Weira grunted as Qyra kicked her in her sleep. She sat up and rubbed her ribcage, every time she saw it she was surprised by how much the younger girl could contort. She appreciated the view for a while before she bent over and kissed the girl on the cheek. Qyra grumbled and snatched for the blanket, Weira smiled and got up. She went through her usual stretch routine. Today they would test the next layer of the dungeon, she had taken control over the team, somehow. She wasn’t even the one making the tactical calls, Florian was, yet somehow they still referred to her as the leader.

She shook her head, the day hadn’t even started and she already missed Jace. Life was easy under his command, despite his random tendencies he was truly gifted in small squad command. A few month under his tutelage and the group moved on instinct. Jace told her his philosophy was that once a squad was properly trained the sergeant wouldn’t have to issue any commands. The soldiers should know what to do when shit hit the fan themselves. Only when shit hit the fan, was the sergeant supposed to intervene. She had asked what a fan was, apparently it was an item for cooling oneself down.

She walked down to the inn, she waved to Frank and Mili. Who was already at work on her next delicious meal. Suddenly she felt a shiver and grabbed for her halberd and twisted to the entrance. A woman walked in, she recognised her kind, one of those Xor. An adult version, although she spotted a child beside her. She recognised the kid, Weira put away her halberd and waved towards them. “Looking for Jace?”

The Xor turned to her, “We wish to Challenge him.”

Weira nodded, “I heard about that, Jace is at the knight college currently.”

The Xor frowned, she folded her arms and a low growling sound escaped from her throat. “He has run?”

Weira laughed, “Doubtful, anything that could be a good fight is something he would enjoy.”

The woman paused then nodded. “ As expected of one accepted.”

Weira saw Mili come out from the kitchen with breakfast, Weira smiled and motioned the two Xor to sit down. “Would you like to join me for breakfast, you will have to wait a few days for Jace to return. He should be back during the weekend.”

The woman paused slightly before she nodded and sat down. Mili who had just reached the table magically made another set of plates appear out of nowhere. Setting them in front of the two strange new additions. The ball of fur Mili bounced up and down and her squeaky voice told the two of them to enjoy breakfast. The adult Xor nodded and looked down at the plate, she hesitatingly picked up a fork and tried a bite. The woman moaned, “This food has been well prepared.”

Weira grinned, “Mili is a wizard in the kitchen.”

They spent the rest of breakfast in silence, eventually the rest of the team started trickling down from the rooms. Qyra with tired eyes squeezed herself next to Weira on the bench. The three boys seeing that the table was pretty full grabbed another table and put it next to the other. They sat down and a few moments later Mili appeared with more plates of food for the others. They each thanked her for the food before they dug in, today they planned to challenge another layer of the tower after all. They had to make sure that they ate well, they also ordered a lunch that they would bring along. Mili familiar with their habits had already prepared a few boxed lunches. The group thanked her for the effort, Plip looked at the younger Xor. He nodded at her, the young girl nodded back and grinned. Showing off her sharp teeth.

Weira waited for her team to finish breakfast, she looked over at the Xor. “You can wait here for Jace to return, if you didn’t bring enough money for the stay you can put it on my tab. I have work to do so if you will excuse me.”

The Xor simply nodded politely while Weira and her group walked past them and headed towards the dungeon tower. As usual once they arrived they checked each other’s gear. Once they felt everything was in order they entered through the gate and appeared on a flat grassland. They immediately fell into a diamond formation with Qyra in the middle, Florian at the fore and Weira and Jerard at the sides and Plip at the rear. They were surrounded by high grass, something that could hide a lot of various creatures. Weira glared at the grass surrounding her before motioning to Qyra, the purple haired girl nodded and after a soft incantation a ring of fire appeared around her and slowly spread outwards.

The rest of the team didn’t react as the flames pass around them, they knew Qyra had enough control over the flames to make sure they wouldn’t harm her team members. Weira watched as the grass caught fire and an inferno spread outwards from them, it was perhaps a reckless tactic but it was one that was thought out. Unlike Jace who had taken them into the layers without much investigation, because he wanted them to keep their edge and prepare for anything. Weira preferred to learn as much as she could before she tackled a layer. She knew this one was filled with ambush predators. So she decided to do away with their advantage, she smiled with grim satisfaction as the flames reduced everything around them to dust.

She heard screeches of anger and rolled her shoulders, a bloodthirsty grin appeared on her face. She twirled her halberd and glyphs started floating around her in the air. She flicked a finger and various glyphs formed small circles and flew over and landed on the ground. Creating some of Weira’s homegrown landmines, she had been thinking of ways to increase her strength. Jace had passed her when he unlocked his mastery and then once again had grown when he had force unlocked his class. Weira refused to fall behind, she had been experimenting more and more with her glyphs and even had the idea to tattoo a few of them on her body that she could activate by passing mana through them. She hadn’t figured out the particulars yet but that was why she had been saving up to build herself a small laboratory.

Once she spotted flashes of green from the corner of her eyes she shook away the stray thoughts and prepared for battle. Today’s opponents would be Babayaza’s a strange rodent with a long body and sharp claws, they moved low among the ground and loved ambushing their prey. They were fast and their claws sharp, their defense was negligible and they were a lot less dangerous without the surrounding grass to hide them. She saw one of them rushing near one of her landmines and grinned when it exploded, tearing the thing to pieces before it could reach them. She kept softly mumbling the incantation she had tied to her glyphs and kept creating new ones, attempting to keep her mana level stable.

More and more of the Babayaza’s appeared with angry screeches and a wave of them appeared before her, Weira smiled and murmured another incantation. Another new spell of her own creation, Glyph Armour. The glyphs tied themselves to her, each with a different purpose but together creation a powerful whole. She twirled her halberd and the blade started glowing blue, with flick the blade grew and she dashed forward. With a swing of her enhanced weapons she cut a pair of the creatures in half, and arrow flew past and knocked one of the things out of the air. Fiery mana needles rained down on the horde of creatures, Qyra had forsaken control for a mass area of effect attack. The creatures howled as they were pierced by needles.

Jerard moved closer to Qyra to protect her while Florian ran forward and covered Weira. He used his shield well and blocked anything that might be able to attack her, Weira completely neglected defense, trusting on her armour, florian and her glyphs to keep her safe as she tore through the group of Babayaza’s. The fight was short but intense, after a mere minute they were surrounded by dozens of corpses, Weira nodded as she looked at the result and motioned with her hand. Qyra stepped forward and started skinning the creatures and grabbing cores. This particular layer was peculiar in that it did not have a boss but merely had a large amount of smaller creatures. After repeating the same tactic a few more times they cleared the layer. It should have been a more hard-won fight, but the Babayaza’s trait of camouflage was rendered useless when the grass was scorched away.

At the end of the day Weira smiled in relief, she finally had enough to set up a moderate lab. She was really excited and beside her Qyra smiled at her, “Let’s get ourselves that lab.”

Weira blinked and looked at her, she cocked her head. “Our lab?

Qyra grinned and pulled on her arm, hugging it. “Of course our lab, I was waiting for you to have enough for that moderate lab you wanted. But I’ve also been saving up, we can get a better lab if we pool our money! Besides, both of us are mages, even if we research in different directions we can help each others. I know you don’t have a relationship with me only because of my dashing looks.”

Weira rolled her eyes, “The dashing looks really helped though.”

Qyra grinned and grabbed hold of her hand as they headed to the real estate manager. Weira went to the same woman who had gotten Jace his house and told her what she was looking for. The saleswoman blinked in surprise but quickly got over it and started looking into various lab opportunities.

“Do you wish to invest in a lab with a group or would you like a personal one?”

Weira frowned and scratched at her chin, “I was unaware that there were groups that invested in a lab, how would that work.”

The saleswoman nodded knowingly, “Building a proper lab is an expensive endeavor, a lot of enterprising young mages set their sights on magical science. When they cannot afford a lab of their own they make contracts with a group and split the costs. Each would then have access to a lab at a different time. Should the lab be damaged during one person’s time of usage the cost of fixing the equipment will fall on the person who caused the damage and not the group. Since I am aware of your position as the head of an adventurer team, you most likely will spend most of your day in the dungeon and only require access to the lab in the evening. Thus I felt mentioning the option might be of aid.”

Weira paused and glanced at Qyra, who shrugged and made a face that told Weira it was up to her. Weira thought for a while, making such a contract would make sense, and with three or four people pooling their money they would be able to make a high quality lab. It would expedite the research progress, and let her go further in depth. Things like a magicule meter or a mana wave reader were expensive. The higher the quality of the equipment the further she could take her research. She nodded to herself, “What people do you have that would be interested in building such a group lab.”