The boars charged, hooves churning the grass beneath them.

Daven knocked an arrow, but instead of facing the incoming threat, he turned to their left. “Vinelings!” He aimed at a clump of trees that seemed to spawn a trio of the little monsters. Their skittering was barely noticeable under the thumping of the boars. “I’ll take care of them!” the archer said.

Cedric nodded, looking around their surroundings with a small smile.

“Cedric,” Valerian boomed from behind them, “Switch!” And suddenly the paladin rushed past them while the crew leader fell back to the rear.

It took a second for Alex to understand. Smart. Cedric lost his weapon, and Valerian is a defensive type. It seemed a bit too showy to be truly needed given the situation and both their classes, but it would be a good way to teach teamwork to teach the hopefuls in the crew.

Diana went to her knees beside him. “Same as yesterday,” she said to Alex. “I’ll slow them down before we kill them.” Her hands sunk on the earth, and the ground ten paces in front of the crew turned into a thick muck.

Alex opened his mouth, intent on telling her that wouldn’t work. The boars might charge recklessly, but if they could jump over knee-height roots, they certainly wouldn’t stop at a particularly wet stretch of earth. But he didn’t have time to have a discussion about the particulars of the monster.

The boars were faster than you’d expect for a beast of their size, and quickly closed in on them, blaring out like demons. Instead of waiting to snipe the boars out once they reached Diana’s ill-conceived trap, he brought fire out in both his hands. He didn't form the flames into any particular trace, just flung out his arms and sent two streams of fire to either side of the muck pit at an angle, creating a tight funnel they had to go through to pass.

The wild boars snarled as the fire corralled them, but they were headstrong beasts. They clustered together in the center as he expected, and when they came just before the mud, they jumped. Leaping one after the other, the boars looked like a synchronized swimming team diving into a pool.

Letting up on the fire streams, Alex shaped two familiar traces in his hands, and soon twin fireballs flew from his hands. At the same time—and to his shock—Diana flexed her arms and a row of earthen spikes jutted out from the ground on the end of the muck pit, spear-like points ready to impale the descending monsters.

They never made it down onto them. The fireballs burst with a roar against the five wild boars in mid air, sending them sprawling to the sides.

The three closest to the blast turned into glass and dust immediately, while the other two landed on the ground with burn marks on their hairy flanks. Not only that, each of them had cauterized cut wounds all over the side of their bodies.

During his practice at the forest, Alex found that he had enough control to have the fire spinning around itself in the center of the sphere. The explosions weren’t potent enough to be used as grenades on their own, but the blades of fire inside of them added a good bit of damage to their result.

With the boars struggling to stand, Alex aimed a fire arrow at the boar closest to him and had it through its eye in two seconds flat. He quickly turned to the other, but a sharp blade of air cutting a slice out of the last boar’s neck dissuaded him from action. The beast gurgled out a final snort, blood spewing from his mouth, before it broke into black glass.

Adrenaline burned in Alex’s chest even after the threat was over. He could still hear that click-clacking sound further into the forest, though it seemed like only one now. He looked just in time to see one of Daven’s arrows take the vineling straight into its center mass.

Then the forest around them was silent again. The air was filled with the smell of burnt flesh. Dust floated up into the sky from various spots to their front and left. Through it all, Valerian had his shield in front of him in a solid, yet relaxed stance. Now, he seemed to shrug off his preparedness as if it was never there.

“Better,” Cedric said nonchalantly from behind them. “Better, but not good enough yet. You two were a bit selfish trying to dust them by yourselves.”

Wait. Alex ignored him and turned to glare at Diana. “You knew they’d jump your trap… you wanted me to wait it out so you could dust them.”

Diana crossed her arms. “You didn’t think I’d leave all the kills for someone else, did you?” She glared back. “And I didn’t hear you telling me of your plan either. You were going to dust them yourself.”

“That’s because you didn’t give me a chance to tell you anything. And besides, I wasn’t going to dust all of them,” Alex said, smirking now. “I did dust them all.”

“Not the last one,” she hissed.

“Yes, congrats on your consolation prize,” Alex said dryly.

“Enough, enough.” Cedric stepped in between the two of them. Daven was looking at them both, a smile twitching at his lips. “Daven, nice job spotting the vinelings and isolating them,” he told the archer. “And you two as well. You both had plans and used the terrain to your advantage. That’s good. Now all you need to do is come up with one plan instead of two. Be less wasteful.”

“What do you mean?” Diana asked, still scowling.

Cedric sighed. “Each of you would have gotten those five boars, yes. Great. But how long can you keep that up, huh? How many traces can you use before you’re too exhausted to create even a little gust of air or a spittle of fire?”

Diana frowned, turning to look away from the crew leader. But as she stood there, her eyes turned pensive. She did seem the type to reflect on her mistakes.

Thinking of Cedric’s question, Alex couldn’t help glancing at his status.

HP: 60/60

MP: 81.9/130

He tried to count it out quickly in his mind. Two for each of the fire arrows, and he knew from practice that the fireballs that had once cost him ten points each were down to eight now with his increased control of his powers. The most wasteful spell had been the streams of fire from his hands. With his regeneration at a hundredth of his total mana per minute, that made it fifteen points for each stream.

So quite a few more traces, he decided.

“A dungeon run, even for pruning, is only called a run,” Cedric continued. “In reality, it’s a grind—hours long—sometimes even days or weeks depending on the dungeon. A mage of both of your strengths can’t spam traces like that with no consequences.”

Days? Alex winced. There goes that thought, then. Unless they constantly stopped to let him recover some mana, he wouldn’t last too long. Not with using fire like he did just now.

“Well, how do we decide on a single plan, then? Or who gets the kill?” Diana asked. “Especially in the heat of the moment like that. It’s clear everyone here wants to elevate as much as possible.” She turned an accusing finger to her brother. “Daven thinks he’s clever too, but I know him better than he does himself. He only said he’d take the vinelings by himself so he could dust them himself.”

The archer opened his mouth wide in feigned outrage. “Why, sister dear, I take offense to that.” He put a hand to his heart. “I would never… ever…” Diana nearly growled at him, and Daven laughed.

Cedric ignored the theatrics. “You’ll have to do like every Chaser who doesn’t go solo. Share. Rotate who gets the kill every ten minutes or every monster you come across, or every group of monsters. Or whenever one of you is out of juice.” He shrugged. “Decide, and do it here and now too, so we don’t need to have this conversation after every monster we dust.” With his piece said, the crew leader walked off toward his spear.

“You two deal with whatever gets the most attention and I’ll take care of anything sneaking on the sides,” Daven said, and like Cedric went off to recover whichever arrows he could get.

When Alex looked, Diana was staring at him, arms crossed over her chest. “Well?”

Alex frowned, not answering at once. This was too great a chance to waste while having two second-rankers as a safety net. He needed to farm experience as much as possible, and that meant coming up with the best strategy.

Any minute-count for a rotation was the first off consideration. First, they didn’t have a clock. As pathetic as it was, Alex was going to need to adjust to the idea of a life without specific time-counting. The sun and the moon were all well and good, but they had their limits. Perhaps there were magical ways to accurately tell the time, but he doubted any of them had one of them in hand.

Second, he didn’t know if his mana could last five or ten minutes of consistent use, as he was always pausing to recover or to feel the pathways inside him during training. Nor did Alex want to end up having his turn of killing during a stretch of time where no monster showed up.

Another option would be rotating by the monster or by the group of monsters, but that would be too disruptive. So it would have to be either by a set number of kills or until the one doing the killing got too low on mana.

Unfortunately, he had no idea what Diana’s mana reserves looked like. No one had ever mentioned anything related to attributes, levels, health and mana. And Alex wouldn’t be the first to ask.

“How about we come up with a set number of monsters until we rotate?” he asked. “Say, five or ten?”

Diana narrowed her eyes, as if trying to unpeel his suggestion for anything that might disadvantage her. “Very well,” she said after a moment’s consideration. “We’ll switch every ten kills. And the one in reserve can always step in if needed.”

Alex nodded. “Sounds good to me.” Then he frowned when he realized he missed something. “Wait, what about Valerian and Cedric?”

“What about me?” Cedric asked, returning with his spear in hand.

“Dusting monster,” Valerian explained succinctly.

“Aren’t you trying to elevate as well?” Diana asked.

“Ah, you want to know why we aren’t claiming any kill time?” Cedric planted the woodend of his spear on the ground and leaned against it, seeming to consider his own question. “Hmm, how can I put this? I told you chasing is not an exact science before, right?” Diana nodded at him. “Well, I’m sure the mages at Runekast have come up with all sorts of calculations to figure it out, but as far as I know, the weaker a monster is compared to you, the less it will elevate you. To the point where killing the monsters here won’t do much at all for Valerian and I.”

Alex listened intently. Progressively harder to level up, then. That confirmed it, as even he who was only level three was having trouble. He didn’t level up after killing the sloth and four of the wild boars now, plus the vineling and the boar from the last time.

“Wait,” he said, turning to Cedric. “So why do you come to prune this dungeon at all?” He might not be overly suspicious about any foul play on the crew leader’s part, but he was still curious.

“The coin, of course.” The crew leader smirked. “And the company.”

Alex snorted, thinking back on the barmaid who so fervently defended Cedric’s honor. “Of course.”

xx

“Eight,” Alex called out, perhaps a bit louder than he needed to. Beside him, Daven covered a laugh with his fist.

“Will you shut up?” Diana snapped, just as the dead form of a Bushtail fell from its perch atop a thick bough, bleeding heavily from a gash on its chest.

[Bushtail lvl 2]

Alex would have liked to say that the first time he encountered one of the Bushtails he had rent the thing apart limb by limb with blades of fire. The monsters were like giant, bark-brown squirrels that cocooned themselves with their long bushy tails and rested upside down much like bats on the low branches of trees.

But reality was often disappointing. He had walked just under a Bushtail without noticing it, and the monster’s tail had flicked out like a frog’s tongue to wrap around his neck. It was as fluffy a tail as you would expect, until it wasn’t. The thing hardened like steel around his throat and pulled him up with a strength that a larger-than-normal squirrel shouldn’t have.

It had happened so fast he didn’t have the time to react with his magic. Only Cedric’s quick reflexes and sharper spear saved him. Diana had given him a hard time for the past half hour over not being able to deal with his rotation, since Cedric had gotten that kill, so he wasn’t in the mood to let her concentrate.

He rubbed at his bruised throat and shot a glare at Diana. “It’s not so fun when someone else does it to you, is it?”

She huffed and kept on walking after Cedric, who’d gained a few yards on them. Valerian walked nearly twenty feet behind them, trailing them the same way a monster would. He served like a rearward scout more than anything.

When Daven nudged him with his bow, Alex allowed himself the satisfaction of the small victory that this was and marched on after them. His first rotation had been mostly wild boars and vinelings, with a single Killer Sloth as the last kill. It hadn’t been enough for him to level up, but he was trying to stay positive. Soon it would be his turn again.

Soon.

xx

Cedric put a finger to his mouth. “Quiet now,” he whispered. He edged forward until he was hard against the broad trunk of an oak, then called them over.

Alex and the others shuffled forward, kneeling beside him. The crew leader pointed to the other end of the clearing they’d found, where a big anthill the size of a pick-up truck sat like a giant turd.

“That’s the vinelings’ nest. They roam out and create other smaller nests all over the first stage of the dungeon, but that’s their main spawn there.”

Alex’s eyes widened. Their spawn? He peeked over the side of the tree and, indeed, he could see the vinelings skittering all over the side of the dirt hill, click-clacking around like the creepy little wood-spiders they were.

Three, four… two just went in, that’s six. He eyed them hungrily. That was only outside. There must be dozens of them in there. Level one monsters or not, that was a lot of experience just sitting there in the open.

A smile spread across Alex’s face and he turned to face the crew. “Just who’s turn is it again, Diana?”

His fellow mage looked like she’d just swallowed a lemon. She had killed her tenth monster not two minutes ago. “Yours,” she spat, the words seeming to hurt her soul.

“Damn fucking right.”