After class, Serenity went to check on the patient. Margrethe was already with him, and Serenity could say that he actually looked human again. He was even conscious - Margrethe was scolding him when Serenity walked in - and Serenity recognized him. It was the man who’d found the orchard of shimmering fruits. He didn’t look quite the same, but it was definitely the same man.

Well, that explained some of how he’d gotten enough cores to mess himself up; he’d been selling things for them. Successfully, apparently.

“How are you doing?”

“Well enough, I guess. Better than yesterday. Oh - I’m Finley. Margrethe said you helped?”

Serenity nodded, then looked at Margrethe.

“I’ve checked him, but he’ll need to be here overnight, just in case. I’ll let him go in the morning - that should get him out in time for a Trial. Asked Sillon to make sure.”

Serenity turned back to Finley. “If you don’t mind?”

Finley nodded, so Serenity stepped forward and put his hand on Finley’s forehead, roughly where he’d had it to pull essence out. That seemed like a good spot. He started searching, and almost immediately found a possible issue. There was a spot in Finley’s brain where a monster’s core would be that vibrated when Serenity got close to it. He decided to skip it and come back.

A quick search of the rest of Finley’s body didn’t reveal any hidden essence, but it did reveal that the network Serenity had made was still present.

Serenity moved back to the brain. On close examination, there was actually a tiny crystal roughly the size of a grain of sand, but shaped just like Serenity’s core. It definitely hadn’t been there when he’d healed the man; Serenity would have noticed.

Serenity didn’t feel any essence from it, but there was a resonance with Serenity’s core. He backed away from it. He didn’t know what it did, but he didn’t want to trigger something accidentally.

“Have you picked a Path yet?”

Finley shook his head. “I can’t decide. It’s a big decision, and I have four that are all interesting. I’m only level 29 anyway, it doesn’t seem like it’s a huge hurry.”

“Are they all still available?” Serenity didn’t really care as long as Finley had at least one Tier 1 available. That would mean he could put off figuring out what the crystal was doing there.

Finley concentrated for a moment, then nodded. “Yep! They are. And huh. I don’t remember a couple of these.”

“Being reckless can have advantages. That’ll give you something to do today. Just remember that if you’d done this a week later, you’d be in a lot of pain or dead. Be more careful. Ask questions when you can.”

Serenity was going to disregard his own advice. Talking about what he’d seen in front of Margrethe seemed like an excellent way to get Finley killed - and since she didn’t seem to detect it as “corruption” - and for that matter, Serenity couldn’t find any essence stored in it - she probably wouldn’t know anything about it anyway. It was probably one of the “other types” of core, and she hadn’t really had a good explanation of those when he’d asked. Maybe there was a book somewhere?

And maybe it would never matter for Finley as long as he was careful? Serenity could hope.

Serenity met with his friends at the Dungeon entrance. They were pleasantly surprised to find out that the Great Dungeon offered them the option of traveling as a group to the second floor, once they all touched the Dungeon entrance.

[Dungeon Party]

Serenity - (No Current Path) - Melee Tank, Self Healing

Moira (Follower) - Mage - Ranged Damage (Magic)

Echo - The Sound of Silence - Ranged Damage (Magic), Scout

Lancaster - Shielding Sword - Melee Damage, Agility Tank

Rissa - Time Heals All - Healing, Melee Damage

Nightwitch - Earth Witch - Ranged Damage (Magic), AoE

Doyle - Hidden Arrow - Scout, Ranged and Melee Damage

Liuyedao - Swordmaster - Melee Damage

[All party members meet entry requirements for early Dungeon entry]

[Select level: 1 or 2]

“Nightwitch, Doyle - congratulations. Good to see you’ve made it up a Tier. Anything interesting?” Serenity was a bit envious. He hadn’t even managed to get his first path, and they were on their second. They must have done a lot of dungeons to get ahead of him with all the mandatory ones he’d done - even with the instructor’s penalty and his loss of experience for Ev, it couldn’t have been easy to keep up. Mandatory Trials started earlier and ended later than optional ones, if nothing else.

“Nah. A stealth skill and Basic Archery are why I took this one. It should just make me better at what I already do. The other stuff is pretty niche. Well, the capstone looks good, but I’m not even level 1 yet so it’s a long way off.” Doyle’s plan made sense.

“Earth Witch has Earth Wall at Level 10. That’ll be all we’ll get soon but I can think of all sorts of ways to use a Wall, even if it does have to pull material from the area. I don’t think it’s fast, but if we have time to plan - ” Nightwitch shrugged.

Serenity nodded. Level 10 was always easy to get to, and any Wall spell was useful. “Yeah, I can go for fighting from behind a short berm. Ready?”

The second level looked like a roughly-carved cylindrical tunnel. It had reinforcing rings every twenty feet, two rails on the floor, and a rail on the ceiling. There was what looked like an irising door behind the group. Serenity doubted the door actually moved, since it would just be the way out. It did seem to set the level as an … oddly futuristic mine, perhaps?

What would make a complex door better than a simple one? It couldn’t just be because the door would disappear into the wall; there were easier ways to do that, and it was almost always easier to just make a wider spot for the door anyway.

Serenity shook himself. Dungeon decor was not important, figuring out what they needed to do to get through the level was.

They set out in the same order as last time; as long as the corridors stayed clear, Echo could easily “scout” from the center of the party.

It was only a short walk before Echo called out the first enemy. It looked like a ball, spinning down the corridor between the rails on the floor. Nightwitch, Echo, Moira, and Doyle started attacking as soon as they could.

Echo’s attacks weren’t visible since they were sound. “I’m hitting it but not damaging it. I think the - yes, it’s deflecting it into the wall somehow! It’s hitting the wall more than the ball-thing!”

Moira’s voice nearly overrode Echo’s. “Mine aren’t hurting it either! It’s not deflecting them, it’s just … absorbing the mana?”

Moira’s attack was an unshaped “Levin Bolt” - one of the simplest ways to attack and the staple of the Tier 1 Mage class. Other paths would make an Affinity-based attack, but Mage focused on what Serenity thought of as Arcane affinity - pure magic.

Anything that would eat that was a real threat.

Fortunately, Nightwitch and Doyle seemed to have attacks that worked. Nightwitch was calling down individual “meteors” from above the spinning ball - Earth and Fire mana mixed, but the attack that hit was with a very hot rock, not magic. Doyle, of course, was using arrows. Since physical damage was working, Serenity, Lancaster and Liyuedao would be useful - but Echo was limited to scouting, and Moira didn’t really have anything she could do.

When they got close to the thing, Serenity immediately knew there wasn’t a core. The group disassembled it anyway. They wanted to know what it was and what it was capable of.

The outer surface was a pair of metal domes fit together to make a sphere, but with spaces at the joint. Inside the pair of domes was a set of sharp, jagged blades that looked like they would fit out through the spaces. The remainder of the thing was open other than a central core that looked like a metal ball covered in a delicate pattern. None of the pieces other than the two domes actually seemed to have a physical connection, so everything else must be handled with magic, somehow.

The pattern on the central core was damaged.

It reminded Serenity of runic magic, but it definitely wasn’t runes. “Closer to enchanting, I think. Some sort of golem?” Serenity had never studied enchanting. That had to be done well in advance, because it took a lot of time, so he’d always just hired someone to do it.

“We should call them spinners!” Echo declared.

Everyone looked at her. After a moment, Doyle asked “Like the fidget spinner things? It does spin, but this seems a lot more dangerous.”

Oddly, it was Liuyedao who supported Echo. “No, like the battlebots. It’s a classic type.”

The rest of the group looked at the two of them blankly.

Liuyedao shook his head. “Just … trust us on this. They should be called spinners.”

No one cared enough to argue, so “spinners” became their name.