Like a Dungeon Crawler (Yakuza/Danmachi, Celestial Grimoire)

[Ebiris]

Now that you said you hope he doesn't roll any Naruto knowledge he's going to roll the Uchiha library of jutsu and stolen cookie recipes within like 4 chapters or something. I think there are a couple of rolls that give you access to substantial amounts of knowledge from previous jumps like that. Not sure but there might be one that basically turns you into Index from Toaru for whatever worlds you've been to.

Click to shrink...

I haven't had that one come up, but there was a Bleach one that gave you tons of practice and experience with all your other skills which he didn't have the budget for when it got rolled, so yeah lots of stuff like that certainly exists.

 

[Roroman]

Thanks for the chapter, unique exploration of perks in stories are always appreciated.

 

[The Dude]

He wondered if he was laying that part on too thick. She might wind up never using it, be like when you beat the last boss in a game with a bunch of elixirs that you were saving 'until you really needed them'.

Click to shrink...

Nazza needs to use it to one-shot Winky The One Eyed Wonder-Wyrm, at this point. Either that or killing the Dungeon itself. Any other use would be a letdown.

 

[Ebiris]

It was getting dark now, but Orario had street-lights like any modern city, so he and Naaza could see just fine as they headed towards the north of the city. "So what's this Braver guy like?" he asked, figuring Naaza would know.

"You met him last yesterday," she reminded him. "The Loki familia captain, Finn Dieme? The blond pallum?"

"Oh shit, that's what they're called?" he blurted out, causing Naaza to look at him in surprise. He gestured up at his head embarrassedly and elaborated, "I've just been calling them halflings in my head."

"Don't call them that!" Naaza exclaimed in the sort of tone that suggested he'd just committed a heinous faux pas and she was now embarrassed to be seen with him.

"Well I won't now!" he said, feeling similarly awful about the whole business. Then, with the reluctance of ripping off a band-aid, he asked, "What about dog-person?"

"That one's okay," she allowed, simmering down, "But the proper word is chienthrope."

"Huh," he grunted, doing his best to try and remember the weird sounding word. "What about cat-person?"

She shrugged. "They're just cat-people."

That seemed needlessly complicated, why wouldn't cats and dogs have the same kind of style of name? "What about the other animal typed people?"

Naaza raised her gloved hand and started to tick off on her fingers as she named them, swapping over to her bare hand as the list went on. "Chienthrope, werewolf, renard, weretiger, cat-person, hume-bunny, boaz, bull, sheep, raccoon."

"That sounds really inconsistent!" he complained. So if he called Anna a sheep she'd have been fine with it? It wouldn't have been weird? "How do you tell the difference between a chienthrope and a werewolf anyway?"

She raised her hands up above her head with her fingers pointed upwards, "Werewolves have those ears?"

"Pointy ears? Like cat ears? Don't some dogs have ears like that too?" he asked, trying his best to actually nail down the differences now he was getting an explanation.

At that Naaza turned and gestured at her fluffy brown tail, "Cat-people have those skinny tails. As for chienthropes with those kinds of ears… it's like how some human women have darker skin but aren't amazons. No one will get mad at you for making a mistake like that."

He felt like was both a wiser and more understanding person as a result of Naaza's lecture and he nodded appreciatively to her for giving it. "Thanks, I could've just blundered into saying something really stupid without meaning to."

"It's okay. I'm here to protect you from your own stupidity as much as monsters in the Dungeon, it's my burden to bear," Naaza gave him a smile worthy of a saint as they made their way to the Twilight Manor.

Fortunately the only thing it had in common with Ganesha's place was being well lit up, otherwise looking like a fantasy European palace, a huge central building surrounded by cone-topped towers.

Since basically everyone in town now knew Ichiban's face, and the adventurers specifically were enjoying the new skill he'd given them, they got let in without any trouble. The inside as nice as the outside, he wouldn't say palatial, there weren't gaudy diamond chandeliers everywhere or anything like that, but it was definitely a rich family's home like he'd seen with Ganesha.

He and Naaza were taken to a fairly open lounge to sit and wait while other Loki familia members were hanging around and no doubt repressing their curiosity, but they didn't have a chance to ask any questions that were on their mind before Finn showed up, accompanied by the same dwarf who provided that earth destruction spell he'd used this morning and an amazon (despite Naaza's earlier words about dark-skinned humans, Ichiban still felt confident in saying amazon purely because of how little she was wearing).

"Ichiban, and Naaza, welcome to the Twilight Manor," Finn greeted them both easily, "Have you reconsidered our goddess's offer of hospitality after experiencing Lord Ganesha's last night?" he asked with a trace of amusement in his voice.

"Haha, no not that, they were fine," Ichiban shook his head, "I was talking to one of the guys at the Colosseum earlier though, and he said you were the guy in charge of the operation against Evilus. I wanted to get involved, lend a hand myself."

"I see," Finn took a seat on the sofa opposite him and Naaza, while his companions remained standing, "I heard from Shakti about what happened this morning… Valletta was always a lot of trouble back in the dark period, personally I'd hoped she'd died back then, but I'm glad it's been confirmed now. We won't turn down your help, so to start with I'll tell you where things stand.

"Last night members of our familia along with the Freya and Ganesha familias attacked the artificial dungeon Knossos under Daedalus Street. The interior is a maze, with gates of orichalcum that are impossible to breach, which opened and closed under someone's control to split up our scouting parties. There we were attacked by a combination of tamed monsters and Evilus members. At some point Ottar of the Freya familia made it down to the second floor, where I assume Evilus panicked and activated a catastrophic defence by collapsing the first floor onto the second." Finn shook his head ruefully, a look of mixed admiration and envy as he told Ichiban what he'd heard earlier, "Ottar was able to punch through from below, although the forces on the first floor took heavy casualties from the collapse on their side. As things stand now, the upper levels of Knossos are a ruin of rubble and precious metals used in its construction. It'd be a scavenger's paradise, but it's blocking the way further down.

"We know however that there are other entrances. Valletta used one for her attack this morning, and furthermore she had a key to allow opening of those orichalcum doors that Shakti was able to retrieve. Right now we're searching Daedalus Street and the sewers to locate those other entrances, while the Hermes familia works to create copies of that key which we can use in our next assault. It'll likely be a few days before we can attack again, Andromeda said copying the key is going to be difficult and require some rare drop items which we're having to gather for her. Given your talents, I think you'd be most help searching for those other entrances if you're willing to lend a hand."

That was a lot to take in, but it put into context all the magic stuff he'd felt last night. "Okay, so you need help finding other entrances? I should be able to help with that. You got a map of the place with the ones already found?"

Finn looked embarrassed as he answered, "We don't really have any good maps of Daedalus Street, the place was practically built to be a maze. If you talk to Riveria down there she should have the most current one we're working with. She's overseeing the search tonight from our familia."

Orin would be so jealous if he knew Ichiban was making these kinds of connections.

"Alright, we'll head down there and start having a look, see what we can turn up. Thanks for letting me know what's all going on, it's kind of stressful just thinking about what these guys could be doing, so I want to help out and get involved," Ichiban said, getting up, while Finn did the same.

"I should be thanking you, just handing out this chakra skill is going to make a huge difference for everyone. We're all very excited by it, but dealing with Evilus comes first so we'll appreciate your help with that too," he stuck out his hand, which Ichiban took. Despite his hand enveloping Finn's, he didn't doubt the little pallum could do far worse than Mord did with their first handshake, but he kept it restrained and soon he and Naaza were on their way.

"It'll be harder to search at night, although if we end up in the sewers it won't make any difference," she said philosophically as the started heading down the main road towards the other end of Orario where the Entertainment District was.

"Yeah well, I've got a few advantages, like can ask animals to help look for us," he told her with a grin. "Just wish there was something to make getting around easier. Orario's a lot smaller than Tokyo, but I still miss being able to take a cab to get around places quicker."

This led to a brief digression on taxis and the availability of horse-drawn carriages in Orario, though ultimately it didn't even last as long as it took them to reach Babel, far less the Entertainment District.

The gate guarded by women with little in the way of clothes but much in the way of weapons had been livened up since the time he came here with Mord and friends with the introduction of some big wooden signposts that were absolutely covered in a collage of photos depicting nearly naked girls with their names written underneath in sparkly letters.

Of course just like at Twilight Manor, now Ichiban was recognised and welcomed wherever he went, and here was no different. "Hi Ichiban!" a pony-tailed girl carrying a spear giggled coquettishly at him. "Come to enjoy a night of pleasure? You won't have to pay a valis anywhere inside!"

He could feel Naaza's eyes rolling even without having to look at her. "Actually it's not that, I was looking for Rina, you think someone could get her for me?" He still felt a little bit nervous about stepping in here, though he doubted he'd be subjected to a forceful recruitment effort at this point, it would still be… distracting, especially given how grateful the amazons seemed to be.

"Hmm? Harmothoe? I think she's taking the night off, all the upper ranks were busy with special training today, but I bet she'd make an exception for you!" the girl grinned before turning to her colleague and asking her to go fetch Rina for them.

While they were waiting, Ichiban looked at the notice-board of pictures, and despite herself Naaza did as well. "They're very life-like," she admitted.

"Aren't they the best?" the guard enthused, "Look, there's me!" she pointed up in the corner where indeed that pretty pony-tailed visage was seen, showing off a hand bra rather than the gossamer thing she was currently wearing across her chest in real life. The sparkly letters underneath identified her as Pio, assuming he was reading the not-quite-English letters correctly. "I never thought I'd get a painting taken, but these pictures are so quick and easy! I've actually got some spicier ones too, but we don't want to see people getting too excited just at the gate here, we've got to ease them in!"

"Yes, these are quite restrained," Naaza agreed with a slow nod, her voice bereft of sarcasm.

"Looking good there, Pio!" he agreed just to be nice, only for her and Naaza to both give him funny looks.

"Uh, it's Rio," the amazon said in a confused tone.

"That's an R?!"

There was some confusion involving Rio defending her penmanship before Naaza cut to the heart of it. "Ichiban, can you read?"

"I can read!" he insisted defensively. "Just… not this language. It looks a bit like one from home but all jumbled, and I don't really know that one either."

This led to the now relieved Rio and a patient Naaza using the names written around to help teach him letters, which absolutely was not the intended purpose of this amazon signboard of thirst snaps. Still, it helped ease some of Ichiban's unfamiliarity with writing around here, and he was pretty sure he could at least muddle through understanding signs if he saw them from now on.

It was to this scene that Rina joined them, holding herself up well to hide it but showing her fatigue in her slow cadence as she spoke, "Hey Ichiban, Naaza. What's up?" she asked, walking over to look at the pictures and inevitably pointing to one showing a perkier looking version of herself on all fours and showing a smoky look along with a lot of cleavage, "Look, there's me!"

He looked, and indeed he could now properly read the name Rina written below. "Looking good, at least in the picture. You had a hard day?" he cast his eyes over the more wrung out looking real life amazon.

"Oh yeah, spent all day kicking ass and getting my ass kicked with the other berbera. What better way to figure out chakra than under stress, right?" she answered, Rio nodding along to back up this innate wisdom.

He wasn't so sure, but at least it was good everyone was trying different methods. "Here, lemme help you out then," he summoned his wand with a flick of the wrist, letting it run through the spell-casting by itself before the glow of Dia Fratel surrounded them.

"Ohhhh… forget everything else, just having that spell on tap is amazing," she moaned, her voice regaining its vitality as she stretched with her butt pushed out and her fingers laced above her head, a satisfying pop sounding from her arched spine. "Mmmn!" easing back from her stretch and bouncing on her feet, she smiled more naturally and asked, "So, what did you need me for?"

"I'm helping out with trying to find all the entrances into Evilus's base, they've got this second dungeon underneath Daedalus Street," he explained. "Naaza's coming along too, and I figured we could make it the full team, just like in the Dungeon."

"Aww, that's sweet," she smiled widely. "You know you could get basically anyone to party up with you now, it's really nice you thought of me!"

"Haha, well you know, I've seen how scary you can be," he said with an embarrassed laugh, "But we did make a good team, so why stop?"

"Glad you see it that way! Lets go then," Rina said, cheerfully setting off while Rio's fellow guard scooted into place so she could stand in the Dia Fratel's area of effect while it was still there.

"So did you figure out anything with chakra techniques today?" he asked as the trio set off through the night-time streets of Orario. "When I was with the Ganesha familia we figured out some stuff with hand signs." Under no circumstances use the term 'finger stuff' around Rina, "And Naaza was doing pressure point stuff with Miach. And I heard Takemikazuchi's familia was figuring out martial arts techniques with it?"

"Mostly the last thing with us," Rina nodded. "Learning under pressure, throwing punches with all that extra power, and using it to block and dodge, moving around faster, that kind of thing. It really tires you out, but for a little while I can fight like a level four."

"That's going to make a big difference to how deep people can go in the Dungeon, so long as they can manage their stamina. We should be able to get a lot more ingredients that are hard to come by," Naaza said with a contented smile on her face. "And stamina restoring potions are going be a lot more valuable too. I'll have to start making more of them as well." She gave Ichiban an approving look and he thought about that barrel of magic water he sees her fill up from his water bottle every time he visits her store. Yeah. Her and Miach should do alright out of this.

"I haven't even really had a chance to practice my own chakra much, back when Evilus attacked me this morning I was just using spells."

Rina was surprised to hear of the attack, which necessitated filling her in on the events surrounding Valletta Grede's attack with tamed monsters. She was appropriately impressed at his ability to even contribute to a battle involving level five adventurers.

"A boosted Yankimaru sounds pretty cool. Do you think you could cast that spell on me?" she asked, batting her eyelashes at him.

He remembered seeing her tearing apart those rock-men he'd sent to distract her. They might always say fear isn't the same as respect, but… "Uh, yeah. I probably could," he agreed nervously, causing Rina to let out a girlish cheer and hug him. Thankfully without exercising the same muscle that motivated his respect.

Reaching Daedalus Street, he recognised it as the same area he'd skirted around the other day, where the odd alleyway or door gave him bad feelings. Were those entrances to Knossos, or places where Evilus members were hanging out? It was darker here than the rest of Orario, the street-lights that lined the main roads absent, the windows of most buildings darkened. The atmosphere was still gloomy and oppressive, even with the adventurers they saw patrolling around the streets and keeping lookout from rooftops.

They recognised and welcomed Ichiban of course, and it wasn't hard to be led to a building that the allied familias were using as their command post. Riveria was there, standing over a map spread out over a table, a few other adventurers around though other than Alchat who he'd met back with the minotaurs on the tenth floor, he only passingly recognised them from handing out chakra.

"Yo. Heard this was the place to get in on hunting down ways into Evilus's dungeon," he said, waving in greeting to everyone.

"Welcome, Ichiban. That's right, we haven't been formally introduced but I'm Riveria Ljos Alf, vice captain of the Loki familia," the green-haired elf answered, nodding to him.

As pleasant and welcoming as Riveria was, he could feel the burning eyes of another elf glaring at him from the corner and wondered if there was some offence being taken at the lack of a formal introduction before now. Why were they so protective around this woman? It was like dealing with a celebrity and her rabid fanbase back home.

"Nice to meet you," he gave her a smile and a bow, doing his best to brush off any mean looks as he came closer where he could see the map. It was a lot more complicated looking than the maps Rose had shown him of Dungeon floors before, but he could see stars drawn in three locations which he pointed to, "Those the entrances we know about?"

"Yes, this is the one we learned about first, from the people who tried to disrupt things yesterday," Riveria answered delicately, pointing to one of them, "It's in the basement of a warehouse no one has ownership records for. The other two are both in the sewers, accessed by obscured tunnels. One was used in the retreat last night, the other we found earlier today, which we think was used by Valletta Grede in her attack on you and the Ganesha familia. Thank you for that, by the way," she smiled a similar looking smile to one he'd seen on Shakti earlier.

"Hah, if you thank anyone it should be Anna, but yeah, seems like everyone's glad she's gone," Ichiban said, a bit conflicted over killing a woman, but really considering what she must have done with Evilus, and considering how many top level adventurers around here were women, he didn't think it was worth feeling bothered by.

"I'll thank her too next time I see her," Riveria agreed politely, "But if you wish to help find other entrances to Knossos you're welcome to join the search. We're keeping a presence here as much to watch out for uprisings from Evilus as to look for ways in, but we think the collapse of the upper floors makes as much a barrier for them as for us. It's been quiet since this morning."

"Got it," he studied the map, trying to commit it to memory so he could translate it to understanding the layout of the actual streets.

Thankfully Naaza helped him out by pointing to a spot and saying, "This is where we are now."

He wondered if she was only being so considerate because she knew he was illiterate now, but he'd take it. "Okay, lets get started. We'll come back here and let you know if we find anything," he smiled at Riveria and her over-protective elf friend before they headed back out and down to street level. "What is with her fanclub? They acted all pissy when I was giving her chakra yesterday too," he complained to his companions.

"She's a princess and a celebrity," Naaza said blandly. "Elves were actually rare in Orario before she came here, so you can thank her for that too."

"No shit?" that was kind of weird to think about, you'd assume in this kind of fantasy setting things would be kind of constant. They'd been sitting on the Dungeon for a thousand years after all.

Spoiler: Remorseless

Free – Remorseless
Final Fantasy IX
You are the star and for whom the spotlight shines. Your confidence in your role is absolute, and your resolution to put yourself forward is an undeniable force. Concepts of morality are for those who have to consider the feelings and stance of others, insignificant to you. Concepts of morale, even more laughable when nothing can faze you save for your own choices.

Those insignificant masses should pray they do not attempt to subject you to silly mind control spells as they are want to do – or they'll see the attempt bounce right back at them, mentally wounding them.

"You should have went in for a hug, see what happens," Rina said playful lilt in her voice, "So what's your plan here? We going to wander around, you got another trick up your sleeve to make this easier?"

"Actually I do," he grinned at her, "I had a bad feeling about some places last time I came by this neighbourhood, so we can check them out and see if they lead towards Knossos." With that he started leading them around to try and find any of the spots he recalled getting nervous about before. Although with the unfriendly layout of Daedalus Street and the pervasive darkness it actually proved something of a struggle, and they must have been wandering close to half an hour when Ichiban pointed at a door set in underneath a staircase that previously seemed to be waiting to bite down on him but now seemed innocuous. Still, he was sure of the location, "There, this one," he pointed at it.

Wouldn't this be breaking and entering if it was someone's home? Well, they'd deal with that if they had to, dealing with Evilus was more important. He tried the door of course, its boards of chipped paint resting unevenly in the frame. It jostled but didn't open, a deadbolt securing it on the other side.

One that crunched and fell off the frame to land on the floor with a metallic sound and a subsequent scrape when Rina reached past him to give the door a shove, pushing it open and sending that now broken lock falling down the steps that descended into the darkness below.

She looked unapologetic, simply saying, "Give us a light?" before she slid past Ichiban to walk down the steps into a basement store-room, illuminated by Ichiban's heroic light as he less than heroically followed the amazon downstairs with Naaza bringing up the rear.

There were wicker baskets, filled with what looked like old sheets when he looked inside one, dusty and clearly left here for some time. A crate filled with rusted woodworking tools made Ichiban pull away before he caught tetanus from looking at it, while a strange device on a stool by the stairs was identified by Rina as a magic stone lantern.

The rolled up and dusty looking rug leaning against the wall didn't look very inviting, but Naaza pulled it aside all the same to reveal a hole with a ladder going deeper, seeming to have been chiselled out unevenly from the stone.

"The door was locked so you could only open it from the inside, so this has to lead somewhere," Naaza pointed out, climbing down the ladder first before Ichiban followed.

"Are you looking at my butt, Ichiban?" Rina called as she followed him down the ladder.

"No, what the hell?!" he blurted out, resisting the momentary urge to look that came with her suggesting the possibility.

"Well you should, it's great," she told him before Naaza called up to interrupt their banter.

"I think we've found it, you're going to have to jump the rest of the way though." There was a sound of impact before Ichiban looked down rather than up, seeing that the ladder ended with the brickwork crumbling apart, a rather intimidating gap into open space where hole they were climbing down opened into a ruined tunnel, Naaza standing below on an uneven slab of jagged masonry.

He'd picked up some pretty good parkour skills to go with all those stealth tricks he'd gotten earlier in the day, but still just to be safe be created a force-field platform underneath which he dropped onto, telling Rina who surely wouldn't need it if Naaza could make that jump but it would've felt weird to use it himself and not let her benefit.

"Little ladder humour, always got to take advantage of these moments," she'd said as she hopped down to join him and then the two of them jumped the rest of the way to join Naaza. They found themselves in a tunnel of dark grey brickwork and exposed rough looking metal, uneven jagged slabs of both making up the floor that stretched off into the darkness past where his light could reach in one direction, while in the other it led to a door which was hanging to the remaining upper brickwork, a wide gap underneath it where the floor had simply fallen out underneath to create the mess they were now standing on.

He also got a feeling it was looking at him, and as he peered up he was able to make out a creepy stone gargoyle thing carved above the door, which radiated the same sort of energy as many magic stone powered devices he'd seen around Orario. It gave off an intense feeling of being watched and he pointed up at it, "I think that's a camera or something."

"What, like the one we've got?" Rina turned to look up at it in surprise.

Oh, right. "Uh, not exactly. More like… uh, one that can see what you're doing as you're doing it," he said, wondering how to best explain the different types of cameras that can exist.

Luckily he needn't have worried as the strange reference pool of Orario natives had him covered. "Oh, like a god's viewing mirror? That must be how the controllers of Knossos were able to monitor everyone last night and trap them with doors until Ottar started breaking walls and they collapsed the floor."

"Imagine hearing all this tumbling down under your feet last night, I'm surprised we didn't notice all the way over in the Entertainment District," Rina said, poking her toe at some of the exposed metal underneath shattered bricks. "Hey, is this adamantite?" she squatted down to look closer and then cast her gaze around, wide-eyed. "No way, they built all this out of adamantite? Where did they even get this much?"

Spoiler: Shaped Like a Fortress: Unreadable

100- Shaped Like a Fortress: Unreadable
Avesta of Black and White
There is something about your thought pattern that makes it really hard for others to get a read on you, and even those who could peer into your thoughts cannot get a good grasp of you. It may be how well-ordered your mind is, not allowing any unwanted thought to pass through, or how used you are to lies that you can even lie in your own thoughts to conceal your true intentions deep within yourself.

"The doors are orichalcum too," Naaza added, crossing her arms. "I wish I'd brought a pickaxe…"

Tsubaki wouldn't have to worry about copying whatever Yankimaru was made of if she had this much to work with, surely.

"So I guess we've found one of the entrances for sure, want to look around?" Ichiban suggested, figuring they might find something while they were down here. He wondered if he could get a rat or something that'd be able to squeeze down under the rubble and find a way past it, but since they were already here and there were no convenient animals they could make do with their own eyes and ears.

The other two were happy enough to do so, figuring any traps that this place would've had before were now ruined by the floor collapse, although getting around by scrambling over shards of uneven rubble was a pain, particularly when a piece would shift underfoot. His light made it easy to see by, though they heard it first rather than seeing it.

"Hee hee, I hear someone…" an off-kilter sounding voice echoed around a corner of cracked brickwork and exposed metal and rock. "If it's Evilus I'll have to kill them, but what if it's someone from the Loki familia? Ahhh, I came down here to hunt in the dark so no one would see me, what if they want to say hello and talk and… aahhhh, I don't want it! I wanna die!"

Ichiban exchanged concerned looks with Rina and Naaza before a figure emerged into view. It was someone he'd seen before of course, one of the strongest adventurers in the city. He'd shown off a powerful explosive spell at the Colosseum yesterday and then ran off in apparent stage-fright before Ichiban even had a chance to give him chakra. He'd reappeared later having apparently gone to rejoin the line from the back where he cast some other spell that didn't really seem to do anything but calmed him down enough that Ichiban was able to successfully do the whole chakra bestowal thing.

Right now he cut an imposing figure, a wicked looking black sword at the ready as purple eyes peered over the high collar of his black mantle, a shock of white hair not quite hiding the pointed elf ears sticking out on either side of his head.

"Uhh, hey buddy, it's okay, we're not Evilus," Ichiban held up his hands in a peaceful gesture while Rina and Naaza continued to look concerned.

"Oh no, they saw me!" the elf moaned, lowering his sword in one hand but tugging at his collar with the other as if to hide his face, "But wait, maybe we can be friends? Even a cursed dweller in the darkness such as I can still be drawn to the light. Focus Hogni, you can do this, you need to make up for a bad first impression!"

Ichiban was feeling pretty concerned too, but kept up a reassuring smile while the powerful but socially anxious elf tried to psyche himself up for a conversation.

"Hail and well met, fellow travellers under the depths of this man-made Dungeon replica," Hogni straightened his back and deepened his voice as he addressed them, sliding his sword smoothly into its sheath. "I, Hogni Ragnar, greet those who would feast on the carrion of Evilus's wicked domain as fellow adventurers." He subtly but still noticeably pumped his fist afterwards as if pleased with his grandiose introduction.

"Nice!" Ichiban gave him a thumbs up and a big smile. "I'm Ichiban Kasuga, and these are Naaza Erisuis and Rina Saffir." He'd seen Rina's full name listed on her photo back at the Entertainment District, and he was pretty sure on Naaza's from how Airmid talked to her. Neither seemed unhappy with how he introduced them, so he'd take it. "And yeah, we're here to scope out Evilus's wicked domain, just like you."

Hogni looked back at him with the steadfast gaze of a king. Ichiban met his eyes, waiting for a response as awkward seconds ticked by before the elf abruptly turned away and crouched, hunching himself over his knees and clutching at his head as he rocked back and forth. "Ahhh! You made it weird Hogni, you were supposed to say something back there!" he berated himself, seemingly absent any kind of filter.

"Hey, it's cool! It's cool!" Ichiban hurried to reassure him, stepping closer, "Uh, how about we compare notes on what we've found? We were looking for other entrances to help Riveria and that brought us down a ladder into here back that way."

"Yes!" Hogni shot to his feet and turned back around, holding a hand to his brow like he was a model posing for a magazine cover, "I too had come down here to hunt in the darkness that serves as my greatest ally, picking through these bones of stone and steel to find the crooked marrow of Evilus that surely still remains hidden underneath! As allies against the wicked, we should compare stratagems!"

Progress! "Great," Ichiban grinned happily. "So, uh… we came down a ladder back that way," he jerked a thumb over his shoulder. "And… we… well, we've really just been climbing around over all the broken rock here." Huh, they really hadn't actually found much, had they?

"Truly, to make even the ground under our feet so treacherous, it only shows the insidious depths to which Evilus will sink. I too have had to navigate my way across these testaments to man's folly and failure at aping the grandeur of the Dungeon," Hogni nodded severely.

It sounded like he hadn't actually found anything either. Was he just down here to hide from everyone else searching the streets and sewers?

"Tell him about the cameras," Rina whispered, reminding him that they actually had found out something useful.

"Oh yeah! Those creepy statues you see above the doors? They're like something Evilus can use to see us while we're down here," he said with a pleased nod towards Rina, glad they did in fact have something to show for their efforts.

Spoiler: This is My Power

200 – This is My Power
Rapturous Rhapsody Jump
When Mikael was sent to each new world, his power was stripped away, forcing him to grow and regain his strength repeatedly. Such a situation is unacceptable to you, and you've taken decisive steps to prevent it from happening to you. As a result, your power cannot be stripped away, stolen, or otherwise taken from you. Regardless of the circumstances, your strength remains intact. If you were put through a situation similar to Mikael's, where you are sent to a new world, you would retain all the power you had previously gained. This effect ensures that you remain at your peak no matter where you go, and works on inherently temporary powers, but only if a power has remained active/available for more than one month.

Hogni's eyes widened in horror and he looked around and past them, towards a toppled over door that Ichiban and company had clambered over the top of moments earlier, a demonic looking statue still mostly intact clinging to the fallen frame. "They've been looking at me? Oh no, they… every moment… Aaahh! I wanna die, I wanna die!" he moaned miserably, his breath coming in rapid pants before he shot off towards the rubble fast enough to make Ichiban stumble with the burst of displaced air. "By the power of the demon blade, bring eternal destruction!" he chanted, loosing an impressive pyrotechnic burst that detonated the statue, though the door and much of the surrounding rubble seemed unaffected by the blast. The elf then bolted off further into the darkness and a few seconds later they saw a flash of light and heard another explosion echoing through the tunnel.

"I think that went as well as it could have?" Rina whispered, as the sound of another explosion reached them. "It um, it gave him something to do?"

"Yeah, you know what? Maybe we should leave. Hogni's got this," Ichiban agreed, it seeming like the ruined upper levels of Knossos were just that; ruins. He was also a bit distracted by the ramifications of a new ability he'd just acquired. If he could maintain a boost, such as by casting an enchantment spell or being deep in the Dungeon where he could draw on its power to increase his magic, he could keep it permanently. The only catch was he'd have to maintain it for a month. He'd only been here a few days and he'd picked up all kinds of crazy abilities, who even knew where he'd be in a month?

The distant sound of explosions every few seconds serenaded them as they backtracked out and Ichiban used some force-field platforms to get back to the ladder now sticking out of the ceiling above ruined rubble where the rest of its path down the wall must have previously stood. They revisited the Loki familia command post to tell them about the entrance they'd found, the news received gratefully though Rina was disappointed Ichiban did not go in for a hug with Riveria, before the three of them left the environs of Daedalus Street.

"Do you have a plan for tomorrow?" Naaza asked. "Since it sounded like they'd be a few days before trying to get deeper into Knossos."

"I think I want to do some actual training," he answered. "Rina did her whole battle thing, you and Miach have been learning about pressure points, but I've just been sitting on this chakra stuff since I've been so busy handing it out to everyone and then doing all of this, I haven't really had a chance to properly cut loose with it."

"Oh, you should!" Rina bounced on her heels, "It's lots of fun, and if you're going to be actually fighting with it you need to know your limits, although between Naaza's potions and Dia Fratel you should be fine in the Dungeon. Do you want a sparring partner?"

He appreciated the offer, but, "Actually I was gonna try asking Takemikazuchi. It sounded like he had some ideas. Naaza, you know where he lives, right?"

"I do, and he showed me some of those techniques when he and Lord Miach were working together. They do seem to help – how you move and position your body affects how easy it is to move chakra around," Naaza nodded and proceeded to demonstrate what looked like a martial arts kata, very flowing and elegant looking.

It wasn't at all a match for Ichiban's scrappy street-fighting style, but if it got results he'd do his best to learn this kind of stuff.

Naaza gave him directions on where the Takemikazuchi familia lived and they parted ways, Naaza back to her shop and Rina back to the Entertainment District, which left Ichiban wondering where he'd go. He could probably bum another night at the Ganesha familia place again, but he had a feeling Evilus wouldn't be able to manage anything else after this morning.

Still he didn't want to make things too easy for any potential stalker or assassin, so he went to the inn he'd previously stayed at to pick up the stuff he'd left there, before vanishing out into the night with a bunch of parkour and rooftop hopping that had him moving across the city unseen and unnoticed.

It didn't necessarily mean much when he ended up at an inn where the boaz lady watching over the place recognised him, but he asked her to keep things quiet for him and even gave her chakra when she expressed some curiosity over it even though she insisted she wasn't an adventurer or anything. Plenty of other non-adventurers had gotten it at the Colosseum today, so why not? It was free for him.

It was near the Loki familia's Twilight Manor so if anything did happen there was potentially help close at hand, but Ichiban was able to enjoy a good night's sleep and a hearty breakfast when he got up early, before heading to where the Takemikazuchi familia lived not far from this bit of town.

It certainly wasn't as grand as the Loki or Ganesha familia homes, honestly it just looked like a kind of run down apartment block shaped around an empty lot. Though it wasn't precisely empty as he saw Ouka and a few other people all setting off, weapons and bags held and looking like they were setting off for a day in the Dungeon.

"Yo, Ouka, right?" he called to the young man at the head of the group, who bowed his head respectfully to him with the others all following his lead. Reminded him a bit of the dynamic with Mord and his crew, but a bit less rough around the edges.

Spoiler: Auto Reflexes

400 – Auto Reflexes
Bleach
Battle is in your bones, your blood, your very soul. Where others plan out their moves or train themselves to react automatically, it was always instinctual for you. These automatic reflexes for battle allow you to instinctively react with offense or defense to an attack, with no delay needed to judge or begin trained movements. Even when it's something you're not actually aware is an enemy or can't even see, your spirit still guides you to fight as an instant response. If you continue to rely on the auto-reflexes during a fight instead of planning things out in advance, you'll find your speed will steadily increase, as does your ability to counter or dodge things you're reacting to. The gains will fade after the battle is over.

And wouldn't you know it, he just felt himself acquire another ability, one which sort of made training redundant. It was certainly his style to just go with the flow and follow his instincts, but all the same he had a godly martial artist he could potentially learn from here, why wouldn't he try and pick up a few tricks?

"Ichiban, thank you again for all your help," Ouka said, straightening and unaware of what was going on in Ichiban's head. "Were you looking for us?"

"Ah, not you exactly, but your god," he answered. "I wanted to pick Lord Takemikazuchi's brain about the chakra martial arts he said he was working on." He'd kind of been referring to the gods informally unlike everyone else around here, and no one had actually called him out on it, but since he was here to ask a favour it made sense to be a little bit more polite!

"Ah! I'm sure he'd be honoured to help you after all you've done for us," Ouka said forcefully, turning to the rest of his crew and commanding, "Asuka, go and tell Lord Takemikazuchi we have an honoured guest!"

"Yes!" one of the girls in his group turned and… was she just wearing a sack and a headscarf? Everyone else seemed to have stuff like armour and martial arts uniforms, he wondered if it was some kind of power-play to single out the lowest ranked in the group, but she seemed happy enough to run back towards the building, knocking on a door through which Takemikazuchi soon emerged.

The familia loitered a bit, seeming curious enough about where this was going to delay their Dungeon expedition as Ichiban met the handsome thunder god in the empty lot that seemed like a good place for this kind of practice. "Ichiban! I knew that talk last night would pique your interest," he said with a wide smile.

"That's right! This stuff's as new to me, wanted to see if I could learn any moves from you," Ichiban met him half-way, grinning with anticipation. Sure, all the magic was fantastic, and throwing down against monsters with Yankimaru was a blast, but chakra offered a way for an old-fashioned beat-down to keep up with those methods. What kind of man would he be if he didn't jump on that?

"Alright, good! Get yourself comfortable and we'll warm up a little first," Takmikazuchi clapped his hands together, as Ichiban considered. Despite the seeming weight of it, he could move better with the lion cloak on than without, but it was pretty ostentatious for training, and so he reached up to his shoulder and pulled.

"Uwaaah!" "How'd he do that?!" "His shirt was buttoned up!"

As he stood topless before the Takimikazuchi familia, Ichiban had been expecting more reaction to his tattoo, but it seemed everyone was more impressed with the relatively straightforward manner he'd pulled his cloak and jacket and shirt off in one simple movement.

"Children, children, don't crowd the man," Takemikazuchi chided his familia who'd all edged closer in curiosity. "I know it looks flashy but it's nothing special. I can do it too – look!" he grabbed at his own shoulder and pulled and thus everyone beheld a shirtless god. He wasn't as buff as Ganesha, but it was still a sculpted lean physique that had the girls of his familia staring.

"Lord Takemikazuchi, why did you never show us such a wondrous technique?!" a girl with long black hair demanded stridently, one Ichiban remembered for showing off a novel gravity typed spell the other day. Chigusa and Asuka both nodded sharply to back her up.

"It's just a man's technique, it's not anything you'd need in the Dungeon," Takemikazuchi insisted, "I can show you all again later, but for now we shouldn't hold up Ichiban here, and you all need to get to the Dungeon, don't you?"

The girls gave him a look that suggested they would definitely hold him to that, but all the same they trooped off, leaving Ichiban and Takemikazuchi facing each other. "Now, I'm sure you know better than anyone that chakra responds to your effort, so none of this is necessary, but incorporating these kinds of movements into your techniques should make it flow more smoothly. My children seemed to have an easier time managing their stamina and were able to push it to greater effect, so let me show you some of the basics and then you can try."

Ichiban had never really gotten into formal martial arts, and he'd beaten up enough guys who crowed about the colour of their belts to not hold them in particular reverence, but he still knew what he was seeing as Takemikazuchi proceeded to demonstrate a straightforward kata.

Copying it after the demonstration, he moulded chakra to his limbs and though he wasn't sure if it was making a huge difference, it glowed visibly around him and he could feel a weightiness to even these slow and choreographed movements that imitated actual strikes. If he moved fast, if he put his back into it? He'd probably be causing shock-waves like he saw when the high level adventurers cut loose.

In fact he did. Speeding up, he started really going for it, and the air fell out of his path with dull booming sounds that ruffled Takemikazuchi's long hair as he watched. The god called him to stop and said, "You seem uncertain of your strength. I saw it with Ouka when he first ranked up to level two. You haven't really pushed yourself, have you?"

He shook his head. "Not since I got chakra. Even when Evilus attacked I just stood still and cast spells from the back, I haven't had a serious fight or gone all out. Honestly…" he looked at his clenched fist, "Little bit scared to."

"It's important to respect your strength, but if you fear it you will never master it," Takemikazuchi said, dispensing the sage wisdom as befitting of a martial arts master.

He considered that. Obviously he didn't want to throw a punch at Takemikazuchi, he might kill him! Despite being gods they were apparently as fragile as anyone else while in this world. Even punching the ground might do some damage. Maybe he should've tested this down in Knossos last night? Still, an idea occurred, and he created a force-field in front of himself, then wound up and delivered a chakra-infused punch.

It shattered like glass, just like when he'd tested by having Yankimaru hit one. His fist didn't really bounce off, it went right through. He was stronger than Yankimaru now, and that still felt like he hadn't really been giving it his all.

"I know those can hold up to a level three adventurer hitting them," he said, looking at his fist as if he'd see a scrape or bruise, but his knuckles were unblemished. "And before I got chakra I couldn't even crack it."

Takemikazuchi hummed at that, "It sounds like you're getting more out of it than my children, if the increase is beyond two levels' worth. Or three, you don't even have the benefit of even a level one's falna. The usual exercises to get used to it won't work, since chakra's an active ability rather than your base strength…"

While the god was considering it, Ichiban had his own idea though. "I can go cut loose in the Dungeon or something, but for now I had an idea. I just got this new ability where my reflexes and instincts take over in a fight. If you come at me, we can see how I react, figure out how my chakra responds and how to use it deliberately."

"Hoh!" Takemikazuchi seemed both amused and pleased by the idea. "I see what you're thinking Ichiban," he swept his arms out in front of him and a sense of pressure began to emanate off of him, the friendly god giving off a sense of threat like he got from Rina when she was pissed, or saw from upper rank yakuza back home right before something bad happened to someone. "I'll start slow and we'll see what you can handle."

Ichiban didn't take a stance or anything of the sort, he just stood there and waited, trusting his new reflexes and the fact that Takemikazuchi wouldn't hurt him too bad if they weren't up to snuff. Suddenly the god moved, sweeping forward with a palm strike to the chest. And Ichiban moved just as easily – chakra flowed through him, coursing down his legs to speed up his movement as he stepped and pivoted to avoid it. He could already feel it was different to how he'd been moulding chakra before. It was less forceful, rather than just shoving it there like he was trying to fuel a rocket, it circulated and focused on multiple points, perfectly aligned with the actual movement of his muscles to both maximise his initial motion and then balance it so he didn't over-shoot.

It would've been really hard to do deliberately, paying attention to so many factors, but he could see how it was done, he could feel the way his chakra was being directed on instinct with so much more finesse than he'd thought himself capable of. But his body still remembered, he remembered. And as Takemikazuchi adjusted from his initial strike, the god's eyes narrowed as if reappraising Ichiban's capabilities before he flowed into a backfist, a jab, and a leg sweep.

Again Ichiban's body moved and chakra flowed in perfect harmony to allow for his superhuman reaction. Twisting his body with flexibility he wouldn't have really thought himself capable of, he weaved between the two hits while keeping his feet stable on the ground, poised to jump over that sweep. Every motion faster than possible, chakra moving inside of him to adjust and augment his physical motions, giving them the extra boost needed to stay ahead of Takemikazuchi's assault.

That hop only brought him into the air for an instant, but it was an instant he was vulnerable, his flight predictable and having no leverage to change his course. He wasn't using his arms, no blocking or countering, he was just letting his instincts dodge for him. He imagined he must look strange, mentally disassociated from the fight, his expression one of someone not even paying attention as he focused inwards to understand what his body was doing by reflex.

A rising kick came from his sparring partner, already recovered from that sweep and flowing into the next attack with the grace of a literal martial arts god.

His knee met it, his reflexes making their own judgement that a dodge was impossible even with the benefit of chakra. Yet still it moved through his limb and he felt how it diffused the impact when his leg adjusted in the air to meet Takemikazuchi's and pushed off of him, negating the potential impact.

Feet touched the ground and the attack continued. Faster now, Takemikazuchi having taken enough of his measure in that first exchange to begin pushing. His movements weren't the explosive outbursts of an upper tier adventurer. It was likely there were men back in Tokyo who could match Takemikazuchi's raw physical ability. But every motion he made was calculated, not an ounce of wasted effort, his muscles under his complete control in a way that matched Ichiban's automatic reflexes.

He started getting clever with it. Feints mixed in to throw him off, every punch or kick flowing into the next in a seemingly endless combination that never extended him to the point he needed to recover or back off.

But with chakra enhancing his motions, Ichiban could handle it. He kept going, learning from himself and how he automatically responded to every bit of pressure that was heaped on him. Inspiration came over and over as his own body showed him new ways to employ chakra in response to the relentless assault Takemikazuchi was heaping on him. He hadn't broken a sweat, he could have done this all day, but for all his skill the god was limited to a mortal body, and when he finally broke apart he was breathing heavy and his body was soaked with sweat, hair matted to his brow.

Spoiler: A Farther Horizon

200 – A Farther Horizon
Godbound
Whether you were once a baker or a beggar, the consequences of a Word of Creation burning in your veins will take you far beyond the life you once knew. With this you can at least be assured you'll be a natural learner for all kinds of new experiences, and always be able to keep an open mind for new vistas and ways of being. Within days of arriving in a new culture you can learn the customs, figure out how to fit in and sniff out who's in charge. This lends itself well to picking up new skills too. You may not be the greatest swordsman or painter ever to live, but you'll find yourself picking up the trade a lot quicker than most.

"Phew, that was even worse than sparring with my kids, you're slippier than any catfish, Ichiban!" he laughed raggedly, while Ichiban came far enough out of his own head to notice they'd drawn something of a crowd. Mostly women who were looking admiringly at the shirtless god, but he liked to think he was getting a few looks too.

"Yeah, that was… that was huge," Ichiban said, looking at his hands as he tried moving chakra around the way he'd felt it doing when he was fighting. It was easy enough to copy, simply repeating what his own body had done on instinct. His reflexes would be good for just taking care of things in a fight, though it felt a bit like having his own body be puppeted. Achieving it through his own deliberate effort was far more satisfying. As a learning tool this was second to none, an instructor inside your own body coupled with external guidance from a master of masters.

Still, Takemikazuchi looked like he needed some hydration, so he unclasped the water bottle from his belt and held it out. "Here, Miach says this water's really healthy, and you definitely need to replace all that sweat. Don't worry about it running out."

Naaza's concerns about someone killing him for his water bottle honestly felt quaint at this point, so he didn't feel any need to keep it secret. He'd already shown Dian Cecht and he liked him less than he liked Takemikazuchi.

Takemikazuchi certainly appreciated as he drank deeply, and their audience similarly appreciated as he poured some straight over his brow. "Haah, Miach knows about medicine," he said gladly, handing the bottle back. "Want to go another round? Just watching you I was getting all sorts of ideas I can't wait to teach my children."

That sounded good to Ichiban, and he actually found himself forced to block when Takemikazuchi came at him all out from the start, pushed more than he expected. His automatic reflexes seemed to ramp up during a fight, so he was doing far better towards the end of the last spar than he found himself at the start of the second, but he soon found his groove, dancing around the lot with godly fists and feet always a hairs-breadth behind. Takemikazuchi didn't need to tell him what to do, didn't need to physically adjust his stance. All he had to do was attack, pushing Ichiban's reflexes to adapt to whatever he dished out, each exchange further imprinting chakra control into Ichiban's habits.

Then they switched things up. He'd gotten some confidence from blocking and redirecting hits that his reflexes weren't going all out in a fashion that could've easily broken an arm with retaliation, and so he started actually fighting back. This further showed him what he was missing, as these reflexive punches worked chakra through his limbs in different ways than they'd done with dodges, refining his understanding of how to mould it when he wanted to do so deliberately. Not that he needed to worry about hurting his sparring partner – no matter the gulf in physical ability, it was clear Takemikazuchi could see right through his moves. The moment Ichiban tensed his muscles or adjusted his stance to go for a particular hit, the god knew exactly what was coming and simply ensured he wasn't in the way of any hit. Maybe that could have changed if Ichiban put more effort into his strikes, but even his instincts understood what a spar was and moderated his output to a level that wasn't generating sonic booms with his punches.

He wasn't exactly sure if he could make a sonic boom with a punch, but he figured it was definitely in the realm of possibility.

They were still at it when evening settled and Takemikazuchi's familia returned from their own long day of exertion in the Dungeon. The women seemed very happy at their god's shirtless and glistening state, while Ichiban started putting his shirt back on since it was as good a cue as any to wrap things up.

He stuck around a little bit, as a still fresh Takemikazuchi listened to their exploits from a day in the Dungeon, and Ichiban did his best to explain the stuff he'd figured out in terms of chakra control. Embarrassingly despite his outside perspective, Takemikazuchi was often able to put it in better words than Ichiban could, but his familia all seemed grateful for the additional knowledge they could use to improve their abilities, and he bid them farewell feeling like he'd made some really good progress today. Whether it was the Dungeon or Evilus, they wouldn't know what hit them when he went all out.

We're definitely at the point where I think most Celestial X writers say, 'Hey this is getting a bit out of hand, I'm gonna slow down the point gain', but that feels like quitter talk. I'm doing this mostly for the writing exercise anyway so I'll just keep chasing that dopamine hit of the gacha roll every thousand words, what's the harm in giving Ichiban bootleg Ultra Instinct? Hell, actual Ultra Instinct is probably in there somewhere too.

It's definitely a case where the pacing is absolutely crazy though, I should probably avoid criticising Bell given what I've had Ichiban do in less time than it takes him to even get his special knife.

Click to shrink...

 

[Roroman]

Thanks for the chapter,loving the interactions in the fic they also feel weirdly fitting like they are Yakuza sidequests especially the chunni elf lol.

We're definitely at the point where I think most Celestial X writers say, 'Hey this is getting a bit out of hand, I'm gonna slow down the point gain', but that feels like quitter talk. I'm doing this mostly for the writing exercise anyway so I'll just keep chasing that dopamine hit of the gacha roll every thousand words

Click to shrink...

Based author honestly,keep gambling

 

[OverReactionGuy]

Gacha knows no bounds.

 

[The Dude]

We're definitely at the point where I think most Celestial X writers say, 'Hey this is getting a bit out of hand, I'm gonna slow down the point gain', but that feels like quitter talk.

Click to shrink...

Damn straight. Don't quit until your drill has pierced the heavens!

Honestly, though, I'm pretty sure you're only one or two more big bumps from him getting there.

In that case, keep going until your drill is the drill that creates the heavens!

 

[Zeromaru2]

It's always time to go gambling, especially when you're having fun.

 

[The Dude]

It's always time to go gambling, especially when you're having fun.

Click to shrink...

Plus, it's not like the Celestial X systems really let you actually lose in the long run.

Sure, short term, you might get a bunch of trash 100pt pulls that left you short for the really sweet pull that just came down the pipe, but eventually you'll either get something hot or you'll just get enough trash to synergize your way into being truly busted anyway.

 

[Zerak]

I just started reading and I was wondering if the mechanics change later on?

Because 1000 words for 100CP is too fast power gain after the first 3-5 perks.

 

[Ebiris]

I just started reading and I was wondering if the mechanics change later on?

Because 1000 words for 100CP is too fast power gain after the first 3-5 perks.

Click to shrink...

It actually came up in the most recent chapter that it is indeed very fast and I understand why most authors of these kinds of stories at some point go, "No, I gotta change it."

On the other hand I'm addicted to pushing that little button that spits out a potentially fun and wonderful perk for me to mess things up with, so I'm not gonna change it. We just have to see where it goes.

 

[Iridesce]

I always think it's weird that the 100 cp for 1,000 words is standard. Because that's not the amount that was used in BBCF originally.

 

[Zerak]

On the other hand I'm addicted to pushing that little button that spits out a potentially fun and wonderful perk for me to mess things up with, so I'm not gonna change it. We just have to see where it goes.

Click to shrink...

The main issue is that it you start getting too many perks that you don't get to explore most of them from how many you have, and you get more before you actually use some and they start to pile. Then it kinda overwhelms the story to the point it trivialises everything else.

Granted being OP as fuck in a short amount of time isn't necessarily a bad things, just means you will have to focus more on character development/interactions and world building rather than the dungeon, because there is a point where he won't struggle in the dungeon no matter what it throws at him, so trying to write a struggle fighting would be artificial.

One option to maintain frequency of rolls without affecting the story negatively is to keep it once every 1000 words, but reduce the CP gained to 50, then later on to 25, then to 10 (if the story lasts that long).

There are over a thousand free perks so you can still luck out that way, but all it means is you roll more but actually gain things less of the time. Really gives you that Gacha experience.

Might even make landing a perk more satisfying. You can give this a shot for a while and see how that goes, it's not like you can't change back if you don't like it after a chapter or 2.

Edit:

I always think it's weird that the 100 cp for 1,000 words is standard. Because that's not the amount that was used in BBCF originally.

Click to shrink...

It's what was added into the v2 celestial forge document for some reason (I think it's abuse on of the people who contributed to the a lot to it used 1000 words in their story).

Personally I think anything under 2,000 words for 100cp is too fast.

Hell even that is fast after the first 5-10 perks.

You need to keep scaling back the points per word count, or the celestial forge/grimoire consumes the story. It's meant to supplement the story not take it over.

 

[Ebiris]

The sun was starting to set by the time Ichiban made it to the Hostess of Fertility. It was a good place to eat, and he figured it'd be good to check in with Syr since her familia was involved in fighting against Evilus. Though he'd have to be careful not to say anything that could blow her cover.

As it happened there was no sign of Syr anyway. Perhaps she was too busy handling all this stuff as Freya that she didn't have time to play around as an ordinary girl? Anya was happy enough to greet him, though she seemed surprised and disappointed Yankimaru wasn't around to hold a sign for her this time, he still got a seat at the bar where he could look around and watch the place.

Surprisingly he saw Orin, the elf sat at a table with that white-haired Bell kid he saw at Miach's shop sometimes. He wondered if that meant the kid was in Hestia's familia. The goddess herself wasn't around, although Chloe was loitering around that table and doing something to turn Bell's face red.

He left them to it, Orin hadn't noticed him and Anya was asking him something. "Are you going to Monsterferia tomorreow, Ichiban?"

"Monsterferia? What's that?" he asked.

"It's a big event the Ganesha familia host at the Colosseum you were giving us all chakra, they put on displays with tamed monsters. For a lot of people it's their only chance to get within a whisker of a monster outside of the Dungeon," she explained, it sounding like something Orin would love. For Ichiban though he saw enough monsters in the Dungeon, even if taming them sounded interesting. It was nice it wasn't just something Evilus did.

"Hah, I think I'll just be going into the Dungeon tomorrow, I'll see enough monsters that way," he demurred, taking the drink she set down for him.

"I know, I've got to work too, it's not fair having to work on a holiday!" she whined in commiseration before there was a thump on the bar, Mia making her presence felt as she glowered at Anya.

"I'd love it if you worked on regular days you lazy cat!"

With a feline yowl of dismay, Anya scampered off to look busy while Ichiban gave the owner an amused look. "Must be hard keeping everyone in line here, huh?" he asked, which got a grunt in response before he thought of something else. "Never saw you at the Colosseum when I was handing out chakra to everyone." Considering she was in the top ten strongest people in the city not counting gods, her absence was conspicuous.

"Hmph, can your chakra help me cook better? I'm retired, don't need a new skill like that to worry about," she waved him off.

That may be true, but he'd given it to plenty of other people that weren't adventurers, and it felt like a waste someone of Mia's power missing out, even if she didn't intend to fight with it. So he tried poking at her refusal, "Well it'd help you deal with rowdy customers, or lazy waitresses?"

Something flashed in her eyes and she straightened herself up. "I see what you're doing, but I don't need that kind of thing any more at my age."

"That's right, Mama Mia's an old lady, she doesn't need to worry about exerting herself any more," a fair-haired waitress blithely said as she walked past, only to squeak in surprise when a meaty arm shot out lightning-fast over the bar to grab her wrist, Mia's expression now looking considerably more severe.

"Old lady? I think it's time for a demonstration of just how spry this old lady still is, Lunoire," she growled as Lunoire looked to be regretting the wisdom of her words.

There wasn't any work getting done as the other waitresses crowded around, but the other patrons didn't seem to mind the free entertainment as a fired up Mia and a chastised looking Lunoire took positions facing each other over a table.

"Oh nyo, Mama Mia usually only arm-wrestles when she's had a few drinks!" Anya whimpered.

"She doesn't look like she's kitten around this time!" Chloe added, Bell and Orin having come over with her to watch the display as the two locked hands, a red glow forming around Lunoire's. He could see she was moulding her chakra efficiently – not as well as he'd learned in his day with Takemikazuchi, but it was clear she'd figured out the basics and was putting it to work as the elf waitress told them to begin.

Both women gripped the table and gritted their teeth as they exerted themselves, arms pushing against each other with titanic strength. They quivered in place before slowly Lunoire started being pushed back. Even this was impressive going by the hushed murmuring he heard.

"Lunoire's actually holding her back!" "Fight harder Lunoire, you can do it!" "Don't give up!"

The waitress seemed to draw strength from the encouragement, her chakra glowing more intensely and stopping Mia's arm in place, drawing more supportive cheers, both women wearing looks of focused exertion. Ichiban had seen this kind of macho posturing plenty both as a schoolboy and a yakuza and a prison inmate, and the determined expressions of these two women would not have looked out of place among any of them as they gave it their all to prove their muscle and grit.

But if it was a contest of endurance, there was only one result. Lunoire did her best, she held Mia back, but the instant her focus wavered? The glowing chakra flickered and with a yelp and a crash of splintering wood the back of her fist met the table under Mia's merciless grip.

"Hah! This old lady's still got it!" Mia crowed and stood up with her arms raised as Lunoire winced and shook out her arm, everyone rushing to console and comfort the loser with insistences that she'd done a great job. Meanwhile Mia just swaggered back around the bar before she shook out her hand with a disguised wince out of view and met Ichiban's eyes. "Alright fine, that was closer'n I'd like," she admitted, holding her hand out for Ichiban to do the needful.

Of course this didn't go unnoticed as the addition of chakra made Mia's potential power swell enormously. "We were that close to winning, if Lunoire hadn't purrovoked her we could've gotten stronger!" Anya cried out in dismay.

"Good going Lunoire, you ruined everything!" Chloe instantly turned from giving words of comfort and support to the loser to chastising her.

Poor Lunoire looked thoroughly betrayed by her colleagues, so Ichiban felt compelled to throw her a bone. "That was some of the better chakra control I'd seen, you really had it focused. You could've improved it by pulling some back here," he planted his elbow on the bar and gestured down his forearm with his free hand, "To circulate it so less just gets wasted."

It was a little hard to articulate even after hearing Takemikazuchi's better worded explanations, but still Lunoire and the crowd of patrons which was mostly made up of adventurers was happy to listen as Ichiban wound up giving a bit of an impromptu lecture on chakra control. It wasn't what he'd intended when he came here, but it proved to be a good way of spreading the knowledge around to a bunch of people from different familias, so it hopefully would circulate.

When he wound up and everyone went back to their food and drink, his own noodles having arrived, he had a chance to catch up with Orin and Bell too. "So you managed to join Hestia's familia?" he asked the ambitious but cowardly elf.

"Yes! It's been very good – Bell here takes my knowledge well and applies it in the Dungeon. And he actually knows a lot too, about myths and legends, it's been fascinating to hear some of his stories," the elf said, giving the younger human a proud look.

"Haha, gramps told me a ton of stories growing up, they didn't really prepare me as well for the Dungeon as Mr. Orin's and Miss Eina's lectures, but they were good for learning about what it is to be a hero," Bell said bashfully.

"Oh yeah, I'm like that with Dragon Quest," Ichiban nodded, absolutely getting it. Which of course drew their own questions as to what Dragon Quest was, knowledge which Ichiban was only too happy to share with them.

It made a nice change from telling gory yakuza stories as he got to animatedly expound on the game that was so formative to his childhood, to an audience who didn't know what games were and so were taking all his lore with the same reverence one would have to an actual legend.

"… and that's why if someone offers to share half the world with you? You just say no, because they're gonna kill you, guys like that don't share," he concluded.

Orin wrote this down in the notebook he'd been recording Ichiban's exposition in, and he could be sure at least that meant it would be preserved and shared. He hoped one day it would help a hero in this fantasy world make the right choice even after Ichiban had long returned home to Japan.

It had been a good day, and Ichiban gave them and the staff at the Hostess of Fertility a fond farewell as they parted ways and he found himself another out of the way but cosy looking inn to stay the night. He might try and get an actual apartment once the stuff with Evilus was locked down if he was going to be staying here a while, but for now at least he could afford to live like this thanks to all the money Tsubaki had paid him for a chunk of Yankimaru's beard.

The next day he found a place that sold boxed lunches and he bought a couple along with some nuts which he spread out for Pearl and her friends outside of Babel while he waited for Naaza and Rina to show up. If they were going to be heading all the way down to Rivira, they'd want some food for the trip. He remembered Rose's warnings about price gouging down there.

"Good morning Ichiban! Did you have a good day getting all sweaty with Lord Takemikakazuchi?" Rina's voice called out as she jogged over, carrying her hammer and this time having a bag on her back as they were preparing for a deeper trip.

"Oh yeah, had a great time," he grinned back at her. "You get sweaty with all the other berbera too?"

"You know it!" she winked. "Looking forward to trying this all out on some unsuspecting monsters."

"And I'm looking forward to trying out this new bow," Naaza said as she joined them, the gang all set. "I've told Lord Miach I might not be back today, in case we decide to stay longer at the Under Resort."

"Sounds good. I'm curious to see it, and we might check a bit deeper. It sounds like we have time," he jerked his head over in the direction of Daedalus Street and the whole issue there that was waiting to be resolved. "Lets see if we can get down to the tenth floor in a hurry and then explore properly the rest of the way down?"

They were fine with that, and as they descended the spiral staircase down into the Dungeon he cast his light spell, feeling it grow noticeably more potent as they entered the Dungeon proper. It wasn't really brighter, already comparable to the afternoon sun, but it shone further and he was pretty sure its heartening effect was more pronounced.

Maybe if he got deep enough in the Dungeon it would be enough to overcome Hogni's social anxiety?

He started jogging along at a speed that probably would've been a dead sprint for him before all of this, chakra circulating through his legs to maintain the speed which didn't even feel close to fatiguing him. In fact he wasn't short of breath at all, so it was easy enough to talk to Rina and Naaza as they ran along with him, sharing what he'd figured out in terms of chakra moulding, the two of them concentrating a bit to adjust their own chakra while they ran along, only slowing a bit to get down the stairs safely before they were running through the second floor.

A group of goblins could be seen further down the tunnel, and here Ichiban took his chance to cut loose. "Let me get these ones," he said, concentrating and accelerating so fast the tunnel became a smear in his vision, fist reared back and glowing with chakra as he hammered straight into the head of the goblin in the middle of the group.

Spoiler: Bag of Tomes

200 – Bag of Tomes (reusable)
Final Fantasy II
All the standard magical tomes. Once read, it will commit to your memory and the pages will become blank. For another 50CP, the text will remain, allowing multiple people to read them. Contains all the spells aside from Ultima, Revive and Destroy.

It exploded. Ripped apart by the impact, a shockwave released from his strike flung the other goblins like ragdolls, their small pot-bellied bodies striking the walls with sickening crunches before their bodies faded away into black mist and their magic stones tinked onto the ground.

His punches had area of effect damage.

"Holy shit," he breathed, looking at his fist and then looking around. Huh. A sack had appeared by his feet, mostly shielded from the blast wave but still tumbled over, spilling out several archaic looking scrolls.

"Wow, that was a first class adventurer hit!" Rina clapped in excitement as she caught up, while Naaza bent down to examine one of the scrolls, lifting it up as it unfurled in her hand.

"What's this? Barrier?" she read it, her eyes trailing down the paper while Ichiban and Rina looked on curiously, Naaza's expression one of curious focus before she made a choking sound and looked up at them. "It's like a grimoire."

"What?" Rina made a similar choking noise and stared down at the overflowing sack of scrolls.

"Barrier," Naaza said with intent this time, and a bluish-green diamond manifested in front of her before fading into her skin. "It protects against paralysis and… other things I didn't know could happen like being turned into a toad or shrunk down. What it calls 'changeable' element. But it can level up on its own to protect from fire, curses, poison… lots of things, it's all here and…" she looked at the scroll, "The writing hasn't vanished. It's a reusable grimoire."

"And there's how many of them?" Rina stared down at the overflowing sack. "Ichiban, why does this happen every time we go into the Dungeon?!"

"It's been happening the whole time since I got here!" he replied defensively, grabbing another scroll that had tipped out of the bag. Unfurling it, the writing swam in front of his eyes briefly before resolving into Japanese, a mixture of hiragana and kanji that was quite legible.

Teleport.

Banishes foes to another dimension, or transports the party out of dungeons. Using for transport drains the caster's health. This is a changeable element spell. Continuous use improves the accuracy for when it is used as a banishment, up to sixteen times. Sixteen spells from these scrolls can be stored, but existing ones can be forgotten to make room for others. A forgotten spell will not have its levels retained if you relearn it later.

He finished reading the rather clear and easy to understand terms of the scroll, and a spell blossomed into his mind, just as easy to cast as any of the ones he'd seen others cast or had planted in his brain like all that necromancy stuff.

Okay, so he had a fast travel spell for getting out of the Dungeon. But the 'banished to another dimension' business sounded pretty wild, he wasn't sure if he wanted to spread that around. Actually what other dimension? Would this send someone back to Earth? Would he have to test it, could he use it to come back? This raised all sorts of questions!

"Uh, so I can teleport now. Or banish people to another dimension," Ichiban looked up from his scroll at Naaza and Rina's expectant faces. "You can learn up to sixteen from these scrolls, and how many do we have?"

Considering he could cast Barrier by copying how Naaza had done it, albeit his version would be even weaker at first, he had a way around that himself at least. Still, he picked up the sack and started to count through the scrolls, replacing the ones that had fallen out including Teleport and Barrier.

There were thirty nine in total. Thirty nine spells which anyone could learn with a few seconds of reading, though any one person could only know sixteen. And they'd get better with use.

"Okay, I think we better take a break from the Dungeon," he said, looking at the two of them and holding tightly to the sack. "Figure out what all these spells are and what we're gonna do with them."

They weren't exactly deep in the Dungeon, it had only taken a couple minutes to get this far, but Ichiban couldn't not teleport now he knew how. Even if it would drain his health? He had a way around that, and the magic stones those goblins left behind would pay for it. "I'm gonna teleport us out now, so hold on," he warned Naaza and Rina before saying firmly, "Teleport!"

Whooosh!

An instant later they were standing in front of Babel, one goblin magic stone left of the five he'd picked up to pay for the spell. There were still some adventurers heading into the Dungeon who stopped and gawked at their sudden arrival, but Ichiban didn't stick around to field questions, while Naaza and Rina were only briefly disoriented as they took stock before following Ichiban. Though Rina did think to ask, "So where are we going?"

"I'm gonna ruin Rose's day again," he answered with a bit of trepidation, leading them up the street to the Pantheon. Which was entering its quiet lull after the initial morning rush of adventurers picking up quests, allowing Rose to see them in a private meeting room.

"So, this is kind of like when I gave everyone chakra, except now it's spells. Naaza called them reusable grimoires, and I've got nearly forty of them," he explained once they were alone.

Rose looked kind of pale.

"They also break the usual limit on spells, anyone can learn up to sixteen of them," Naaza added.

Rose looked like she wanted to throw up.

"I should have taken today off for Monster Feria…" she muttered under her breath before marshalling her willpower. "So do I understand correctly that you want to offer these spells out the same way you did chakra?" she asked, drawing herself up with the impressive resolve of a career civil servant.

"Uh, maybe?" he felt a bit leery about giving just anyone the ability to banish people to another dimension. That just felt a bit too out there to spread around even if a quick escape from the Dungeon felt helpful, while chakra just seemed like an all around boost to what was already basically there. "First I want to see what all of them do, the bag just appeared in the Dungeon so I never had time to check them all out. Naaza found a barrier spell and I found a teleport one."

"It really worked! It went whoosh and took us from the second floor right to Babel!" Rina nodded, backing up his story and looking avariciously at the sack full of magical potential.

"Yeah, so uh, first lets just sort what we all have? If you want to read one go ahead, they're kind of short, but if you just get the name we can figure out what might be concerning or what'd be really good to spread around," Ichiban said, opening the sack in the middle of the table so they could all reach in and start sorting through the scrolls.

There were basic things like fire and lightning, a healing spell called cure. Then there were familiar names. Esuna. Osmose. He couldn't find Ultima among them, but all the same? "These are spells from Final Fantasy!"

That got him a round of quizzical looks, and he had to explain that it was a game, like Dragon Quest. This still didn't seem to register with anyone. "Gah, it's… it's a story back home. It's like if you suddenly got given a spell from a fairy tale," he tried to explain, but he wasn't sure that quite worked for people who still saw spells as real. For them it'd be like him getting a gun from a movie – a bit of strange coincidence, but still something real that could happen.

Indeed, they didn't really seem to get how this information was rocking Ichiban. "So it's fine if we just pick the ones we want to learn, right?" Rina asked. Rose had already gone through the least offensive one and was marvelling at the golden sparkles that ensued when she cast Cure on herself.

"Yeah, knock yourselves out," he agreed, seeing no reason not to let his friends have a free pick even if he wasn't sure about restricting others, or even how they'd go about restricting them.

Everyone seemed to like the Cure and Life spells, Otherwise Naaza tended towards a balance of debuffs and defensive buffs, while Rina favoured more direct damage spells and offensive buffs.

After enjoying the ability to cast a Cure spell, Rose not only asked Ichiban to give her chakra, she snagged a bunch of mostly buffing spells.

"Okay, so obviously anyone can do a lot of damage with most of these, but it's not really different than the spells and weapons that are currently around," Ichiban said once they'd organised everything. "It's just Toad and Break that seem the most sketchy." Permanently turning someone into an amphibian or a statue was pretty messed up, and it wouldn't be any good to use on monsters since it'd prevent getting their magic stones or item drops.

"Curses have a bad reputation, but many respectable adventurers have spells that work similarly," Rose said, nodding her head towards Naaza. Ichiban had seen plenty more during the Colosseum showcase to know nothing else here was going to be that unusual for Orario.

"What about teleporting to another dimension?" Naaza asked.

And that was a tricky one. Giving everyone a way to teleport out of the Dungeon would be great, but banishing people to another dimension just felt messed up, to say nothing of how it could be used for unsolvable murders by getting rid of the body.

"I think we're going to have to test it," he decided. "I mean, if someone can teleport back from there it's not as bad, right?"

Everyone stared at him for a moment long enough to make him feel foolish and Rina asked, "But what if you can't?"

"Well, I'll have water and stuff, if I wait long enough I might just get another random thing that'll get me out? If we put this spell out there someone's gonna cast it on someone sooner or later, it's better if we know right now what'll happen," he insisted. Besides, maybe it would send him to Earth.

He'd still come back even if it did, just to let everyone know. And also to then stop anyone using the spell because Tokyo was not ready for a swarm of banished Dungeon monsters.

"Alright, I learned it," Naaza relented to his mode of experimental testing, "But if you're not back in a few minutes we'll have to figure this all out without you, so you better be right." The two of them stood up facing each other and Ichiban braced himself as Naaza stared at him and said, "Teleport!"

Whooosh!

Okay, definitely not Earth. Ichiban found himself floating in what looked like a kaleidoscope. Mostly silver and shifting like a pool of liquid mercury, with other colours merging in and out like those puddles you'd see at the gas station. Which was a lot of similes to say he was in basically how most video-games would depict the inter-dimensional void.

He could breathe though, so that was nice. He didn't see anything beyond the shifting vista in any direction, nor could he actually move. His limbs worked just fine he just had nothing to push off of, and it wasn't like water he could swim through. He wasn't really here to sight-see anyway. "Teleport!" he cast.

Whooosh!

Pain.

"Augh!" he staggered as he reappeared exactly where he'd been before, feeling something twist in his insides. Right, it hurts to cast it for transport, and he forgot to pass it on to the magic stone he still had on him from the other day. Still, it quickly passed as he gave everyone a thumbs up.

Spoiler: Path of the Dragon

400 – Path of the Dragon
Dark Souls: War of the Ancients
Though they were defeated in that most ancient of battles, people of all stripes have dreamed of transforming into a dragon themselves, to wield the power of those stone scaled entities that predated even the gods. But these would typically be just that, dreams. Under you, though, such dreams can be made a reality. You know how to initiate a process in others that will transform them into true dragons, though their strength, as well as the speed of the transformation itself depends entirely on how much power you use to kick start this process.

And as if to celebrate this achievement, another bullshit power just dropped on him. And how ironic given the tattoo he wears on his back… the Dragonfish, on the cusp of becoming a dragon itself, and now he has the power to turn others into dragons.

He didn't think it would be useful around here the same way chakra was. Dragons might be badass, but becoming a giant mythological being would necessitate a lot of lifestyle adjustments for most people.

"Did it hurt? You were only gone a few seconds," Naaza said, still standing there.

"Yeah, I forgot casting Teleport for transport drains your health, it's okay," he waved her off. "The other dimension's freaky but if you can teleport you can get back out, so if someone gets banished someone else could bring them back from the same spot. I think that makes that one safe enough to spread around – it's actually better if more people know it."

"Yeah, I'm gonna forget Curse so I can learn Teleport. I probably don't need Curse and Mini. Who ever imagined having too many spells to keep track of? Is this what it's like for Nine Hells?" Rina asked, reaching over to grab the scroll containing teleport so she could adjust her spells known.

Well it was even worse for Ichiban. He wasn't even sure he was going to get much use out of these Final Fantasy spells when he had so many others to play with, not to mention the simple pleasure of having punches with area of effect damage.

"So you want to put aside Toad and Break, and make every other spell freely available for anyone who wants them?" Rose asked to get things back on track, picking out those two scrolls to separate from the rest. "This is a lot more complicated than when you personally gave chakra to everyone. Because these are physical objects, anyone could potentially steal one. And if chakra gets a reaction from countries outside of Orario, it's going to be far worse with this. I'm not sure they can be kept safe without having a full time guard of first rank adventurers. I'll have to talk to my boss again, and… his boss, and you know how it goes, we've already done all this just a few days ago," she concluded, trying to hide her weariness.

"Yeah. At least with chakra I can just control who I give it to, but we can't really make these available for people to use and impossible to be stolen," Ichiban admitted. Hell even if they put them in the most secure vault anyone could build, someone like Ottar could just punch his way in and grab what he wanted. The only way to truly keep these safe would be to dump them somewhere no one knew about, and that would make it impossible for anyone to get any actual good use out of them.

"It's going to be hard to organise today because of Monster Feria, but can you hold onto the scrolls for now? I don't really want to be responsible for losing them if something happens before we've even set everything up," Rose admitted, pulling over the paper on which she'd been writing details of all the spells they'd gone over. "If you come to the Pantheon late tomorrow we'll hopefully have an idea of how we want to organise this. It might be a permanent reading room here or at Babel."

Ichiban kind of didn't want to carry around such a big sack of scrolls, but Rose was right that leaving it with someone else was asking for trouble. That's when an idea struck. "Hey Naaza, can you banish me again?"

She didn't even question it, just cast the spell and sent him to the shadow realm. What a star! Once there he took out a coin, which he discovered floated in place when let go of – in fact there was no momentum, if he pushed them they'd stop in place the moment his hand left contact. Another painful teleport back and he picked up the sack full of scrolls and had Naaza banish him once more. The coin was still there, confirming that relative space was constant between dimensions. He set the bag aside and recovered his coin, before teleporting back to the Guild. The pain wasn't even that bad when you got used to it.

"Okay," he dusted off his hands. "Now the only way to get them back is if one of us three banishes the other in this spot, and then the other teleports back with the sack." Naaza and Rina looked astounded at his quick grasp of exploiting teleportation magic for safe storage, while the ever-efficient Rose took a piece of chalk and drew a circle around Ichiban's feet to mark the spot without missing a beat.

"So we're just going to go back into the Dungeon? After that?" Rina asked, a bit stupefied.

"Unless Ichiban gets another world-shattering blessing before we reach the middle floors," Naaza said, showing both an ability to roll with the punches and basic pattern recognition.

"Yeah, I guess we'll see… hopefully we don't come back to give you more work, Rose," he said, a bit embarrassed.

The lycanthrope – he was able to tell the difference now, smiled though. "I won't say it doesn't have its challenges, but you're doing more to raise adventurer life expectancy than anyone else I've advised. Please be safe in the Dungeon though – if you don't come back after all this I'm going to be very cross," that smile faded and she gave him a severe look.

He nodded in the face her pressure, a different kind than what Takemikazuchi emanated during their spar but all the same making clear the resolve of a civil servant. "We'll be safe. C'mon, don't you want to test out those new spells?" he asked Rina and Naaza, who both seemed enthused by that as they got up to leave the Pantheon.

But as they reached Babel, Ichiban saw a familiar pigeon walking around by the fountain, and he couldn't help but feel an itch to try out that new ability.

"Hey Pearl, do you want to be a dragon?"

Naturally Pearl understood what a dragon was, just the same as she understood every other term Ichiban used when speaking to her despite the gulf in language and brain power. Magic was just like that.

"Hell yeah I do, sonny!"

Yeah, for a human, definitely lifestyle adjustments. For an animal? Straight upgrade, no question.

Of course turning her into a dragon in the middle of the city would surely cause a panic, even during Monster Feria, and getting Yankimaru in and out of the Dungeon was tricky enough before the mafuba, so it would be better to do this once they got deep enough to where the floors really opened up.

She flew over and perched on his shoulder, Naaza and Rina giving her a look. "Didn't your pigeon have a hard time with the bad bats last time? It'll be even less safe when we go to the middle floors," Rina warned.

"Oh no, trust me. She'll be fine," Ichiban grinned, leading the way into the Dungeon for the second time today. It was more like a fast walk now, as he didn't want to dislodge Pearl, but it was still faster time than they usually made walking around with Yankimaru. Especially with Naaza simply shooting every monster that came into sight, her arrows hitting with enough force to blow apart the upper floor monsters.

She'd previously one-shot them anyway, but it definitely seemed more visceral with the new bow.

There were no surprises and nothing really slowed them down until they reached the misty tenth floor. Wide open as it was, there was plenty of space even if Ichiban wasn't quite sure precisely how much would be needed.

"Alright, you all want to see something cool?" he asked as Pearl fluttered down onto the floor amidst the faded white grass. With the two adventurers watching curiously, he crouched over Pearl with his hand on her back and focused, pushing power into her. It wasn't the same as when he gave someone chakra, it followed a different path and drew from him fully rather than through the pathways of his chakra system, but it wasn't hard to see some similarity. And rather than being a simple change like flipping a switch, it was more like turning a dial, one that he could keep twisting around and around, drawing more power from himself.

That seemingly bottomless well of power he'd found in his chakra finally started to show its limits as Ichiban went all out. The more power he used, the stronger Pearl would become, and the faster the transformation would be. Since he had those recovery potions, he held basically nothing back, and for the first time in several days, he actually felt tired, that pounding ache in his head that he knew from over-use of his magic reasserting itself.

But oh did it show results.

From a pigeon that could fit on the palm of his hand, Pearl grew to titanic proportions. Feathers merged into her skin which grew thick crag-like scales of the same white hue as her feathers, almost crystalline and iridescent where the glow of his hero's light spell reflected off her. Little twig-like bird legs grew into something more feline, matched by a pair of forelimbs that grew from nothing. Her wings spread out above her now ridged back, smoother membranes held between rocky ridges. The bird's beak split open into an enormous maw filled with huge predatory teeth as her head grew, a crest over the back of it like a dinosaur's.

Naaza had fallen on her butt while Rina had dropped her hammer and was pointing stupidly at the newly created dragon, her mouth opening and closing like a fish.

"Haha, those loud bats are gonna get it now!"

Dragon or not, it seemed Pearl's mind was still pigeon enough for his animal communication powers to work, though she verbalised that comment with a roar that made the mist visibly ripple from its power, echoing through the Dungeon and no doubt causing everyone else on this and the adjacent floors to crap themselves.

Rina made an inarticulate noise as the roar died down while Naaza scrambled to her feet. "Ichiban, warn us properly!" she gasped out.

"You turned a fucking pigeon into a floor boss!" Rina managed to find her voice, eyes wide as saucers.

"Yeah, she looks amazing, doesn't she?" Ichiban grinned, looking up at the bus-sized western dragon and taking out his mana restoration potion to drink, fully recovering him from the drain.

Yet as the echoing reverberations of Pearl's roar died down, they were answered by a loud crackling noise of shattering rock. Eyes tracked up to the ceiling where the surface of the Dungeon crumbled away, Ichiban feeling the magic of the Dungeon concentrating as it heard the challenge in Pearl's roar and gathered something to respond.

The glow of twin red eyes stared down at them, framed by a skeletal saurian head. It tumbled free, seemingly ungainly and out of control, before narrow limbs ending in long razor-sharp claws fanned out, adjusting its tumble to land on its feet, a whip-like tail snaking out behind it. Like Pearl it seemed almost made of rock, but its form was more skeletal and dark, like a nightmare dinosaur crossed with an acid-spitting alien.

"Oh shit-" Rina started to say before the monster hurled itself at them. Sparks few from Pearl's rocky scales as claws raked across them, the monster's body twisting like a corkscrew as it shot through the air ripping an attack through the newly-minted dragon's flank but continuing on to the three smaller figures beside it.

Chakra coursed through Ichiban without him having to think about it, his automatic reflexes kicking in as he pivoted his body to avoid the claws coming his way and snapped out a punch that let off a loud boom of displaced air before it cracked into the creature's ribs, launching it off course and causing it to tumble and crush several of the dead looking trees that littered this floor.

Unfortunately it took Rina with it, her arm having been snapped into the jaw of the beast, its speed surprising even the experienced level three adventurer. Naaza had been lucky she'd been further behind Ichiban, as his instinctive strike had hit it before any of those claws or teeth could have reached her.

The amazon screamed as she tumbled in the grasp of the flailing monster, serrated teeth grinding against her shoulder, but still she managed a chakra-infused punch with her other hand, the mystical energy making up for her lack of leverage and poor positioning to at least ensure the impact was felt, cracking its surface. But like a pit bull, its jaw was locked and it left Rina to bounce helplessly in its grasp as it skittered back onto its feet.

"Stop!" Naaza shouted, not a command but a spell. A glowing clock started to appear in place around the monster, but it leapt into the air with a scream from Rina as she was carried along for the ride, escaping the spell's effect even as the clock showed hands ticking slower and freezing. Up the thing went, flipping in mid air to lock its claws into the ceiling, sticking there like a spider.

Pearl's wings beat, a powerful draft of air caused as the creature on the ceiling bobbed its head in a curiously avian fashion before its mouth opened, allowing Rina to fall with her blood-drenched and mangled arm freed. She tumbled helplessly in the air and the creature tensed before pushing off, its sole attention now on finishing the falling adventurer before she could even hit the ground ten metres below.

Ichiban finished his own spell in time, channelled through the Hero Mage's Wand at full speed, losing some power from him not chanting but making up for it in speed to come at just the right moment. "Hold it!" he yelled, unleashing a barrage of freezing projectiles, a spell he'd learned from an elf adventurer that she'd boasted would freeze any monster solid and make them easy prey… but she must never have fought one of these because they bounced right off, flying every which way. A few impacted Pearl, blue frost spreading over her white scales but not seeming to bother her over-much, other than her general distaste for the entire situation.

Fortunately that distaste was firmly aimed at the creepy monster that had just slashed her scales seconds ago, and with a kick of her legs and beat of her wings, Pearl soared into the air, crashing into the monster before it could complete its descending attack on Rina. The two landed with another thunderous crash and splintering of trees as their bodies rolled over and crushed everything in their path while Rina impacted the ground with less fanfare but likely a lot more pain.

It was easy to forget, as skittish as pigeons acted around humans, they could be scrappy little fuckers. Who wouldn't be skittish around things so much bigger than you? But right now Pearl was the biggest creature in the area.

"Don't use magic, it reflects it!" he warned Naaza, though she was already running towards Rina, a different spell in mind.

"Cure!" Naaza yelled with her hands pushed out, golden sparkles settling over Rina as the amazon's eyes widened in realisation and she mimicked Naaza, doubling up the healing effect and causing flesh to knit back together, bone shifting back to its proper alignment as she let out a hiss of pain.

"It's a fucking juggernaut!" the amazon got out as she surged to her feet, her arm mostly repaired but still oozing blood, though the Dia Fratel Ichiban had been charging up on his wand came through and fixed it the rest of the way.

By now Pearl and the now identified juggernaut had separated, steaming blood leaking between the dragon's scales from wounds it had suffered in the tumble from the other monster's razor sharp claws. The juggernaut looked banged up, cracks and dents all over its form but it was still moving, skittering in an unnatural way that reminded Ichiban of how creepy the imps on this floor were.

Pearl was bigger, and undoubtedly more powerful from what he could sense. The juggernaut felt different than any monsters he'd seen yet – stronger than the plant-snake things, but its power felt weirdly unstable compared to every other monster, like every second was wearing it down. That didn't change the fact that it had clearly been built for a purpose, while Pearl was a behemoth being operated by the brain of a scrappy pigeon. Her head lunged out more to peck than bite, and she didn't use her claws at all.

Rina had started running now, back towards her hammer, while Naaza grimly raised her bow and loosed arrows in quick succession that crackled with lightning. Despite its seeming focus on Pearl, the juggernaut twisted its body and moved with jerky speed that saw it evading some. Those that hit however blasted rocky chunks out of its body, and as slender as it was if she could hit its neck or a limb she'd likely sever something.

A force-field sprung into place in front of Naaza, allowing her to shoot through while protecting her if the juggernaut were to break off and come her way. Pearl was getting distressed, rearing back and flapping her wings, the sheer movement of air sending the juggernaut skittering back and knocking more of Naaza's arrows off course, and Ichiban cast a spell of his own before surging forward.

"Tempest!"

He didn't use the hand-sign for air, but simply saying that word while his wand automated the spell was enough to give it a boost over what he could do normally, and now with wind circulating to augment his movement, chakra flowing through his limbs, and his amulet doubling his speed in a straight line?

Spoiler: Unforgotten Nemesis

100 - Unforgotten Nemesis
HighSchool DxD
Monster tamers are those that know how to bend the will of lesser monsters and even sentient ones, to make their bidding. Naturally, a powerful being telling a lesser one what to do is not what I'm talking about, but rather being a good hand at training less intelligent ones, such as Lamias, Yuki-onnas, and various other creatures, even when they are stronger than you in a direct fight. Perhaps with enough time and practice you will achieve the level of skill needed to bind powerful and intelligent creatures, such as Dragons, to you, but it will certainly require a lot of practice.

He hit the thing like a bomb going off.

It had already reacted, twisting and scything its tail out to try and stab him with its bladed tip, but that didn't happen when the metal robot control rod struck the juggernaut's body it went through just as easily as Ichiban's fist had gone through the goblin earlier in the day. The shock-wave of impact tearing its body apart from inside and causing it to explode outwards with the majority of its body shredding apart as it flew off into the mist its different parts leaving whirling patterns cut through the pervasive white fog with their passing.

Also the durable brass looking rod had a nasty looking bend near its tip, yet as he looked at it he felt the object trying to automatically pull on his mana, which he obliged and got to see it straighten itself back out.

"Damn. What the fuck was that?" he asked, sure Rina had named it, and as names went it was in fact pretty descriptive, but still the whole encounter had been shocking in its speed and ferocity.

"That's what you get! Don't underestimate an old lady!"

Pearl was at least basking in her triumph, and while she'd been mostly ineffective she'd definitely saved Rina at one point so he'd let her have it. His ability to train animals had seemingly expanded during the fight to do better with monsters too, and he knew that was going to be seeing a lot of use to have the newly-minted dragon realise her actual potential.

"Juggernaut," Rina repeated as she jogged over, "Something the Dungeon spawns when its structure is threatened. Like setting off a huge amount of bombs all over a floor. They're the stuff of horror stories."

"It must have taken the creation of a new type of monster as some kind of challenge," Naaza suggested as she came over. "We're lucky you've gotten a lot stronger, Ichiban, if you'd done this a few days ago I don't think Rina and I could have won, even with… the dragon," she looked up at Pearl with faint disbelief written over her face.

Well they'd have had Yankimaru too, he was pretty badass! Might as well be standing still next to something as fast as the juggernaut though, that was crazy. He was certainly lucky he had reflexes that could handle fighting without conscious thought, because just mentally trying to keep up with the speed of that kind of fight was taxing on his brain, lacking whatever magic made adventurers able to keep up with their own insane speed, and not having worked out a way to compensate with chakra.

"Yeah, Pearl was definitely stronger than that thing, but she's still thinking like a pigeon," Ichiban said, calling the dragon over and first using a healing spell he'd learned from another adventurer. Dia Fratel was great for humans, but the way it worked over a radius meant it wasn't really practical for a giant dragon. As the wounds sliced between her scales closed up, he touched her snout and gave her a chakra system of her own. He could probably train her how to use it at least a little bit, and if nothing else it seemed her theoretical power as far as he could sense went up. He wasn't sure she could really beat someone like Riveria in a straight fight due to the lack of intelligence and experience, but the metaphorical numbers were on her side.

"At least the healing magic works," Rina said, rolling her shoulder and looking in distaste at all the blood still drenching her arm. Ichiban handed her the endless water bottle and she gladly rinsed herself off, only grunting at the fact the water bottle was in fact endless before she gave it back. "You know she's going to cause a panic with anyone that sees her though, right?"

"We'll tell them she's tame. You know, like what they have for Monster Feria," Ichiban insisted, patting Pearl's snout which was still in range as she loomed over the group. "People got used to Yankimaru!"

"Yeah, what even happened to him?! You teased something back the other day when we went down with Mord but never explained!" Rina blurted out as his reassuring words only brought forth another concern.

They may as well get the whole squad, why not? "He's in here. Watch," he took out his totally-not-a-pokeball and peeled the seal from it before popping it open and causing three metres of giant brass robot to appear, everyone jumping back in surprise. Which in Pearl's case caused the ground to shake. "I can put Pearl in one too for when we leave the Dungeon so she can get out easily."

"That's what you had them made for! I kept wondering!" Naaza said as she recovered, staring at the segmented sphere with intensity as Ichiban scooped it back up and into his pocket.

"Anyway, c'mon. With five of us we should be able to handle anything – I want to train Pearl so she can fight properly, and you can practice all the new Final Fantasy magic on the monsters while we head deeper?" Ichiban suggested, itching to help Pearl realise her full potential after investing so much into her. Seeing a bunch more magic at work would be nice too!

Weirdly they did not actually run into any monsters on the tenth floor before they found some stairs going deeper, though these were big enough for even Pearl to descend with little difficulty. Naaza reminded him of the new monsters they'd likely see down here, and Ichiban couldn't help but feel a little excited about pitting Pearl against another dragon, even if 'infant dragon' made it feel a bit like bullying.

The first attack however came from a swarm of familiar bad bats, their disorienting screeching no more pleasant than it had ever been. It didn't stop Naaza from shooting them, and Rina tried out some of her new magic with her yells of, "Thunder!" "Fire!" and "Blizzard!" causing blasts of the classic RPG element triad to explode amidst the monsters.

"Okay, try like pulling in deep from your belly and then breathing out, just think like you're trying to spark something. Fire! Like that!"

Ichiban spent the fight trying to coach Pearl through how to use her fire breath, drawing inspiration from some of Rina's magic. It was pretty late to the party and that last bat already had an arrow with its name on it, but Pearl did manage to expel a ferocious stream of flame from her maw which blasted up towards the ceiling, cracking rock and burning away the mist for some distance with the sheer heat expelled.

"I didn't know I could do that! Everyone better look out, I'm going to do it a lot now!"

"Alright! She should be able to do that faster next time, finding the right trigger was a bit tricky," he explained to Naaza and Rina who were staring at the primal gout of elemental fury now tapering off.

"I was just starting to feel good about my magic too…" Rina muttered.

That reminded him and he showed Rina the hand sign they'd worked out that synchronised with fire spells so she could try that next time. Could a dragon do hand signs? He looked speculatively at Pearl's enormous crag-like claws and decided to put off experimenting with that until she had a bit more of the basics down.

She did have a lot of fun batting around the hard armoured when they came across some of those next, Naaza practising some of her magic to Stop and Slow the hard-shelled armadillo-like monsters, Rina getting some practice with Osmose to restore her mana from the monsters that were mostly helpless to do anything except serve as practice for Pearl as she learned that her new forelimbs were actually good for more than just walking around on.

"What the hell is that?!"

Of course it was inevitable they'd run into more adventurers down here, a party of mostly humans plus one cat-person in mismatched armour staring as Pearl caught a rolled up hard armoured in her jaw and bit down until something gave way with a crunch, black mist escaping out between her teeth and a magic stone tinking to the ground.

"Hey don't worry, she's tame. Just out training my dragon!" Ichiban gave them a thumbs up while Rina cast her Mini spell to shrink one of the hard armoured down to the size of a more conventional armadillo. It let out an almost adorable squeak right before a considerably less adorable splat marked a draconic hand smashing down on it.

"Uh, yeah. G-good going, Ichiban, sir! We'll just get out of your hair!" the guy in the lead bowed hurriedly before leading his group off in another direction through the mist.

"See, they were fine with it," he reassured his companions as the last hard armoured crumbled under a crushing swat from Pearl, the remaining magic stones theirs for the taking.

"It does help that everyone knows you now," Naaza opined as she did the gathering. "These new spells are really good. They're not the most powerful, but with short chants and no backlash… I might swap one out for Osmose later, it'll save money on mind potions if I'm going to be using them a lot."

"It's great!" Rina agreed with a grin. "Having so many spells, and still being able to change around for more if we need to, this is luxury even first tier adventurers can't dream of!"

They got plenty more practice with them as they pushed through the eleventh floor and made their way down to the twelfth, where the mist was so thick one standing by Pearl's head wouldn't be able to even see her tail. Ichiban's magic sensing was good enough to keep track of everyone though, and spot monsters before they became visible to his eyes.

They did find an infant dragon, but it was already being fought, and by a recognisable group at that. Takemikazuchi's familia were engaged, with the dragon being held in place by one girl's gravity spell as everyone else harried its flanks. It was trying to breathe fire at the spellcaster only to be interrupted by Ouka slamming a chakra-boosted axe-slash through its neck, severing it and briefly showing the liquid flame spewing aimlessly out of its gullet before the monster faded into black mist.

Fresh off their victory against one dragon, they reacted with surprise to the arrival of another far larger and more intimidating one, but luckily Ichiban was able to catch their attention. "Hey, relax. This one's tame, she's with me!"

"Lord Ichiban!" Ouka bowed with perhaps excessive respect, the other members of his team following his example. "Forgive us, our blood was up from battle. Truly, that is a magnificent tamed monster!"

"I've never seen anything like it, is that a dragon from the deep floors?" the side-ponytail girl asked, staring up at Pearl as everyone crowded closer to get a better look through the mist.

"Not exactly, her name's Pearl and she's one of a kind," Ichiban answered, patting Pearl's snout where she'd lowered her head to look at everyone, the yellowish-brown eyes set amidst her intimidating visage of rocky white scales still having a trace of pigeon in them if you knew to look for it.

"Truly an impressive servant, Lord Ichiban! Lord Takemikazuchi was right to speak so highly of you!" she said in a weird of mix of excited and formal.

"I thought I was missing out on Monster Feria by coming to the Dungeon today, but I bet they don't have anything like this up there!" Chigusa seconded, edging closer. "Can I, can I touch Pearl?"

"Yeah, sure. She doesn't mind," Ichiban reassured them, psychically reassuring Pearl too to put up with it as the girls of the Takemikazuchi familia started patting at her rough white scales with admiration and excitement while Ouka and the guys stood back and did their best to look like they were above it all.

"Hah, these kids are showing the proper respect, not like the ones I usually see hanging around that tower and walking right past me like they're so big..."

Everyone made introductions as they hung around for a little bit, but soon Ouka spoke up. "Come on, we shouldn't hold up Lord Ichiban any longer, and we have our own battles to fight. There's less adventurers today because of Monster Feria so that means more magic stones and more training for us, lets get back to it."

They went their separate ways, with Rina wryly reflecting, "They didn't even care about Yankimaru. He's already yesterday's news."

"Ahh, he doesn't have an ego, he's fine with it," Ichiban chuckled, the group finding a nearby staircase that left this misty floor behind, and opened out into what Naaza called the Cave Labyrinth. No more grass or trees, no more fog, though the air still had a moist humid quality to it. Otherwise it was just bare rock, similar to how the first few floors looked except with a more expansive layout rather than the straightforward tunnels the Dungeon started with.

It was still big enough for Pearl to walk around comfortably, and that range of motion was soon needed as the walls cracked and burst forth a swarm of monsters. Not the huge number of killer ants from the monster party they'd endured before, but still more than the number of goblins that would typically burst from the walls up above. And unlike goblins these were were giant man-sized praying mantises made up of refractive white crystal, smooth but jagged, a contrast to the more rough hewn rock of Pearl's white scales.

"Crystal mantises, don't use magic!" Rina shouted, though she actually did use magic. Just on herself, as a dull red aura surrounded her when she yelled, "Berserk!" and smashed one of the mantises to shrapnel with a broad swing of her hammer, ducking under the scything claw of another.

"Yankimaru, kill the bugs!" Ichiban ordered, smoothly dodging one that came for him and severing its arm with a retaliatory swing of his wand, the shock-wave of that attack causing crystal to crack all over the rest of the thing's body as it stumbled and fell and broke apart into black mist.

The robot's hammer arm proved more than up to the task of crushing the mantises with powerful strikes while their bladed arms drew up sparks across his body when they struck. But most of them were converging on the far larger target of Pearl, swarming her with one having even landed on her back and sliced into the base of a wing before an arrow from Naaza knocked it off with a crater blown into its slender body, evaporating to mist before it even hit the ground.

Ichiban simply let his reflexes take over, dodging on instinct and counter-attacking anything that got too close while his attention was actually on Pearl, psychically calming her down and directing her as she got freaked out by the aggressive mantises swarming over her. Their sharp claws struggled to penetrate her scales as easily as the juggernaut's had, but it was still clearly upsetting and distracting to be so beset on all sides.

"Turn towards me, sweep out your tail behind you!"

Pearl used tail sweep as she bounded around with her legs lifting off the ground and landing with a thunderous crash, the scything whip of her tail sending several mantises scattering like ten pins, two crushed and broken outright while the others went sprawling and dug their claws against the ground to recover. Those ones didn't get to recover as Naaza shot them down, while Rina and Yankimaru were doing a solid job of keeping this side clear, the last mantis ending up crushed between the jaws of a huge dragon.

"Whew, nice going! That's a fun spell!" Rina cheered, the glow of her berserk buff fading. As if she needed the help to be more of a wrecking ball.

"Gather up the stones quickly," Naaza advised, doing just that. "Monsters spawn faster and in greater numbers here. Since they're stronger too, it's a big step up from the last floors."

She wasn't wrong. They hadn't made it far through the caverns when an enormous gross toothy worm looking thing burst out of the ground. They'd been forewarned enough by the vibrations that no one was above it, and in fact it met a full force flame breath from Pearl that basically vaporised it before they could get much of a proper look. It would've made a good distraction for the band of rabbit looking things that came racing around a bend to charge at them. They didn't have the horns of those needle rabbits from a few floors back, but they were bigger and just as mean. Some of them even carried crude looking stone axes as they leapt into the storm of arrows that Naaza met them with.

That was the pattern as they pushed through the Cave Labyrinth, monsters frequently erupting from the environment to attack in tandem with ones already wandering around, a constant stream of attacks that honestly made Ichiban wonder how well they'd have done if they'd come down here a few days ago with Mord's group like originally planned.

Rina still basically one-shot everything, but he wasn't sure if Naaza would were she using her old bow. She'd taken a few shots to put down that minotaur before after all. His own reflexes and chakra certainly saved his hide a few times when the erupting monsters swarmed out too close. But with those reflexes it was always easy to dodge, and he kept his focus on directing both Yankimaru and Pearl to contribute to the fights, the robot as ever working with machine-like efficiency while Pearl steadily improved her reactions and her control over her new body, growing into the potential of being a dragon.

Spoiler: Combo

100 – Combo
Worm CYOA v17
Your melee attacks get stronger in a geometric progression the longer you attack the same target without stopping. You have to continue hitting your opponent with pauses no longer than 5 seconds between the strikes or your combo will be broken.

He felt a new ability come in as they explored, one that would make his melee attacks grow stronger the more he kept hitting the same target. Since he was still one-shotting everything here it wasn't exactly tested, but he had a feeling it would combine exceptionally well with his automatic reflexes.

For now though, they kept fighting their way deeper into the Dungeon, the constant swarms of monsters it threw at them a threat that never ended, even if none were close to the danger represented by that one juggernaut. They scarcely ran into other adventurers, but those they did had the same initial freak-out on seeing Pearl before calming down and accepting Ichiban's explanation.

Soon they were fighting minotaurs in their native habitat, Naaza confirming fully the power of her improved bow as she was able to kill them in a single shot with lightning arrows or a particularly well-aimed normal one. Even if not well aimed, each arrow still inflicted grievous wounds that would surely hinder the fighting ability of anything so injured.

Finally they emerged into an enormous chamber where Pearl would be able to actually take flight, which Rina introduced as, "The Wall of Grief. This is where the Monster Rex Goliath spawns. Every two weeks, the big familias have to schedule around it because it's great training for those at higher levels, and it needs to be cleared so the lower ones have a chance at getting to Rivira. I actually ranked up after the Ishtar familia fought it about a year ago," she finished proudly.

"Is it going to come out any time soon?" Ichiban asked, feeling his blood pump faster at the thought of battling a huge boss in this kind of arena.

"I think it already did yesterday, the Ganesha familia had it this time," Rina admitted with a shrug. "It's a great fight though – it's more than twice the size of Yankimaru, and kind of fights like him too. A bit slow, but all raw power and toughness. I'd love to see Pearl tangle with it, that'd be a fight for the ages!" she looked up with admiration at the dragon which under Ichiban's direction had turned into a deadly combatant during their descent through the Cave Labyrinth.

He would've liked to see that too. But well, "There's probably nastier stuff even deeper she can show off against. For now, lets finally check out Rivira," he led the way through the boss room, the quietest part of their journey in hours, no other monsters intruding on this hallowed ground even as the boss who was meant to guard it was regenerating somewhere.

Finally, he'd reach the first safe floor of the Dungeon, a significant milestone on his plans to reach the bottom. It'd be nice to see a part of the Dungeon that had been turned to habitation, with no monsters or other trouble at the bottom of the stairs ahead, they could all enjoy a well earned break.

Ichiban, stop, everyone's still grappling with chakra and you're dropping an entire Final Fantasy spell list on them too?!

The restriction of only being able to know 16 of those spells is a restriction from the game I added to make it more interesting than just being able to give everyone all the spells. Also need to reconcile the whole thing between Death killing enemies but only KOing party members. It probably puts you in a near death unconscious state to split the difference. Insert your Princess Bride references here.

Good news is Pearl got to come back and be relevant again, hurray for lovers of avians, dragons, and obatarians alike.

Bad news is after I used her appearance in chapter 4 to vividly demonstrate how terrifying a level 3 adventurer can be, Rina got unceremoniously dumpstered by the juggernaut to show how scary it was. I now fully understand how the writers of Star Trek: The Next Generation felt whenever they looked at Worf.

Click to shrink...

 

[XZR-2]

Could the mini spell be used on Pearl to shrink her?

 

[Ebiris]

Could the mini spell be used on Pearl to shrink her?

Click to shrink...

It could, any spell does friendly fire. Though mini is one that ends after battle under Final Fantasy rules, so I'm treating it as having a very short duration.

 

[Kolarthecool]

Nice. TFTC. A pigeon turned into a dragon sounds terrifying. There's gonna be a lot of work there satisfying her new dietary needs and making sure no one tries to kill her in the city.

 

[Ebiris]

Nice. TFTC. A pigeon turned into a dragon sounds terrifying. There's gonna be a lot of work there satisfying her new dietary needs and making sure no one tries to kill her in the city.

Click to shrink...

Dark Souls dragons seem to be kind of eternal mineral-based lifeforms that don't need to eat, although they can if they want to and it can fuck them up if they get obsessed with it, as seen with the gaping dragon. Given she still has a pigeon brain, she's definitely still going to want to eat, so Demeter might need to plant a few more fields for growing nuts and legumes.

 

[Kolarthecool]

Dark Souls dragons seem to be kind of eternal mineral-based lifeforms that don't need to eat, although they can if they want to and it can fuck them up if they get obsessed with it, as seen with the gaping dragon. Given she still has a pigeon brain, she's definitely still going to want to eat, so Demeter might need to plant a few more fields for growing nuts and legumes.

Click to shrink...

Oh, nice. That's better than it could have been. I was imagining her needing a full sheep or two daily.

 

[TuskenGuy]

Love the story. Binged the whole thing last night. I think making the protagonist earnest, but maybe not the brightest, was a good call for this kind of system. It's easier to question the decisions of a more rational main character for how they use and adapt to perks.

I do think this latest chapter was the first time I saw hints of the snowball problem that most CF/CG stories have. We just got chakra and they've barely scratched the surface with it, but now they've got an entirely new magic library that kind of steals the impact of the first. It's like how Kendrick dropped his diss track immediately after Drake's. It doesn't negate it, but it does leave less room to show the audience how the setting adapts to the paradigm shift.

Also, shouldn't the teleport spell be way more of a deal. I thought there wasn't fast travel in the Dungeon?

 

[Ebiris]

Love the story. Binged the whole thing last night. I think making the protagonist earnest, but maybe not the brightest, was a good call for this kind of system. It's easier to question the decisions of a more rational main character for how they use and adapt to perks.

I do think this latest chapter was the first time I saw hints of the snowball problem that most CF/CG stories have. We just got chakra and they've barely scratched the surface with it, but now they've got an entirely new magic library that kind of steals the impact of the first. It's like how Kendrick dropped his diss track immediately after Drake's. It doesn't negate it, but it does leave less room to show the audience how the setting adapts to the paradigm shift.

Also, shouldn't the teleport spell be way more of a deal. I thought there wasn't fast travel in the Dungeon?

Click to shrink...

Teleport is absolutely a big deal, though it's only for leaving so it halves the logistics on an expedition/gives a quick escape from monster parties and pass parades, but it isn't free-roaming fast travel.

As for the snowball thing, you're not entirely wrong. Full disclosure, I have gotten more choosy with perks in recent chapters. I'm not picking things directly, but I'm seeing stuff that I would've taken early on and just shrugging and rerolling because it's not something I want to deal with at this precise moment. On the other hand, even if the Final Fantasy spell library overshadows chakra a bit, it's such a cool thing to add in that I wasn't turning that one down. Doing more than basic physical buffing with chakra is a very long term thing, while these spells being plug and play gives them a very different dynamic to explore, as well as the logistical problems inherent in how to provide access to the spell tomes without them being stolen, so it affords some interesting plot hooks.

 

[The Dude]

He felt a new ability come in as they explored, one that would make his melee attacks grow stronger the more he kept hitting the same target. Since he was still one-shotting everything here it wasn't exactly tested, but he had a feeling it would combine exceptionally well with his automatic reflexes.

Click to shrink...

Well this is certainly understatement, if anything. Geometric growth is insane; even something as tiny as a 1.1x multiplier will double his power in 8 punches, and if you're going full-on redoubling... whooo boy.

Not to mention that five seconds is an eternity in a fight, even before we take super speed into account. With his chakra and Automatic Reflexes? He's going to be going full ATATATATATA on someone and turn them into chunky salsa.

 

[Roroman]

Thanks for the chapter, the spell list is interesting. Good to know you are able to use perks you think work for the story, you have been good at using them in interesting ways and not nerfing them which is a surprise to me since I thought it was fairly common.

 

[Ebiris]

"Woah, it looks like the world tree!"

The eighteenth floor was a huge departure from the twisting rocky caverns they'd spent most of their day working through, as the stairs down from the seventeenth floor opened onto a vast open cavern, the centre of which was dominated by an enormous tree which stretched up towards the ceiling of this cave, completely dwarfing the insignificant looking village beside it.

It wasn't just the tree that stood out though. The ground was covered in grass and foliage like one would see on the surface, and jutting out of the ceiling were huge crystals that shone light like the sun, causing Ichiban to end his own illumination spell as hardly necessary when it was so bright down here. Similar crystal formations jutted out of the ground too, bright blue and contrasting the surrounding plant-life, while several lakes and springs were scattered around.

"Yeah, it takes your breath away the first time you see it," Rina said, smiling at Ichiban's reaction. "We're lucky we made good time, the light here matches the surface so it'll get dark soon and then you wouldn't have this view."

"Finally, all those damp caves are no good for a girl's plumage!"

Ichiban wasn't sure how to tell Pearl she didn't have a plumage any more, so he figured he'd let that one slide. She seemed happy enough spreading out her wings and strutting about on the downward slope that continued leading down towards the town beneath that vast tree.

"It's always a relief when you reach Rivira, whether going down or up," Naaza put in her commentary in her usual placid tone as everyone just took a moment to savour their arrival on the Dungeon's first safe floor. They were still underground, sheer white cliffs in the distance marking the limits of this space, but it was still so vast and brightly lit the brain was fooled into thinking you'd escaped the depths.

They'd seemingly timed their arrival perfectly, as the radiance from above steadily began to dim as the group headed towards the actual town that had been built in the Dungeon. Though the arrival of three people, one giant robot, and one even more giant dragon didn't exactly go unremarked. A hue and cry rose from the walls and a throng of adventurers came charging out ready for battle.

The fact the dragon was just casually walking along with a bunch of people naturally drew some confusion from this initial muster to repel what must have seemed like a monster attack, and Ichiban waved his arms to get attention as he yelled out, "It's okay, she's a tame monster, she's with us!"

Spoiler: Chillbite Ring

50 – Chillbite Ring (merged with Orange Charred Ring)
Dark Souls 3
"One of the bite rings native to Carim. This ring would never grace Friede's hand, for the painting and its frost became her home." Like the other rings produced by the Earl of Carim the Chillbite Ring increases one's resistance to elemental frost when worn, making the biting chill of winter a bit easier to bear. A necessity, for those not used to the painted world's frigid temperatures.

Luckily there were a few people among their number who'd previously gotten chakra from Ichiban, so he was both recognised and well regarded. Though one stranger, an older guy with an eye-patch and a gnarly scar running down his face above and below it, shouldered his way to the front of the crowd. "Oi, you can't just rile the whole town up with your pet dragon, you're gonna have to pay a… a stabling fee, yeah!" he rubbed his hands together after coming up with that one.

"That's Bors. Greedy and opportunistic," Naaza muttered, glowering at the guy.

"Hey, rather than money, how about I pay with something better?" he offered, looking over the crowd. Plenty of people must stay down here long enough they hadn't been to the surface recently, though there were enough down here that he'd given chakra to that word must have spread. "I can give chakra to anyone that wants it, that's gotta be worth something right?" Anything that'd help people survive down here was all good in his book.

Sure, plenty of them looked kind of unsavoury, and he had a feeling this was a good place to hide out from the law in the city above, but he wasn't going to vet and judge everyone over their circumstances. Plenty of adventurers he'd given chakra to at the Colosseum seemed pretty sketchy too. Regardless he'd still help out anyone willing to come down here and carve out a place of safety amidst all these monsters.

With enough people down here already reaping the benefits of the 'skill' as it manifested on their falna and talking it up, it wasn't hard to get interest from the rest, especially since most of the town had already come out to see the dragon.

"Also we want free food and lodging while we're down here, don't pretend like you're not getting a good deal, this is a powerful skill," Naaza bluntly spoke up to secure a little more on their end after everyone had already agreed to go along with Ichiban's plan.

"That's Naaza…" Rina started, but she didn't finish the sentence. She didn't need to, they were all thinking it. Still, there was no denying it was a good deal, and Ichiban soon got to work with the mass of adventurers lining up to take advantage.

Quite a few were about as strong as Naaza, as expected given the difficulty in reaching here normally, although Bors was at the same level as Rina. He was surprised by the number of level one adventurers, but they must have come down as part of larger groups like how Rose had assumed Rina and Naaza would carry Ichiban's worthless ass down here.

There was one woman who stood out though, not just in terms of her power which was closer to Hedin's pre-chakra, but it felt different. While he could perceive differences like getting hints of elemental affinities, all adventurers felt fundamentally similar, just as all gods did – in fact the adventurers felt a bit like reflections of the gods.

Hers was unique. Though she wore a hooded robe, he could make out a womanly figure underneath it, and yellow eyes that looked intently at him when she held her hands out after waiting in line behind the dwarf he'd just given chakra to.

It was similar to a monster's – though not the juggernaut, that one had been unique too. But still different, like she was something completely different from anyone or anything he'd encountered so far.

She'd picked up on his hesitation and was starting to pull her hands back, her voice husky as though from disuse as she asked, "Do you have a problem with me?"

Did he? She was down here mingling with everyone else. She was certainly powerful enough to have killed everyone in Rivira if she wanted to, and she felt dangerous but so did plenty of other adventurers. He decided to stick with his initial plan of just handing it out to everyone, unless he actually saw action worth caring about, he wouldn't deprive someone of an advantage against the Dungeon.

"No, no problem," he reached forward and caught her hands before she could pull completely back. "Just surprised. You're a cut above everyone else here," he said as chakra passed between them and a new avenue of power opened up to her.

"You're perceptive. That's dangerous," she warned, looking at her hands and flexing her fingers as she felt chakra flow through her. That was the first thing most people did actually, it kind of pointed as a clue to the hand sign stuff right from the start. "But I'll thank you for this. It'll be useful."

She moved off and an elf girl took her place, no surprises or drama there and soon Ichiban had run through everyone in Rivira that didn't already have chakra, and he took some time to run through explaining basic chakra circulation and how to use it for fighting and movement to his attentive audience.

By then it was night as the Dungeon reckoned it, the illumination from above still present but more at the level of a bright moonlit night.

Pearl had to be left outside, but she seemed quite happy to just curl up and nap off to the side of the town gates, and Ichiban left Yankimaru with orders to defend her, as well as asking the adventurers who kept lookout from the gates to keep an eye out and stop anyone from messing with the dragon and robot. It should have been self evident, but you never know when a badass adventurer might roll through and think them a worthy challenge to throw down with.

"Hey, I'm gonna visit the brothel, catch up with some friends down here, you want to come along?" Rina invited as the three of them went into Rivira properly at last, narrow lanes of ramshackle looking wooden buildings surrounding the town. It definitely had the look of a shanty-town.

Spoiler: Knight's Bravery

200 – Knight's Bravery
Magic The Gathering - Iconics
Paragons of honor and justice, knights are those soldiers who keep the law in check. Their martial skills are nothing to scoff at either, and neither are your own martial skills. You have been trained as a knight and have excelled under the tutelage. This has made you one of the best knights across the planes, through martial skill alone you could hold your own against entire bands of lesser knights and it would take a knight of legendary status to best you just in martial combat alone, your skill is sufficient to easily be knighted in four of the five courts of Eldraine with a good chance at the fifth. In addition to this skill at arms, you also find it effortless to weave spells in the middle of fighting with a weapon, not needing to pause as beat back enemies.

As he took it all in he felt himself suddenly know how to use a sword, a shield, and a lance. All the weapons of chivalric knights… wasn't bad for a hero either. More than that, it gave him a handle on how to cast spells while fighting at the same time – not really necessary for his quicker spells, but for the ones with long chants that was quite a useful trick!

"Actually I think me and Naaza are gonna get dinner and a place to stay," Ichiban demurred, the party splitting up as Naaza led him to a place that had actually been dug out into the roots of the tree. The food wasn't anything special, but the price couldn't be beat, and they were soon joined by Rina too.

Curiously someone Ichiban must have seen before at the Colosseum appeared, a heavily armoured adventurer in the level four with chakra range, who drew some notice, but as he kept to himself at a table in the corner they saw little need to bother him. Someone else didn't have those reservations, a chienthrope like Naaza, though at Rina's level of power went to converse with him briefly, some kind of exchange happening before she departed.

Ichiban and crew weren't far behind, leaving the bar to find themselves an inn to stay at following Rina's recommendation, one where they availed themselves of the luxury of individual rooms thanks to Naaza's foresight. "Usually parties bunk up in one room, or even just camp outside the walls, because the prices are so unfair here," she'd said, looking expectantly at Rina and Naaza as they all lined up outside their rooms, hanging curtains over the doorways rather than actual doors.

"Thank you Naaza, you saved us a lot of money," Ichiban said with appropriate gratefulness and not letting the words opportunistic or greedy pass his lips.

She nodded with a slightly pleased smile and the three of them bid each other goodnight, Ichiban getting to sleep in the Dungeon for the first time.

Unfortunately they woke up the next day to find the town in uproar. "There's been a murder!" "Someone's been killed!" "It wasn't even the dragon!" and similar such words were spread amidst the crowd massed outside one of the other inns, dug into the rocks at the edge of the town where a blue crystal formation sprouted.

Exchanging looks with Naaza and Rina who both seemed curious, Ichiban shouldered his way through the crowd, clearing a path for them. He had to push chakra through his limbs, but with it he was able to barge aside adventurers as strong as Mord with ease. That first handshake would've gone differently now. "Hey, coming through, make some room!" he growled, adventurers giving way as he pushed his way towards the entrance.

It seemed his reputation was already good for it as initial grumbles gave way to apologies and a more direct path offered right inside, the interior a mixture of carved stone and jagged crystals, the actual furnishing and light fixtures looking weirdly out of place. The arrangements of candelabras with magic stone 'flames' at their tips reminded him a bit of Castlevania, but before he could dig into that Naaza twitched her nose and muttered, "It stinks of blood."

Following Naaza, Ichiban could soon smell that metallic tang himself as they went down a hallway of curtained off rooms and swept it aside to enter one, where they beheld a grisly sight. A muscular man in his underwear lay face-down on the floor beside the bed, except face-down was a misnomer because his head above the jawline had been completely pulverised, a grotesque splatter of blood and gore arced out over the floor and up the nearby wall.

"Oi, you guys! This place is closed off! What the hell are the watch doing?!" Bors yelled irritably from where he was looking at the corpse, a black-haired werewolf man sat on the bed looking down at it as well with a sickly expression.

"Hey, you think we're gonna sit still when there's been a murder?" Ichiban asked. "There's no police or anything down here, so of course we're gonna get involved. You could use the help, right?"

"Tch," Bors clicked his tongue, "Strong guys always think they can throw their weight around and do whatever they feel like."

"Isn't that how you run this town?" Naaza asked, glaring at him through hooded eyes.

"Geh," Bors made an unhappy noise before he rounded on the werewolf, "Oi Viri! Stop sulking there and explain what happened!"

The innkeeper groaned a sickly noise and tore his pallid gaze up from the corpse on the floor, "The guy had a helmet and full armour on so I never even saw what he looked like. Came in last night with a woman, never saw her face past her hood either, but the two of them asked for me to rent them the entire inn."

"Just two of them for the entire inn? That's so frivolous!" Naaza expressed her disapproval, a hand over her mouth.

"Yeah these places though, not much privacy if you want to get freaky," Rina pointed out, rapping her knuckles on the door-frame.

"I didn't have any reason to turn them away, he paid a lot of magic stones. But then this morning, I found this…" Viri gestured unhappily down at the near-headless cadaver.

A guy in full armour? In fact Ichiban could see the pieces by the bed, and they looked familiar. He'd seen them last night, at the bar. He was sure of it.

Bors meanwhile was standing with his hands on his hips, "So yeah, a man gets killed and the woman he was with disappeared, there's no doubt who the criminal is," he declared grandly as if he'd solved the case.

"But you didn't see her face? What about anything else that distinguished her?" Naaza asked, although Ichiban already had a bad feeling. A woman in robes, strong enough to take out a guy this strong?

Viri however did in fact remember something. "Ahh! You know what? She had a really nice body! You could tell even through the robe!" he gestured expansively over his chest to make clear what he was talking about.

"Oh! I think I saw her too now you mention it! I didn't see her face, but there's no doubt that's a fine woman!" Bors agreed, suddenly excited, both men getting heated up as they grinned over the beauty of the apparent murderer, the grisly corpse at their feet seemingly forgotten.

"Yeah, forget it. Shit, I think I know who they're talking about," Ichiban grimaced. "Come on," he turned and led the way out, Rina and Naaza following, the two other men left to their lechery.

"It's the girl you hesitated at yesterday with the chakra, wasn't it?" Rina asked, clasping her hands behind her head as they walked.

"Yeah. Fuck," he swore. "She probably would've killed him chakra or no, she was way stronger. But she felt weird, more like a monster than an adventurer, that's what threw me off."

"And you didn't think to say anything?" Naaza asked, her tone typically bland, but he could feel the accusation.

"I would've if I thought she was gonna kill someone!" he blurted out in frustration. "Hell, I'm different than everyone with their falnas too, I walked in here with a dragon, I wasn't gonna judge. She looked human, she could talk and wasn't causing any trouble. It's not like I was conducting interviews!"

"We don't even know why she killed him, maybe there was a good reason?" Rina ventured. "I mean, fact is lots of adventurers can be pretty mean. I could pick out a few that have body counts just in the berbera."

That didn't really make Ichiban feel better.

"Adventurers are people, and not all of them are nice," Naaza said more gently. "But I'm still worried about how you said she felt like a monster. Some monsters have humanoid parts, but none can pass that well, far less talk and walk around normally among people."

"She could've been hiding something under those robes," Rina pointed out as they emerged back into the fake sunlight of Rivira. Obviously there was no sign of the robed woman among the crowd all milling around and now badgering the group for answers as they stepped back out, but Ichiban pushed his way back through the crowd without answering, the scowl on his face enough to deter anyone from getting too pushy.

That's when he saw her, not the robed woman, but the chienthrope. Dark-haired and with a reddish tone to her skin, her brown ears stuck out more to the side than over the top like Naaza's, and she was sticking to the shadows underneath the supports of one of the taller buildings lifted up above Rivira. Their eyes met and Ichiban started walking towards her, hoping she might have some answers, but she must have seen something she didn't like in his scowl as she looked panicked before turning and running.

Considering she was as strong as Rina, it really made clear what a difference a few days made.

"No! Hey, wait!" he yelled, taking off after her, Rina casting Haste on herself as she followed him, leaving poor Naaza to bring up the rear. The girl was fast, befitting a level three adventurer, but even with her head start she wasn't capable of outrunning the speed Ichiban was now capable of as he caught up just past the gate into town, Pearl and Yankimaru still hanging around nearby thankfully.

"Hold up, we don't mean any trouble!" Ichiban called, reaching out and grabbing her shoulder, his hand snagging on the strap of her satchel and causing it to rip as the leather couldn't hold up to the force of a level three adventurer going full tilt. She let out a squawk as she stumbled to a stop while the bag fell to the ground and burst open, a green sphere about the size of a volleyball rolling out over the uneven ground before coming to a stop against where a bump rose up off the path.

"What the hell is that?!"

Rina cried out as she skidded to a stop just behind him, Ichiban looking down to see that the sphere was glassy and transparent, something inside that looked like some kind of gross monster baby.

"Hey, you're back sweet-cheeks! I waited all night just like you asked, so can I go flying now?"

Not the time, Pearl. Dismissing the dragon for the moment Ichiban stared at the creepy orb while the chienthrope girl stopped and did much the same. "I was told not to look at it or investigate, I'm just a courier," she babbled out, "I didn't have anything to do with the guy getting killed, but whoever did it, this must've been what they were looking for, I'm sure of it."

The orb was magical. Alive. The thing inside it felt powerful, like a seed waiting to blossom into something far greater than it looked right now, that was the feeling it gave Ichiban as all three of them stared, Naaza catching up herself.

"I didn't think you were the killer, but I saw you with him last night," Ichiban tore his eyes from the sphere to look at the girl, while more adventurers were starting to crowd around the gate, drawn by the chase. "I thought you might know something." And she clearly did going by how quickly and easily she'd spilled her guts.

"Uh, yeah. My name's Lulune Louie. Hermes familia, level thr-two," she gave an embarrassed smile and rubbed the back of her head. "I just panicked, you looked really scary coming at me like that."

Well, she was definitely the most badass level two he'd encountered. Or she was lying about her level for some reason, that was a pretty obvious slip of the tongue. It was hardly the most important thing to question right now, like-

Spoiler: Ultimate Ninja Style

50 – Ultimate Ninja Style
Naruto
No, this isn't some overpowered fighting style. What this does is provide a boost in cosmetic flexibility to your techniques. Simply stated, your techniques are much more stylish and cooler-looking than normal, though no more or less powerful than normal. Even if you make it look as though you're punching your opponent into space with five thousand Shadow Clones, they won't actually be launched into space unless your attack would've done that anyways. This effect can be spread to teammates, allowing team attacks to benefit from the same aesthetic boost. This can be toggled on and off freely.

A shrill whistle pierced the air, and the ground shook in response. All around Rivira they sprouted like tentacles from the ground, those same serpentine plant monsters that had attacked in the city when he was with the Ganesha familia.

"Protect!" Naaza immediately cast a defensive spell, but it sparked just as rapid a reaction from two of the nearby monsters which surged towards her, one met by Rina's hammer which struck with a thunderous clang, scales barely denting however as the two bounced off of each other.

Ichiban managed to get a force-field in place to cover Naaza's other side, that monster cracking it on impact and buying Naaza a precious second to get moving as she readied her bow. "They're reacting to magic!" she called out.

He hadn't noticed that last time, but then hadn't the whole fight been taking place under the aura of Valletta's spell? Maybe that stopped any spells from standing out at the time, but he could hardly not use magic, not if they hoped to fight off this many powerful monsters. The level five Ganesha heroes weren't here this time.

"Yankimaru, kill the plant monsters!" "Pearl, get those things!"

He called for help even as the adventurers of Rivira roused themselves to battle, Lulune drawing a knife while Ichiban looked for the source of the whistle he'd heard that had started all this.

There. Up on the roof of one of the buildings, a figure in black armour. But he instantly recognised her power, the woman he'd wondered about yesterday, the most likely culprit for the murder.

She leapt in the air, everything happening all at once. Yankimaru hissing steam and charging off towards a plant-monster further off, not being particularly helpful in his immediate target prioritisation while Pearl breathed flame that immolated the one that had bounced off his force-field, causing it to shriek and writhe, charring away in a flash before nothing was left but black mist.

Rina was dodging around, a yell of, "Berserk!" as the already hasted amazon drew off the one she'd engaged, a flurry of lightning-trailed arrows flying from Naaza's bow to perforate its length. Scales were pierced and blown out from impact, but the sheer mass of the creature meant her attacks weren't doing enough critical damage to kill it.

And Ichiban was rushing to meet the killer. The strongest person around, made even stronger because of his generosity last night. He could only hope the others could handle the plant-snakes, because other than perhaps Pearl he was the only one who had a shot against her.

With a clang his bronze metal rod impacted her sword as she landed, her momentum pushing him back despite the chakra he'd poured into his arms. Up close he could see her mouth in a thin line, but above it covering down past the nose lay scraps of darker skin that hung over her face beneath the helmet she wore, giving her the visage of a scarred man.

The tone matched the corpse back at the inn. What kind of twisted shit was this?

"You're wearing his face?!" he yelled in disgust and dismay as they broke apart, landing away from each other with a shower of trailing sparks coming from the collision of their weapons.

She reached up and pulled, tossing the helmet aside as if it were trash, peeling off the skin she wore on top of her own. "You can preserve skin with poison vemis, it's a good disguise," she said apathetically, no expression on her face as she stared at him from beneath her short red hair. "Except against perceptive people like you. But as thanks for what you gave me, I'll let you live. You're not what I'm here for."

He tightened his grip on his weapon and glared at her, hearing Rina's battle-cry off to the side as she leapt at a monster with a berserk-empowered and chakra-boosted strike that sent a monster rocketing back and crashing through the town walls. "Like hell I'm gonna let you walk away," he growled, glaring back at her.

She shrugged without changing her expression, and then showed that unfortunately she had been paying attention last night when Ichiban had been explaining chakra to people as she blasted towards him with speed he had to rely on his automatic reflexes to block, the metal rod he was using as a weapon chipping as it took her sword full on, forcing him back before he counter-attacked. She took it on her armour, weaving aside to protect her body and not caring as she allowed a pauldron to be knocked off.

She was wearing her armour shoddily, he realised. Part of those knightly skills he picked up last night also seemed to include the proper care and use of heavy armour like knights wore, and the suit she was wearing definitely hadn't been put on properly.

In fact as they exchanged several more blows back and forth, her armour got further dislodged by impacts before she bounded back from him and just ripped the remnants off, dented and broken metal plates clattering to the ground. "Shit, this was tight and uncomfortable anyway," she muttered, her clothes beneath showing enough cleavage and thigh to match an amazon even if otherwise there was a lot more material going on with her long sleeves, leotard, and boots.

Pearl was ripping apart another of the monsters, those scales giving way to her claws and teeth far more easily than they had Rina's hammer or Naaza's arrows. The two of them were still fighting their initial target which was surging back out of the debris it had been knocked into, Lulune rushing to join them, but Ichiban and the mysterious woman only had eyes for each other. Again she rushed at him, faster now. The armour clearly had been slowing her down, and Ichiban found himself pressed back. Her sword drew blood, cutting through his arm, tearing his sleeve… it didn't hurt as much as he would've thought though, and even after the initial sting it didn't impede his mobility as he kept swinging back at her, a single-handed swing with his rod giving cover for him to land a punch in her mid-section that despite all the power behind it she took with little more than a grunt.

Spoiler: Millwood Battle Axe

200 – Millwood Battle Axe
Dark Souls 3
"Battle axe wielded by Millwood Knights. Its blade is blessed by the symbol of the Ethereal Oak. A hefty axe normally wielded by the mightiest of warriors. " Much lighter than its description would have you believe, this axe is a fantastic weapon for warriors due to its light-weight and easy heft enabling it to be swung quickly. When properly infused and buffed the deadliness of the weapon increases greatly, particularly if its wielder utilizes the running slash used by Millwood Knights.

An axe appeared in his free hand, the sort of huge single-bladed thing an executioner might wield in a medieval fantasy, its sudden appearance enough to make the woman's eyes widen in surprise.

He took advantage of it, rearing back and hurling it over towards the nearest melee. "Rina, try this!" He wasn't sure if it was better than her hammer, but its size seemed about right for her preference and he could only hope if he was suddenly gifted a weapon it'd be powerful like Naaza's bow.

There was no time to see how that was working though, as the woman took his distraction as an opportunity to renew her attack, forcing him to dodge wildly. She might not be as skilled as Takemikazuchi but she was so god damn fast, and clearly could take a beating. He needed to step things up, like he had with the Juggernaut.

"Tempest!" the wind element spell was easy to cast, hardly even needing his new ability for spell-casting during combat to just do it, his wand helping too and causing a gale of wind to erupt around him. It made his speed and power surge with the magical reinforcement, the initial rush of force pushing her back while her eyes widened in surprise once more.

"Aria-"

He dodged. He didn't even see it coming, but his instincts somehow knew and he twisted out of the way as something shot at him from his flank. He glanced the way it came and saw that green sphere still on the ground, only ruptured and broken apart.

A roar came from the other direction, and a psychic pigeon's voice. "I feel w-e-i-r-d…"

"Shit, all that for nothing," the woman's voice uttered, mercifully not taking advantage of his distraction as Ichiban turned to see a green tentacled thing sinking through Pearl's scales, the dragon stumbling as if drunk.

"Pearl, I gotta help her!" Ichiban started moving towards the stricken dragon he'd brought down here, but the reprieve he was being given ended as the woman crashed into his side, forcing an automatic dodge, though with the speed of his wind buff spell coursing through him he was able to properly evade and then counter, a strike impacting her arm with a crunch and causing her to drop her sword.

"You're mine," she growled, hardly even seeming bothered by her broken arm, though the way her limb jerkily shifted back into position with another unsettling crunch made clear why. "I can't go home by myself now, so you're coming with me," her gloved fists came up, clearly just as happy to do this hand to hand.

Ichiban was fine with that. The chipped and dented wand dematerialised as he clenched his fists in turn and they went at each other. Fast enough now to handle her, they exchanged blows properly. No parries or deflections, the woman clearly counting on her inhuman strength and regenerative ability to overwhelm Ichiban.

Her punches were the real deal alright, Ichiban felt bones creak despite his chakra flowing through them to reinforce them. She struck hard and fast, aiming for his head to disorient him, his joints to immobilise him.

But Ichiban took them on the chin, smiling as his head straightened after being jerked back with a blow that would've snapped most people's necks. Impacts that juddered and twisted his insides were shrugged off as his body just kept powering through, no injury able to actually slow him down as he struck her back.

And while she barely registered the first hit, the second made her grunt, the third made her eyes bug out, the fourth lifted her off the ground, and it kept getting worse.

ESSENCE OF RAGING TORNADO TEMPEST​

Her world was one of pain, the Dungeon melting away around them, leaving the woman alone with Ichiban as his cumulative blows lifted her into the air higher and higher with every punch rising up from below. Rocketing into the air on sheer momentum, the wind formed a physical wall all around them, whirling with a fury before one final strike from Ichiban sent her launching into the stratosphere with a mighty climactic blow and a yell of, "Get the hell out of here!" the clouds above being blasted apart with the speed of her passing into low earth orbit, nothing but a twinkling light in the clear blue sky left to mark her passage.

Then he was standing back in the Dungeon in front of Rivira, the woman collapsed and broken at his feet.

That was awesome.

Oh right, Pearl. He looked over, seeing there had been a momentary lull in the fighting as his stupendous attack had drawn a lot of startled and slack-jawed looks at what had just gone down. Luckily the monsters were distracted in their own way by Pearl's transformation.

Ignoring everyone else, the plant monsters were slithering straight towards what moments ago had been a perfectly decent looking western dragon. Now however Pearl's neck and head were gone, her ribcage split apart at the top where a huge vaguely feminine figure with a similar green, blue, and purple colour scheme as the flower petals on the monsters had emerged.

"Hungry… A-r-i-a… give me more… I-w-a-n-t-t-o-s-e-e… can't stop…"

"The sky!"

It was warbling, erratic and thready, but it was a voice, it was speech that they all could hear. Pearl was speaking, her human-like mouth moving on a blank face that seemed more like a mask with no other features, black eyes set too high up, and a mane of vines falling behind it like hair.

There was no other words however as Pearl bent down and bit into one of the monsters that seemed to be lining up to offer themselves to her, a nasty sounding crunch and tear as she ripped out something vital, the monster disintegrating as another took its place and she resumed her grotesque feast.

Everyone was stunned. Only Yankimaru was unaffected, chasing after and hacking into the tail of a monster that was even now slithering towards Pearl to dutifully present its neck to her jaws. He hit the standby button to pause the robot, it didn't seem helpful at the moment, and he slowly started approaching his pigeon turned dragon turned abomination.

"Hey, Pearl… you still in there?" he asked carefully over the crunch of another monster being bitten into, something swallowed and absorbed, flowing through her and powering whatever changes the dragon was undergoing.

"She's eating their magic stones, they're offering themselves up for it!" Rina called out, backing away with both hands holding the new axe.

There was no reply from Pearl, obsessed with her gluttonous feast as the formerly rampaging monsters swarmed towards her only to present themselves as sacrifices, slavering fanged beasts now docile as lambs going to the slaughter as every one ended with disgusting crunching noises and wet sounding swallows.

No one seemed to know what to do, the adventurers who'd just been fighting for their lives and their town watching in sickened fascination as this new breed of monster developed before their eyes. Ichiban was no better, all he could think of was the helpful if slightly annoying pigeon that had watched his back on his first trip to the Dungeon, the cool dragon that had battled the juggernaut with them… she was still in there, right? She had to be.

The last of the monster perished without protest, and only then did the thing protruding from Pearl's chest turn towards him. There was no expression on that featureless face, but the lips on its mouth pulled back hungrily, exposing rows of gleaming white teeth, and then she charged. Thunderous steps shook the earth as the still draconic body rushed him, wings fanned out and flapping erratically.

"Shit!" he dived to the side. It was all he could do. He didn't want to hurt her if she was still in there.

But she didn't pivot to chase him, she kept going, and…

Crunch!

"Oh, fuck," he swore as he turned and saw that red-haired woman being bitten into, gore spreading from her chest every bit as messily as what he'd seen back at the inn as Pearl devoured something vital. Whatever it was, it was enough to trigger the next stage of her metamorphosis. Flesh bubbled and rippled over the giant humanoid protrusion sticking out of the dragon's neck, pulling it back inwards as it throbbed like a heartbeat before the ripples smoothed themselves out and the mass solidified into overlapping pink petals like a flower about to bud.

No one moved, spellbound by the bizarre and unnatural sight before them, by the immense pressure they all felt emanating from this fusion that should never have been born. A light shone from within as the petals slowly unfurled and peeled back over the mass of green and pink foliage that had overtaken the rock-scaled dragon's chest. Rearing up on its hind legs and fanning its wings, a figure stretched out from the base of Pearl's neck.

Where before it had been suggestive of humanity, now there was no doubt that was a person. Slender arms with dainty fingers stretched out above a face that could have graced magazine covers. Apart from the fact her skin was a verdant leafy green colour. Darker green hair crowned her head, short and curly like it had been permed, and when her eyes opened they shone a luminous yellow.

Also the rest of her body brought to mind the gestures that innkeeper had made when describing the robed woman earlier, at least as far as it went down to her navel before she merged into the floral arrangement that had taken over the dragon's top half.

"Aria!" she cried out, her voice melodious and sweet, a joyful expression on her face as she looked at Ichiban and spread out her arms lovingly, a thunderous crash as the draconic mass of her main body bounded its legs to shift so she was facing Ichiban.

"Phwoar, look at those!" a voice called from the adventurers gathered around Rivira's gate, and Ichiban wished she had longer hair so she could at least do the Godiva censoring bit.

"Shut up Bors, it's gonna kill us!" another voice chastised, and… well. It maybe could. The sheer power Ichiban could sense from her now… only the gods had it beat. Before Pearl had been at the level to match the top tier of adventurers, but she'd handily leapfrogged that benchmark now.

If Pearl was even still in there.

"Hey, Pearl, I dunno what you mean by Aria, but it's me, Ichiban. You remember, right?" he asked, carefully stepping closer to the mutated creature.

"Ichi… ban?" she repeated, cocking her head quizzically and staring at him. Then her features twisted in dismay, hand clutching at her cheeks. "N-no… Aria. I wanted to see Aria, I felt her… y-you're not Aria you're… sweet-cheeks!"

He felt a surge of relief at hearing that annoying nickname. Why would a pigeon have even called him that to begin with? He doesn't know, but it proves his friend is still in there.

"Yeah, it's me, it's… it's your boy, sweet-cheeks!" he agreed, just desperately trying to rebuild their connection.

"Pffft!"

He heard Naaza repressing her laughter but he ignored it as he kept eye contact with Pearl. He was willing to bet most of the guys around here couldn't manage that much, she really needed to cover up!

"Sweet-cheeks, where's Aria?" she asked, draconic claws churning up the ground as she prowled closer, lowering her neck to bring her human body closer to Ichiban. "I felt her, I feel her magic, but you're not her. She's… she's she! You're he! Aria should be a pretty young girl, not a handsome young stud!"

Spoiler: Elemental Proficiency

100 – Elemental Proficiency
Final Fantasy XI
All blackmages are specialists in elemental damage from afar and you are no exception to this. You find magic based on the elements is easier to cast, taking slightly less magic to achieve the same result as other mages would need to achieve the same effect.

"What the hell, that's his pigeon, right?" Rina's voice was heard asking in the background. "Is that how she's been talking to him this whole time?"

"He did say she sounded like an old granny…" Naaza pointed out.

"Looks more like a mommy to me!" an unhelpful random adventurer added.

Ichiban did his best to tune out the peanut gallery, but really there was a distraction that needed to be addressed. "Uh, hey Pearl, can you do me a favour and wear this?" he asked, taking off his white lion cloak and passing it up to her. "You really need to, uh, cover up."

She looked a bit confused by the request but she accepted his gift, draping the cloak over herself in order to cover her chest. She couldn't wear it normally of course as that would leave the girls out, and so it wound up trapping one of her arms under it but considering she had such an excess of limbs that was probably a small price to pay.

The lion's head glaring out at everyone from over her chest just added to the unnatural chimeric look she had going on, and somehow just seemed like it naturally belonged there because of it.

"Is this better, sonny? I can't help it if everyone wants to look at me, I've always been the type to stand out you know," she said, nonetheless seeming quite happy with her new fashion.

She wasn't wrong either. He'd picked her to come with him on his first Dungeon trip because her white feathers stood out amidst all the other grey pigeons. "Yeah, it helps a lot," he said supportively. "But what's this Aria stuff all about? Who is she? Why do you want to see her?"

She cocked her head to the side and furrowed her brow, the lines looking out of place on her uncannily perfect visage, "She does," she said slowly. "She's my… mother? She wants to see Aria, she wants to see the sky, she wants to consume Aria. Aria should join us, where is Aria, sweet-cheeks?" her tone grew more erratic and she started looking around wildly, her much larger draconic body moving as if ready to pounce. "I felt her magic, it was here, I felt it!"

Aria must have been that girl he learned the spell from. She seemed nice, so, "No consuming anyone!" he said firmly, giving the pigeon-dragon-plant-granny-supermodel-abomination a severe look.

"But she… nnngh, she wants me to eat Aria, but sweet-cheeks doesn't want me to, who do I believe?" she asked, raising her hand to her brow and grimacing as she looked down.

"Believe me!" Ichiban thumped a hand on his chest. "Believe the guy who's not telling you to eat people! Trust me that's not a hard one!"

She grumbled and frowned and bit her lip, clearly in fact finding it to be a dilemma worth stewing over before she abruptly growled and slammed her tail down on the ground with a thunderous crash. "Shut up you shitty brat! Sonny here says not to eat anyone and he's not as annoying as you! Don't make me come down there or I'll eat you instead, raaaaaargh!" she turned to the side and opened her mouth and proved that even if her head was a lot smaller and prettier now, she still had dragon parts. A beam of condensed flame more like a sci-fi plasma beam spat from her mouth and burned through the ground for several long seconds before tapering off, the air around her steaming and distorted from the sheer heat.

"Holy shit!"

After recoiling from that display, Ichiban crept closer and looked at the hole, too small for a person to fit through perhaps but wide enough to see down the molten path it had carved through rock before the light of the nineteenth floor was visible on the other end.

"You, uh… you good now?" he turned from that display of destruction towards Pearl, who glared at the hole a moment longer before nodding.

"She's sulking now. She doesn't like being told no. She wants to see Aria's magic again," she answered shortly.

Dammit, that was a really good spell too, but if it was going to set off reactions like that he might want to be careful about using it. There were other enchantments he knew, but that one was both powerful and quick to cast. "But you're fine though?" he asked, "You won't freak out if I cast it?"

"I kind of want to see it too…" she admitted almost guiltily, before giving him a sly smile. "You won't deprive your Pearl a little thrill, will you sweet-cheeks?"

He sighed. "How about if you start calling me Ichiban instead?" It was one thing when it was just a psychic conduit only he could hear, but he really didn't like the looks he was getting from everyone else at this kind of pet name.

"Tch, most boys would love a little flirtation from a dish like me. Isn't that right?" she turned towards Rivira and blew a kiss. It might have been more effective if she hadn't just spat out a beam of hyper-condensed hellfire, as rather than lovestruck gazes all her action got was flinches and a few nervous adventurers diving for cover. "Ugh. No guts. Not like my Ichiban!"

At least it seemed like she was getting herself under control, her personality stabilising after the initial shock of her transformation and whatever influence her progenitor was having over her. "So, uh… how about we maybe go to the next floor down? Fight some monsters, get some practice, figure out your new deal?" he suggested, glancing over at Naaza and Rina who'd perhaps wisely been hanging well back until now.

Now called out however, they approached with only a bit of nervousness. "Um, hi Pearl. We're still friends right? Remember when I killed that ligerfang that was clawing at your neck?" Rina asked hesitantly.

Spoiler: Kinetic Learner

200 – Kinetic Learner
Honkai Impact 3rd
You learn faster physically and through experiencing stuff than from classroom environments. This does not mean that you learn slower from classroom environments than you did before – it simply means that you're more of a kinesthetic learner than before, and you learn things about ten times faster when you learn it kinesthetically. And, when it comes to combat, you can learn it ten times faster kinesthetically than you can learn normal things kinesthetically, meaning that you can learn combat one hundred times faster than normal.

"That was good. Dog-girl's helpful as well," Pearl nodded imperiously.

"So we're just going to continue on like this?" Naaza asked, not protesting the name and looking between Ichiban and Pearl.

"I mean… what else can we do, right?" he asked, calling over Yankimaru to resume following him once more. "Uh, there's your murderer!" he called over to Bors and the rest, pointing at the grisly smear that was left after Pearl ate most of the woman's chest. "Case closed, right?"

"Y-yeah, yeah! You just go on to the deeper floors, we'll clean up here!" Bors called back with a desperate looking nod.

"Um, what about me though?" Lulune asked. "I was meant to bring that thing up to the surface and now…" she crept closer, looking between the now broken and empty sphere and at the disturbing but now peaceful abomination that had formed as a result of its hatching.

Ichiban gestured for her to follow as they started heading towards some stairs that would take them down. "I guess to start with you can tell us who hired you?"

"I don't really know, they had robes on," lot of that going around, "I couldn't even tell if it was a man or a woman! I was just told to come here, give the code-phrase to a man in full armour, then take what he gave me back up. I thought it was weird, but the money was really good!"

"I guess you're just gonna have to tell them what happened? Considering what happened to the other guy you're lucky you made it out at all, but someone trying to smuggle something like this is probably bad news too," Ichiban said, thinking it over. "Hermes knows what's up though, he's helping with everything against Evilus, so I'd talk to him first before looking for anyone in creepy robes."

"Yeah, I guess I'll have to do that," Lulune slumped her shoulders. "Thanks for fighting that woman though, she definitely would've killed me otherwise. Are you… going to bring that back up to the city, though?" she looked up at Pearl.

He glanced over as well. "Well, she wants to see the sky?" Pearl smiled widely and nodded as she overheard that. "Don't worry, I've got a way to sneak her out of the Dungeon that won't cause a panic." Though now she was half a person he felt a bit bad about the idea of sticking her in a pokeball.

Lulune looked unconvinced, but also couldn't really do anything but take his word for it as they parted ways, descending down another long set of stone stairs until they emerged on the nineteenth floor, the Large Tree Labyrinth. The foliage they'd seen on the eighteenth floor intensified, covering everything in dense bushes and vines with exotic looking plants growing out of the greenery in colourful profusion.

"Look out, mad beetles!" Rina shouted as the bushes rustled and a swarm of humanoid beetle-monsters started rushing towards them, dimly reminding him of those rock-men that had appeared to help him fight off Rina his first night in Orario.

"Arise flames. Rage, rage, rage. Vortex of fire…"

Pearl was chanting. Because of course she could cast spells now, why wouldn't she? He wanted to see where this was going so he started forming force-fields in the path of the mad beetles to slow them down. "Stall them until Pearl finishes chanting!"

Rina gave him a look of disbelief as she clutched her new axe in one hand and her hammer in another, but Naaza got with it and started casting her own spells. "Stop!" a beetle froze, one behind crashing into it in a tumble of limbs. Another shrunk down as Rina followed along and cast Mini.

"The skies shall burn. The earth shall ignite. The seas shall boil. The fonts shall churn. The mountains shall erupt."

Pearl was speaking quite quickly, but it didn't change the fact this was one of the longest spell chants he'd heard yet, and the wording was pretty damn grandiose. "Everyone get behind Pearl!" he called to the others, throwing up more force-fields and backing off under the dragon's wings as he intuition told him this was going to be big.

Yankimaru was already back there, and the other two didn't argue as they retreated while still casting their debuff spells at the monsters who hadn't yet managed to close into melee range, finding Ichiban's layers of force-fields too tough for them to crack.

"Your envoy beseeches you, Salamander. Incarnate of fire. Queen of flame."

She raised her hand up to her lips and blew out a tiny puff of flame over her palm, which slowly tumbled down to the ground…

ESSENCE OF FIRE STORM​

That tiny flame bloomed, and everything was its fuel. Surging and roaring, it put to shame every fire spell Ichiban had seen at the Colosseum, reducing monsters to cinders and smoke with the barest lick of its ever hungry flames. Endlessly whirling, they rolled over everything in sight, reducing verdant landscape to charred and cracked ruin. The tunnels and pathways, the twists and turns of the nineteenth floor, they offered no protection as the flames sought all and consumed all. Not even magic stones were left behind, everything brought to ash by the inferno.

Naaza let out a quiet whimpering noise. Rina made a cracked sounding giggle. Yankimaru, bless him, just took it all with his usual stoicism.

Ichiban just hoped there were no adventurers on this floor right now.

"Um…" he looked up and saw Pearl's face smiling beatifically at the destruction she'd wrought. "L-lets put a lid on the spells just for now, yeah?"

"Are you sure? I know lots more, sweet-cheeks, and they're all as good as that one!" Pearl told him brightly, as if she hadn't just set off the equivalent of a low yield nuclear weapon in the Dungeon.

Spoiler: Elemental Resistance (Fire)

200 – Elemental Resistance (Fire)
Generic Dungeon Crawler
You are 50% resistant to a common source of damage like fire, acid or electricity. This only mitigates damage, not environmental effects, so having resistance to gravity does not allow you to jump higher. This trait can be purchased multiple times, but only one purchase may apply per source of damage.

May be Purchased Multiple Times

"Yeah, it's fine! That one was enough, that one was good!" Ichiban hurriedly reassured her.

"Y-you know what, Ichiban, I take back what I said the other day," Rina stepped forward gingerly to where the pale rock of their path ended just past where Pearl stood and was replaced with blackened and molten near magma, holding her hand above it and feeling the heat that still radiated. "You can probably make it to the bottom of the Dungeon, I don't think anything ever prepared for this."

"All those ingredients though…" Naaza muttered disconsolately, looking over the moonscape that had moments ago been an underground jungle.

"Yeah, I mean… Pearl's definitely the strongest thing I've sensed that wasn't a god since I got here," Ichiban said. "But remember she's got her fake mom somewhere down there too." Even then, she was a powerful dragon, with chakra, could all those weird mixings overtake whatever her progenitor was?

Picking up the axe she'd briefly set down, Rina stepped back and held it in front of her. "Don't get me wrong, this is a solid axe, but you can buy better in Orario. It's not gonna close this gulf, but things are the opposite of how we started. You and Pearl are going to be the ones carrying me and Naaza at this rate."

They weren't wrong. Giving them chakra may have made them more powerful, and all those spells gave them a bunch more options, but he was getting all that and more. Which meant though that there were things he maybe didn't need as much?

"Here," he took off the charred looking ring from his finger, its orange gem now bisected with a blue half – it had changed last night at some point, he hadn't even noticed when. "This protects against fire and cold," he handed it to Rina, as the one more likely to get up close to danger. And for Naaza he took off his iron pendant and offered it to her. "This makes me run twice as fast." It'd help her avoid melee and keep shooting from a safe distance. "You two can use these more than I can at this point."

They both accepted, Naaza looking curious before she took off running down the cracked path and then zipped back, her speed now far more impressive. Rina of course had a little trouble with the ring, sized as it was for Ichiban's larger fingers, but she managed to get it over her thumb and then pinched it tighter.

"Have to get this properly resized later, but it's like undine cloth in a ring so I won't say no," she said, readying her weapons. "Thanks for sharing Ichiban. The fact I didn't even make a comment about giving a ring to a girl I think shows the kind of day I'm having and the effect on my mind!" her smile did look a bit unhinged, yes.

"Yeah, uh… every day's like this now. There are years like days and days like years, huh?" he gave an awkward laugh of his own, thinking of how those monotonous days in prison for all those years had led to this.

"That's a good saying for what this feels like," Naaza agreed. "At least we probably won't get attacked, this much damage to the walls means the Dungeon will be focused on repairing itself over spawning more monsters. Still, I hope that fire didn't spread to the other floors, I did want to gather some herbs while we were down here."

At least Rina was happy to discover she could walk barefoot on the cooling rock with the benefit of her new ring. Ichiban and Naaza's footwear held up to it, and of course neither Pearl nor Yankimaru were bothered about sizzling stone underfoot as the party made their way through the devastated nineteenth floor to find stairs even deeper, where the rest of the Large Tree Labyrinth awaited them.

Eagle-eyed readers may notice the timeline doesn't precisely match for the events in Rivira, but I can chalk that up to Hashana being faster on his mission thanks to having chakra.

Also, Ultimate Ninja Style. When I saw that name and that it was from Naruto my stomach sank, I wasn't ready for Ichiban to become a legit expert with chakra. Then I read it and my heart soared, now the brain damage can truly be contagious! It'll only be saved for big attacks rather than spammed in every fight, and honestly there wasn't any way I could even make fire storm look more impressive than it already is, but any important fight should see an Essence Of move getting deployed, to the amazement and confusion of everyone that isn't Ichiban.

The whole stuff with Pearl was such a wonderful conflux of events and abilities. Being able to talk to animals, the decision to have animals talk like random Yakuza side characters, learning Ariel via a spell copying perk, turning an animal into a dragon, having taming perks to ensure loyalty could be kept even with the influence of a corrupted spirit, and then the fucking lion cloak coming back to complete the Obatarian look on the group's new pet demi spirit. Just everything came together for that all to work, and it makes me incredibly happy. I hope you all enjoyed it too!

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[XZR-2]

What does Pearl look like now?

 

[Ebiris]

What does Pearl look like now?

Click to shrink...

It's probably beyond my image editing capabilities, here's a few things that kind of fit together for it.

edit: does QQ not allow image links to imgur? They appear in the post preview... Changed to direct links.

Here's Sinh the Slumbering Dragon, which is what I was basically using for her initial draconic look.

Here's a Danmachi demi spirit, the thing she's ultimately been turned into.

Here's the Gaping Dragon from Dark Souls, which is kind of how I imagined having her head/neck removed to make room for the demi spirit parts on top to look.

And here's the Obatarian from Yakuza who her personality was initially based on, and so her humanoid part looks like this except young and green.

 

[Iridesce]

All the images are messed up.

 

[XZR-2]

 

[XZR-2]

Click to shrink...

Like this maybe?

 

[Ebiris]

Oh, Falin's pretty much the exact same body plan, yeah, good catch!