“Yuki! Brace our passengers! Everyone else, MK Alpha on three!”

“Eric! What the fuck’s MK Alpha?”

Eric frowned at Jack as the pair of minotaurs that just turned into their corridor, their surprised bleats quickly turning to furious bellows as they raised their battleaxes high.

“Minotaur Killer, plan alpha! Seriously, we didn’t go over this?”

“No, Eric, we did not!” Jack shouted with growing anxiety as the ground shook with the pounding of massive cloven hooves racing toward them.

Eric sighed, rolling out his scroll.

“Hell Vines! Hell Vines! Inevitable Doom!”

The ground cracked with a sharp report as multiple trees covered in thick vines whipping about like octopedal limbs causing the charging minotaurs to jerk to a halt, glaring angrily at the trees as they lashed out with their axes.

“Alright, Emily. Time for that ice slick. Jack? Fire your badass javelins at will through the openings between the tree trunks. Even a shot to lance their thighs and shatter their knees is sweet, so long as we can keep than at bay for you to skill up by throwing as many javelins as you like.”

“On it!” Jack shouted, the air whistling with the crack and boom of magical javelins being thrown at supersonic speeds, kneecapping the closest minotaur who promptly fell right into the Hell Vines as dozens of flaming tendrils whipped about the surprised minotaurs flesh, the creature managing to choke out a single desperate bleat before thorny tendrils covered in liquid fire were rammed through it’s nostrils and down its throat. It continued to thrash for long moments before stiffening and curling up in a fetal position as the hallway began filling up with thick black smoke.

“Roboro ventus attentio,” Eric whispered over a handful of seconds, and the thick black smoke of charred flesh causing Eric’s party to cough and wipe their stinging eyes was replaced by a fresh breeze sending the thick black smoke the way of the remaining pair of minotaurs that were even now backing away, their bovine faces an almost comical mixture of confusion and fear.

“Glacius Murius! Glacius Murius!” Emily quickly cried out, and the look of surprise on the minotaurs’ faces when they found themselves backing into a double-thick wall of ice had Yuki cracking up.

“Too bad, motherfuckers. Now it’s YOU who won’t be getting away!”

The pair of minotaurs bleated, snarling at Yuki and the others before turning around to frantically chop at the ice wall, to no avail.

“Obsian Flamma!”

“Pilum strike, motherfuckers!”

The air rang with the boys calling out their attacks Sayun-style as Eric smirked and unleashed fire-tipped arrow after fire-tipped arrow, and within a handful of seconds the minotaurs were crashing to the ground, hearts pierced, skulls blasted open, impaled by multiple arrows covered in eternal flame.

Your party has successfully slain 3 minotaurs!

Experience earned!

Coordination bonus of 15% given!

Yuki’s eyes widened. “Well fuck, I actually earned experience, even though I didn’t do anything more than taunt one.”

Emily cheered, cheeks flushed with joy, eyes sparkling with fierce satisfaction. “We fucking did it! And my double thick ice wall actually worked! Now it wasn’t us huddling in fear, but those assholes trying to escape!”

Steve grinned. “And damn does it feel good disintegrating those asshole’s oversized skulls.”

“As long as you don’t disintegrate yourself while doing so,” Yuki said with a cautionary grin.

Steve laughed like a madman. “Damn right! So I’ll let you guess the perk I picked after busting my ass toward it for the last ten levels!”

Yuki’s eyes widened. “You mean it popped up?”

“You better believe it did! After we took out that sub-chief in back in that tower-defense nightmare, an option to cut all costs by a full 50% popped up, and you’d damn well better believe I took it.”

“Jack, congratulations,” whispered none other than Richard, finally open his eyes with a wan smile.

“Rich, you’re awake!” Emily sobbed, wrapping him up in her arms and sobbing her heart out. He gave her warm smile and awkwardly patted her back.

“It’s alright, Emily. I’m okay.” He flashed Eric a sheepish smile. “I’m glad to see you’re still with us.”

Eric grinned. “Well of course! Do you know how boring it is wandering endless tunnels with just your own spiraling thoughts for company? No thanks. I don’t even have my bunny anymore, so I’d far rather do this one with friends.”

Yuki’s ears perked at that. “You have a pet bunny?”

Eric’s warm smile faded. “I did. And she was much more to me than just a bunny. And I’ll let you guess what happened to her after my Freetown ‘negotiation.’”

Yuki winced. “Shit. They even killed your pet? Those guys really are grade-A bastards.” She flashed her friends an apologetic smile. “Present company’s kin excepted, of course.”

Emily smirked. “No need. I know what my father is like as well as anyone.”

Richard looked a bit uncomfortable, quick to change the topic as he gingerly got back to his feet, stretched, and flashed the first genuine smile Eric had seen since he had met the man. “Honestly, guys, it’s a fucking miracle I’m even upright. That last fight was too damned close.”

He turned to Eric, saying so much with his gaze as he solemnly held out his hand. “It’s an honor to have you fighting by our side.”

Of course that was the moment a groaning Ron woke up, reading the situation in a heartbeat, glaring daggers Eric’s way.

Eric happily ignored the man utterly, taking Rich’s hand. “Likewise, Rich. Happy to help.”

“Until it’s time for you to take us all out,” Ron hissed, suppressing a groan as he stumbled back to his own feet. He gave Emily a look of heartfelt concern so at odds with his otherwise assholish personality. “Are you alright, my lady?”

Emily gave him a strained smile. “Yes, Ron, I am. How are you feeling.”

The man chuckled softly. “I’ve certainly been better, but the important thing is that your still in once piece.”

Emily’s smile stiffened. “That’s thanks to Eric, Ron.”

The man’s smile wilted.

“Ron, you need to respect that.” Her gaze hardened. “It’s only because of his contraption that we were able to keep you still during movement, so you could enjoy a complete System reset.”

Ron paled. “Just how badly was I hurt?”

Jack snorted, shrugging his shoulders. “Who the fuck knows? You might have a Vitality of a fucking hundred, but I know you’re pushing fifty years if you’re a day, and you didn’t get a fresh 18 reset. So maybe the minotaur’s sonic shout caused some sort of brain aneurysm?”

Ron visibly paled, violently shaking his head. “No. There’s no way I could be that weak. No way I’d let myself fail you all so badly.”

Emily patted his shoulder. “You’ve failed nothing, Ron. I’d trust you with my life. You know that.” She gently scolded him with a finger to his unresisting brow. “Which is why I need you to trust Eric, no matter what issues my parents has with his. That has absolutely nothing to do with us. Do you understand, Ron?”

The older man furrowed his brow in clear silent protest.

Emily’s smile turned to a focused stare. “You do serve me, don’t you, Ron? Not my father. Me.”

“I… yes, my lady. In all things.”

Emily flashed a dimpled smile. “Wonderful! I’m so glad to hear it. So you’ll try to get along with my friend Eric, won’t you, Ron?”

Ron stiffened, glaring at Eric for long moments before finally bowing his head. “I will strive for greater… courtesy when addressing him. This I promise to do to the best of my ability.”

Emily beamed. “Thank you, Ron. That’s exactly what I wanted to hear.”

He then glared at the obstacle ahead. “I see we’ve run into an underground grove of fiery vines? They look extremely dangerous. They’re writhing like sentient animals. I suggest we backtrack immediately.”

He looked surprised at the smirks this earned him.

“Good to have you back in the thick of it, Ron! And sure, fleeing’s definitely one way to handle it, or… you know, Eric could just cancel the spell?” Steve said with a twinkle in his eye.

Ron’s glare was replaced with a lurch and a hissed curse when the massive knots of whipping vines covered in thorns and flame vanished as if they had never been, as did the breeze, just seconds later.

“How the hell did he do that?” Ron glared accusingly Eric’s way. “I thought he was just an archer.”

Eric tried to control the surprise in his expression, though Yuki’s smirk made it clear he hadn’t completely succeeded.

Had Ron forgotten about the System Interface message that had pinged all of them, admittedly in the middle of combat, several battles ago, before he had been rendered unconscious?

Perhaps any suspicions had been knocked right out of him, and they were all lucky as hell that System resets also prevented long term damage from concussions, a definite hazard of their job, or strokes and similar hazards that perhaps older adventurers lacking five or more meridians that could form a balanced configuration had to watch out for, as they were denied any sort of System reset upon becoming a Classer. Or maybe that was all bullshit, Classers really did stop aging entirely, Vitality was the only definitive marker of health and youth, and apparent age was just lower starting Physical stats and a few cosmetic skin wrinkles? Eric had heard too many conflicting theories to know for sure.

All he knew was that the uncertain look in Ron’s eyes, free of the wild hostility of an hour ago, gave him sudden cause for hope.

Assuming Ron’s confusion was genuine, and that Eric’s perks would pick up on something as subtle as the man playing clueless, just hoping to get out of this dungeon without Eric taking out a perceived threat.

Eric grinned at Steve’s nod, pulling up his scroll of flesh and bone.

“He stumbled upon a powerful eldritch artifact, much like my Black Book,” Steve explained. “Or maybe it’s a prop and he’s both archer and mage. Who knows. Who the fuck cares? What matters is that we’re alive, and those minotaur fucks are not.”

A dozen emotions flickered across the man’s rough features before he sighed and shook his head. “Fine. If this asshole can actually pull his weight and doesn’t fuck us over… then why the fuck do I care about his past bullshit?”

Jack hooted. “That’s the spirit, bro!”

Emily gave Ron a heartfelt smile. “It’s good to hear you say that, Ron.”

Ron smirked, dipping his head, before giving Eric a measuring look. “So long as he doesn’t stab us in the back before we’re finally out of here.”

Eric smiled, grateful that Ron was finally breaking free of his instinctive prejudice against him. Ron clearly didn’t trust him, but at least now seemed willing to give him a chance. And for the sake of the party, that was good enough for Eric.

“Awesome! Well then, Ron, I’ll do my best not to let anyone down. Shall we?”

Richard chuckled. “Indeed we shall.” He gave Eric a measured nod. “Thanks for pulling us out of the hotbox. Anything I should know about our group tactics?”

Yuki gave Eric a concerned look, but he smiled, happy to let Richard take the lead. He wasn’t trying to make a power play, after all, merely make some new friends and open them all up to a world of possibilities.

“We sure do! We’re calling it MK Alpha.”

“We agreed to no such thing,” Emily huffed.

Richard quirked an eyebrow. “Really.”

Eric grinned. Really! Short for Minotaur Killer. I throw out fiery twenty foot tall whipping knots of fiery vines, Emily coats the ground beyond the vines in multiple slicks of ice which we found out do stack quite nicely for synergistic bonuses that not even the minotaurs can crack through without wasting lots of time, and the whole time they’re trying not to slip right into the vines they’re desperate to hack down before they get strangled with fiery rippy thorny tendrils tearing out their throats and searing their lungs, our boys Jack Savage and Doc Steve-O are tap dancing love notes with artillery javelins and great big balls of you’re-completely-fucked!”

Richard crossed his arms Eric’s description waxed poetic. “Enough!” he chuckled, eyes twinkling. “I think I get the picture. And really, it’s an effective use of overlapping defenses when you lack proper tanks.” He gave a thoughtful nod. “Actually I see no reason why we can’t continue doing just that, so long as you have the arcane reserves to keep pulling it off,” he said, with a nod toward Eric’s prop.

Eric smiled as he took a quick look at his potency pools, seeing that he still had over 2000 Spiritual Energy and his Mana Pool had already ticked back to full. But considering that each set of Hell Vines tapped him for 140 of both Mana and Qi, and Inevitable Doom, which made all Fire, Wood and Wind attacks hit so much harder, allowing Steve’s spells and even the shafts of Jack’s javelins to hit to devastating effect, he was spewing about 400 points in both pools with each triple casting.

“I can pull off another four chants before I’m completely tapped. Those vines definitely take it out of me.”

Rich nodded. “Fair enough. So let’s do this. When we encounter one or two, we’ll do it the way we’ve always done it before as a team, and we’ll keep Eric’s MK Alpha strategy in mind for when things get serious.”

Eric and the others nodded. “Sounds good. I’ll use my bow then, unless you say otherwise.”

Richard nodded. He turned to Yuki. “How’s are favorite dungeoneer feeling?”

Yuki lowered her gaze, as if genuinely ashamed. “I’m sorry, Rich. Ever since the connection between ourselves and our corp-mates outside was severed… I’ve got nothing.” She glared at her own clenched fists. “A gift I worked so hard to nurture, when we had nothing but white-tier crap others have run a hundred times before, and now when it really counts? All it took was a single gnoll asshole shattering my connection to Terra to completely fuck me over.”

Everyone grew silent.

Rich nodded, patting her shoulder. “It’s okay, Yuki. Next time we’ll do it right. We won’t tease fate for weeks on end, stretching the absolute limits of this delve. With our next run, your gifts will shine like the sun. I just know it.” He then turned to Eric. “I don’t suppose you have any idea how to get out of here?”

Eric winced. “Look, direction sense isn’t one of those things that comes naturally to everyone. Alright?”

“Sure.”

“And we’re in a maze! I can rock it up topside, because interface maps are a sweet cheat.”

Rich blinked at that. “Seriously? You have access to Contender maps?”

“Aaanyway, those maps don’t do shit down here, so...” Eric shrugged. “Yeah. We’re just walking.”

“But you’re leaving a string behind. Right?” Rich frowned, looking behind him. “I don’t see any string.”

Jack solemnly shook his head. “No string, I’m afraid, bossman.”

“Alright, that’s fine. Markings then?

The group stared.

And before long, everyone was looking at Eric.

He shrugged. Then he tried whistling.

He wasn’t very good at it.

“Come on, guys. Seriously. I don’t do mazes, or politics. I just kill things, grab crunchy titles, and savor those sweet, sweet power-ups.”

Richard sighed. “Alright. Well, from this point on, it’s markings all the way. We’ll leave markings and arrow signs midway down each corridor and at all the intersections. Maybe we can devise some sort of code sign to go with it.”

Steve grinned. “Good idea, boss-man!”

Richard gave a satisfied nod, made the first markings with the chalk that of course he had on him, and in very short order, he was explaining maze exploration based on Markov chains and probability models that, after ten absolutely excruciating minutes, made Eric want to smash something.

He gave a sigh of relief when they were finally moving once more.

Yuki grinned. “He was a model student, already in his third year studying financial analysis and higher mathematics when most of us were fucking around in our senior year.”

Eric nodded. “Yup. I totally get that vibe.”

“He’s very good at piecing together tactical models based on limited info.”

“No doubt.”

“He’s a good leader, Eric.”

Eric grinned at a frowning Yuki. “I’m sure he is.”

“He just tends to go on tangents,” she said, gazing up at the arched ceiling, high above.

“Yes he does,” Eric said with a twinkle in his eye. “And that’s fine.”

“You were just leading us in circles.”

“Actually, my infravision’s so acute that I’ll be able to sense the heat signatures of our passing long after we left, if we ended up getting turned around.”

Yuki gave him a look. “You’re just covering for the fact that you forgot to leave any sort of marking at all.”

“True.”

“You’re really good at killing things, though.”

“Thank you,” Eric said, pulling out his bow.

Yuki’s eyes widened, then her voice turned to a shout for all to hear. “I hear something ahead!”

Eric of course was already pulling the string back and infusing it with as much power as the limbs could take, waiting for the emergence of the roaring, lumbering creature they could now all hear approaching the bend around the latest intersection just up ahead.