Dungeons and Dalliances Ch. 080-089

Elida's party was composed of, unsurprisingly, five people in the archetypal layout. Elida herself was her team's rogue. The heavily armored boy at the front, the tank, hadn't removed his helm, so Natalie couldn't make out much of him. From his gear alone, though, she could tell he was even more defensively focused than the average tank. She thought his name was Otto, but wasn't sure.

The fighter, a boy with green hair, a crooked nose, and a scar on his lower lip, Natalie recognized from yesterday's spars. Another member of class twelve, as Elida. She couldn't remember his name. He'd been good--as all of class twelve.

Finally, the backline was composed of their healer, a girl with long brown hair, and a mage with short orange hair. Natalie didn't recognize the mage, but the healer was another of class twelve. That wasn't surprising; competent delvers usually wanted to group with one another.

Natalie didn't get a chance to make more than a superficial appraisal of her opponents. Arriving within a distance they could casually speak, Elida was happy to take the opportunity.

"My, my, my," the red-head's amused voice rang out. "What do we have here? Is that you, dear Elizabeth? And your wonderful collection of strays, no less. How fortuitous of a meeting."

By the girl's tone alone, Natalie's hopes that this encounter wouldn't be antagonistic evaporated. Now, she just hoped it would be refrained to insults. Even that she found herself dubious on. The glint in Elida's eyes was a bit too excited--a bit too opportunistic.

"Elida," Liz returned frostily. "Yes. How nice to see you."

Hearing Liz take an unfriendly tone was, funny enough, the most shocking part of everything. Natalie got the sudden impression that more than a house rivalry, there was some personal dislike mixed in between these two girls.

Which, great. Even better.

The 'collection of strays' comment hadn't endeared Elida to Natalie, obviously, and she was definitely pissed off from it, but she was still digesting what was going on. She would really rather this unfortunate encounter wrap up cleanly and without incident. She wanted to be on with delving--seeking out a boss, not dealing with Tenet politics.

"And you as well, of course," Elida said politely, her expression belying the seemingly friendly tone. The two girls studied each other for a long moment, when Elida finally continued: "So. How's the delve going, Lizzy?"

"Don't call me that," Liz said flatly.

Elida's grin widened at the response. She didn't address it. "We haven't been having much luck, ourselves. Not a single uncommon, the whole way through--and we've found two mini bosses. The dungeon's being stingy, today."

Natalie would've sympathized--that was rather unfortunate--but for obvious reasons, failed to dredge up any empathy.

"I was starting to wonder whether the whole expedition would be so unlucky," Elida continued. "But, ah, it never lasts forever. Here it is. Our windfall. In such wonderful form." Her eyes roved across Natalie's party, the predatory smirk accompanying her words making her intentions clear.

Natalie internally grimaced. Not that she was surprised. She'd had a feeling what this would turn into the moment they'd bumped into another party--and doubly so when it turned out to be Elida.

"I like that wand, especially," Elida said. "Is it new? I wonder how much it'll go for on the Exchange."

Liz's grip tightened on the shaft of wood. She, like Natalie, didn't seem surprised at the threat.

So.

This would be coming to a fight, then.

Natalie scanned the faces of Elida's team. Though the red-haired woman had jumped to the implication of a fight in just a few sentences, the rest of her team didn't seem half as eager. Rather, all four of them seemed uncomfortable by this encounter. Though not unwilling. They might not want to attack Natalie's group, but it was clear where their allegiances lay. If Elida--the clear leader of the this group, by status if not literally--told them to, then they would.

And Natalie didn't like her team's odds. At least three of their opponents were from class twelve, which yesterday's spars had shown to be, probably, the best students of the year. As expected of Elida's teammates--who Camille predicted to be easily within the top five, possibly the best single student of the year.

No, if it came to a fight, Natalie didn't see them winning. That stung, and she had zero intentions to roll over and give up, but she could still face the facts. They were outmatched.

"You wouldn't," Liz finally said. "It's against Tenet policy."

The statement was endearing, though it made Natalie want to snort. She had a feeling Elida didn't care much about policy. And attacking other students in the dungeon wasn't an expellable offense. Not an insignificant one, either, but Tenet didn't mind letting rivalries foster between their students. Conflict created better delvers. Just no killing.

"I wouldn't?" Elida asked innocently. She looked around, blinking to her teammates, in fake surprise. "If you ask me, not taking easy pickings when they arrive--that would be uncharacteristic. But I understand. You've always had too high of an opinion of me, Lizzy. I'm not half as nice as you think I am."

"I said don't call me that," Liz growled.

Again, the hostile response had Natalie off-foot. She'd never heard Liz be more than mildly annoyed, much less outright angry.

"And I think in exchange for a pay day, we can handle some kitchen duty," Elida said. "See, I don't mind getting my hands dirty. In fact, I quite like it."

She tilted her head.

"But more importantly than the loot," Elida said, "getting to take a Beaumon down a few notches. That's the real prize."

"One correction," Natalie said.

Elida turned to her, seeming surprised that Natalie had spoken. Both teams had remained quiet, this clearly being--more than anything--an encounter between Beaumon and Parda-Halt.

Still, the surprise annoyed Natalie more, somehow, than everything else. As if it wasn't Natalie's place to be inserting herself into this encounter, when her team--and she herself--had also been threatened.

"Oh?" Elida asked, sounding genuinely intrigued.

"You said easy pickings," Natalie said. "I'm going to have fun proving that wrong." She shrugged. "Just wanted to say that."

Maybe an attempt as deescalation was the proper way to handle this. But not only had Elida pissed her off, but she didn't think defusing the situation was possible. The heavens had clearly intervened to make this happen. Considering who was on their team, and who was on the enemy's, there weren't many ways this ended without violence.

"My," Elida said, appraising Natalie in a new light. "Maybe that's even true." She smiled. "For strays, I will admit I've been impressed. Natalie, right?"

"So is it a fight, or what?" Natalie asked. She had no interest in sparring verbally with this woman. She'd probably lose. Natalie would normally take solace in the fact she could win the real fight, but that wasn't true either, likely. She rolled her grip on her hammer, annoyed at that.

"And so eager, too," Elida said. "It's a shame you're with Lizzy. I think I like you." Her eyes flicked across the group, to the rest of Natalie's team. "Please know it's not personal. You four are simply on the wrong side of the line. It's how these things go."

An attack and robbery, mixed with insults, wasn't personal?

Somehow, Natalie even sensed that Elida meant it.

Nobility.

"But yes," Elida said. "A fight." She raised her daggers, then sneered. "If you can call it that."

3.25 - Brawl

Without further ado, the fight broke out.

With so many moving pieces, even a normal dungeon encounter could be chaotic. But five trained delvers against five others? From the moment the melee started, Natalie lost track of her surroundings. The boy, Otto, in heavy plate armor charged her, and what Jordan, Sofia, and the rest of her team were doing didn't matter, couldn't matter, else Natalie would lose her own fight.

Likely, the fighters, tanks, and rogues would match up against each other, with the mage and healer playing in the backline. The start of the fight would be individual spars with wild elements of who the healer and mage helped. From there, as the sub-fights were decided, the rest of the group would collapse. A five on five was tenable, but five-on-four, once the first person was knocked out? Numbers advantage was a real thing--overwhelmingly so.

As in Tenet-sponsored spars, HP would decide who surrendered, not literal incapacitation. Once that magical resource dipped low enough it didn't offer enough protection to stave off serious injury, each participant would surrender. Or be too stunned to keep fighting back in the first place; having your HP sent to zero could be debilitating in its own right.

But this wasn't a fight to the death. Still, it was probably a fight for everything they owned, and would set them back horrendously if they lost, so Natalie intended to give it everything she had. And not just for her own sake, but Liz's too.

Otto barreled forward, braced into his shield, and for all his bulky armor, the gap closed with shocking speed. A part of Natalie stubbornly wanted to meet him head-on, to test her strength against his own, but the pragmatist in her admitted it would be rather one-sided. As a level one, her class hadn't closed the gap between sexes yet; she couldn't match Otto's bulk, even aided by her class. And at a guess, the boy was even more of a juggernaut than the typical tank.

That said, she couldn't let him charge through. She suspected he'd head straight for the backline if Natalie side-stepped and refused to engage. She had to keep his attention.

She settled for the middle ground. She stepped to the side, but made sure to throw her entire weight into a counter-bash as he came charging forward. Her shoulder jarred as she essentially bounced off of him, shield clanging--though he at least grunted and stumbled, momentum faltering.

He recovered and faced her, then raised his short-sword and advanced. Natalie struggled to regain her own footing from having been repelled by a mountain of metal. Her attack had been less potent than she'd expected, and it took her a second to place why.

Because for once, Liz hadn't empowered Natalie with her strengthening buff. It was disorienting, since Natalie had been fighting with the enhancement practically all day. But she knew the reasoning behind the choice. Likely, the spell had gone to Jordan. She had the hardest match-up: Elida herself.

If Elida disabled Jordan, then joined the fray in two-on-ones against the other standing members of the party, they'd crumple in moments. Though maximizing power and durability to the tank was the usual best play, clearly, Jordan was the appropriate target in this brawl.

So, Natalie against Otto. Tank against tank. Before the fight devolved into true chaos, with members dropping out of the fray from defeat, it would be a more traditional duel, with occasional interference from the backline.

Natalie took the lead on the next exchange. No longer incompetent with her spellcasting abilities, her [Illusion] sprang to life, orchestrated with a quick swipe of her hammer, which crashed into Otto's tower shield with a resounding clang, and made the boy grunt with the impact. As far as match-ups went, hammer against heavy armor was one of the better ones. A spiked mace would've been better, but a hammer wasn't shabby.

An illusory second-Natalie shimmered into existence, overlaid on top of her. It was one of Natalie's favorite applications of the skill against intelligent enemies. Her illusions could be seen through with some effort--how easily depended on her opponent and their stats--but trying to track multiple pairs of arms and weapons and discern which were real could be devastatingly difficult in the middle of a brawl.

Maybe other applications were better from a raw efficacy standpoint, but Natalie found the illusory limbs fit with her style. She supplemented her melee capabilities, playing to her strengths, not trying to be something she wasn't. Tess's advice.

More than that, Natalie tapped into [Empower]. While a disgustingly expensive ability when speaking from a long-term perspective, basically trading experience for a stronger attack, what better time to use it than when her team was about to be robbed for everything they were worth?

Doubling the strength of a skill was incredible, but it wasn't some instant fight-ender, either. Especially when, while her spellcasting had improved drastically, she was no archmage.

Still, it worked beautifully. Illusory limbs sprung up around Natalie, and behind the boy's faceplate, Natalie saw a furrowed brow, eyes flicking around, trying to pick the correct one.

They exchanged blows. Natalie caught a slash of his short sword on her shield, then followed the blocked attack up--her intent hidden by her mirage of limbs--with a swipe of her hammer.

Otto instinctively positioned himself to eat the impact, except he did so for the wrong one, falling victim to the empowered illusion. A harmless construct of light disintegrated as it slammed into his shield, and Natalie's real attack crashed into his exposed side.

Hammer bit into plate, and Otto grunted in pain, a dent left behind. He retaliated with a shield bash, but Natalie had already stepped away. Otto's plate armor and physique meant he could take a hit better than her, but she was the more maneuverable.

Otto eyed her from behind the slit of his plate helm, clearly caught off guard by the strength of her illusions, and Natalie sneered in return. She didn't have a problem with him in specific, she guessed, big-picture speaking, but the reaction had been instinctive.

He stepped forward, shield raised, and Natalie tensed for another charge--but then, unexpectedly, he stomped. The ground crumpled beneath her, and her footing became unsteady. Nothing an empowered [Illusion] could do about that.

Her opponent lunged forward, shoulder braced into his tower shield, and Natalie barely got her own defenses up in time. Hundreds of pounds of metal crashed into her, empowered by a class, and she was knocked over with comical ease.

She crashed into the ground, head bouncing off tight-packed dirt, and her breath was stolen from her, head left ringing. Instinct alone had her rolling sideways, avoiding the second of the boy's earth-cracking stomps. His skill, Natalie registered, but so much stronger than she'd expected.

She climbed to her feet, only to be laid low a second time. His sword scraped against her thigh, the easiest to reach exposed area, and the blow bit into reinforced leather and drew blood. HP ate some of the attack, but it wasn't a critical area, so it didn't stop it in its tracks.

Natalie clumsily bashed his follow-up, then regained her footing. But she was on the back-foot, now. Her head still spun from crashing into the ground. She'd known whoever Elida's tank was would be one of the best of the year--but losing this quickly? She wasn't even holding her own, really. She was being slapped around. Even having used [Empower].

She exchanged a few more blows with Otto, but even direct impacts only seemed to make him grunt, and he had adapted to her illusory limbs with shocking speed. His own retaliations were brutal, too. For her initial appraisal of seeming defense-focused, his offense wasn't lacking in the slightest. The opposite.

Then, out of nowhere, a dagger slashed across Natalie's throat, and she felt her HP evaporate. It scraped sideways, drawing blood but not biting deep, repelled by that vital resource. The exhaustion that impacted her with such a would-have-been lethal attack had Natalie's stamina disappearing all at once, and she collapsed into the ground, instantly limp.

Elida, it seemed, had won against Jordan, and was working through the rest of them--starting with Natalie. The redheaded woman spared a smirk for her, then dashed for the backline.

Otto nudged her hammer away with his foot. "Stay down. You're out."

Natalie couldn't even reply, still gasping in air, vision black at the edges, so yeah. She didn't need to be told. The words barely registered.

Otto joined Elida, headed for Liz and Ana.

When Natalie had halfway recovered--which only took a few moments, but that was forever in a fight--she struggled up onto an elbow and looked around.

Her team had been swiftly disabled. All five of their opponents were standing. They hadn't even taken one with them.

Easy pickings, Elida had said.

Natalie and her team hadn't proved that wrong.

3.26 - Defeat

If there was one piece of credit Jordan could give to their assaulters, it was that they didn't gloat about their victory.

Well, besides Elida. But the smirk she wore as she had Liz strip off her gear and hand it over seemed to be for Liz alone. By Jordan's appraisal, Elida genuinely didn't care about rubbing the victory in to anyone else. To her, everyone else's involvement--including her own team's--was incidental. This had been between Beaumon and Parda-Halt.

Jordan had known they'd be getting mixed up with something political, coming to Tenet. While maybe spared the full intrigue of a court, the campus was swarming with all layers of nobility, and from other countries, even. That she, Natalie, and Sofia had decided to team up with a Beaumon meant political consequences would be coming for them.

Just, she hadn't expected it to be so soon, and in such a dramatic fashion. What were the odds that the Beaumon's arch-nemesis had bumped into them on their first long delve out? Astronomically low, she would have figured, but here they were.

All things considered, their team wasn't in horrible shape. All of them had been taken out of the fight, HP dismantled and left stunned, but no accidents had happened--and accidents did, on occasion. HP wasn't the most reliable resource when it came to ensuring someone's safety, even if it usually saved your life, as long as you had the points to spare.

But beyond some cuts, bruises, and bumps, their team hadn't taken any grievous injuries. It was the kind of beating a night's rest would take care of, thanks to their classes. Jordan had honestly been beaten up worse in spars.

The emotional--and situational--damage was much worse.

Elida and her group took, as she had implied they would, nearly everything they owned. Not just their earnings from the hours delving prior, like Jordan's quiver and Liz's wand, but the gear they'd spent putting together for the past week. Elida's teammates at least had the good grace to look awkward about it.

"We'll leave you your weapons," Elida said. "Besides Lizzy, of course. And your supplies. So you can fight your way out. If you five got killed, it would look bad on us."

The humiliating event was at least short-lived. Jordan and her team were forced to peel off their relevant gear and hand it over, and the items went tucked into the opposing team's monster cores, but with that done, Elida and her group departed, punctuated by a dainty wave of the red-head's fingers. She had eyes only for Liz as her group departed down the trail of the Wispwood. The smirk was so blatant--and well-earned--that it grated even Jordan's nerves.

And so her team sat in a scattered circle, in a motley arrangement of mundane armor and plainclothes, stripped of their belongings--and more importantly, their pride.

A cloud hung over them, and nobody spoke.

Even Jordan wasn't immune to the sour mood, and she usually could brush past this sort of thing. But this was a more infuriating event than usual, because she held the lion's share fault for the defeat. She had been the quickest to be downed, and the moment she'd failed to keep Elida's attention, the enemy rogue had decimated her way through the rest of Jordan's teammates.