, maybe not the first thing. Ok, there were a lot of things before that and after “Stop crying about what you can’t fix and figure out a way to deal with it son.” and maybe not quite like a rogue either. But at least he was better than Pinky. Micky always thought that Pinky was the competent one of Bob’s crew but this was terrible.

*sploop* Micky raised his hand in front of Pinky’s face, and Pinky made more noise. Micky just twinged, not that Pinky thought Micky was doing any better in the [Silent] department. They waited and listened and *Bloop* yup it was definitely a slime, getting closer, and bigger than the [Basic Mob Blue Slime] and [Pink Slime] that Micky had been outlasting in the hole. Hopefully, it wasn’t a [Poisen Slime] though it was probably just a [Green Slime]. And it was coming closer.

Micky could hear it grinding the dirt and the tiny siz pop of the slimes acidic body. This was a [Large Slime] Micky and Pinky both agreed that it could even be a [King Slime] or no, could it even be a [Queen Slime]? Micky and Pinky’s eyes grew big at that possibility as they silently (but not very) mouthed out possibilities to each other. The only thing they knew was that this would be the most dangerous fight the had ever fought in their lives. All without a front liner of any kind or even a mid liner. Just two [Center]s facing off against this terrible foe.

Pinky and Micky had finally joined into a party after Micky realized that he was in a dungeon without being in a party. Pinky at first didn’t want to be in a party with a [Pink Mage] But quickly realized that there were no other parties and that Micky wasn’t going to help him without it. So even if he was a [Pink Mage] he was all the help Pinky was going to get. They had prepared as much as they could, which was really just moving since there wasn’t much to prepare besides that rope that miraculously fell near them.

They were starting to get hungry since neither of them had ever gone without lunch before, except for the time Pinky couldn’t even remember when he was a monster orphan. Luckily the mana in the air made recharging their own mana almost automatic. What would normally take hours only took them a few minutes to top off.

They found themselves at a crossroads. Ready as the ever would to face the terrible foe. They would charge valiantly, except they were mages, right, so as they remembered that they were mages they would cast valiantly or die trying, a very real possibility. Their foe sizzed and popped and splooped its way toward them. Rounding the corner was an [Baby Blue Slime].

It was still a tier 1 slime but a slime that had gone through a quasi-evolution and instead of evolving to the next tier shrunk itself to increase its damage. This also opened up new evolutions for it and, oh god it’s bouncing! It’s so fast. Nothing like the regular slimes at all. Pinky had faced an [Goblin Scout] before, typically considered much higher ranked than any slime ever would, and it was nothing like this.

“[Charm] it already!” Pinky said.

“I’m trying but it’s to fast, I can’t get a [Lock] so I can’t cast [Charm] it’s a targeted spell!” said Micky.

“#^(*&*@^(” Pinky. Micky and Pinky dodged and avoided the bouncing bullet of a slime.

“Why don’t you do something [Purple Mage]!” Micky

“I’m trying, but I don’t know any single target spells yet either, all my spells are targeted as well!” Pinky.

“We have to do something.” Micky said.

This was probably not going to work but “Get it to that spot or somewhere like it and I might be able to do something” Micky said. It was definitely not going to work.

Pinky lured the [Baby Blue Slime] to the spot in the intersection. If it was going to bounce then it would have to bounce back out of that spot as well. This doubled the amount of time it would spend in that area, effectively more than doubling the area his [Mass Charm] Had to work with, which wasn’t much. “[Mass Charm]!” Micky yelled when the [Baby Blue Slime] bounced after Pinky.

It was a near thing, the [Baby Blue Slime] was almost out of the area by the time Micky finished casting. But near is close enough and Micky wasn’t going to give it a do over even if it wasn’t fair. The monster was [Charmed] and so was Pinky. Micky was going to enjoy this. *Slap* It didn’t work yet. So Micky *Slapped* him again. He got ready for the third time using his max strength setting up his body to put his all into it “It worked it worked already I’m not [Charmed] anymore!” pinky said *Slap* as Micky slapped him again.

“I know, that’s just a taste for what happened earlier.” Micky said, amazingly this was not what lead to the discussion earlier.

Pinky cast [Curse of weakness] on the [Baby Blue Slime] causing all of its stats to lower. Then he cast [Curse of slow] and finally [Curse of health] as the slimes health slowly ticked down it barely seemed to notice. At least until it reached ¼ of it’s health and the charm wore off. Then it was back to a slime death bullet again… Just a much more manageable slime death bullet.

[Curse of weakness] and [Curse of slow] were doing their job working in tandem and had an amplitudinal result. By reducing the stats overall and then reducing the speed over all, and the fact that these two [Curse]s worked on the original stats, and that it no longer had the stats to resist the curses. The combo was beautiful. So Pinky and Micky played a game of ‘Dodge slime’ until the little sucker died.

[Battle [Won]: [Baby Blue Slime]x1 Has run away, []x0 has capitulated, []x0 has died]

[Opponents defeated: [Baby Blue Slime]x1]

[Loot: 1000 XP]

“Oh ya!-" Micky fist pumped. "-1000 XP.” Micky said as he made a triumphant pose. This was the most XP he had ever gotten. It put him well on his way to his next level. Then he saw Pinky’s smug smile.

“What?” Micky said icely.

“4000 XP, It means the world recognizes that I did the most on this kill and… why are you crying?... Dude why are you...” Pinky said

“¼” Micky said.

“What?” said Pinky

“¼… baby...” said Micky

“What are you talking about ¼? Oh… OH… baby… I’m sorry, I’m so sorry I didn’t realize.” said Pinky but Micky was already bawling at this point. Pinky thought about the fact that this was a dungeon and that crying wasn’t going to help them but he knew better than to actually say it. ¼ meant that the world didn’t recognize him as doing any of the work.

“I hate being a [Pink Mage]!” screamed Micky, tears streaming down his face.

¼ was the lowest setting that a [Party] member could get for being in a party and getting a kill. Being in a party itself automatically reduced XP gains by 1/n N being the number of party members. Of course, had Micky contributed any dmg to the battle at all then his support contributions would have been recognized.

Of course, he could have hit this [Baby Blue Slime] but what about high leveled opponents? Sure he could equip a crossbow or even a dwarven stone flinger but would it matter? Without a [Class bonus:] Micky wouldn’t even be able to penetrate the P.Def of a monster. Basically Micky was screwed and would never be recognized by the world. Even healers could fling a [Class] spell onto a monster and do some dmg to get recognition for their efforts.

In war is was standard practice to let the enemies healer hit your troops with an offensive spell before the battle began. The generals would even take this spell to the face before retreating to the back lines of the battle. It would be a great insult if a [General] died to the spell of a [White Mage]. It was also a type of taunt for these classes, I’m right here what can you do about it. But not the [Pink Mage]. It didn’t matter what they did, Pink mages were the systems [Baby]s and would always be ‘carried’.

Pinky looked at Micky and didn’t know what to do. He just stood there and watched. Sure he had seen people cry, made people cry even. But not like this, not true desperation, he would never let people cry in true desperation while he watched again. He didn’t know what to do. Pinky had seen it before, and couldn’t stand the sight of it. He had to do something but…

This was why Pinky had bullied those kids. He didn’t want to see this, didn’t want to watch this again. He didn’t really have memories of before, but the desperate crying was something that haunted his nightmares. But now was not the time for that. He couldn’t bully or joke his way out of this. He could only sit there and watch. A silent observer to the deepest depths of pain.

Eventually Micky stopped crying. No point to it, but he did feel better. Happy juice and all that, as the healers would say. So he got up and that’s when they heard it, an inquisitive squeak. And it was getting closer. The two looked at each other, Micky’s eyes somehow more puffy then when they were swollen. And they ran!

But it became apparent that Micky was going at more of an awkward hobble. Skipping along as fast as he could while limping with the other. He wasn’t going to make it, and Pinky wasn’t going to make it without him. So he turned around.

“We have to fight.” Pinky said.

“It’s going to catch up anyways.” it was a ROUS, a giant rat thing. An [Giant Rat Thing] apparently not accurate enough to get a viable tag on it though. It screamed and charged and [Charm] walked at a moderate pace toward them. The two looked at each other and ran again. [Curse of weakness], [Curse of slow] Pinky cast on the [Giant Rat Thing] while he was running away. They wouldn’t remove the [Charmed] status and would slow the thing down even further, though marginally.

After escaping the [Giant Rat Thing] the two looked had at each other and laughed. [Charmed] Lasted a minute as long as nothing attacked it, and anything that would do that would likely [Agro] it as well. It was this laugh, this relief that maybe they could survive in this dungeon, killing slimes and things that were low leveled and running from the [Charmed] higher leveled counterparts that would later lead to what would later be called and only referred to as ‘The Discussion’.