Chapter 3 — Edge Cases

Derivan struck down the last of the Crystal Mimics, his sword slowing as it shattered. He didn’t have the muscles to feel the ache of acid or the soreness of prolonged battle, but his movements were beginning to feel sluggish. It took more effort for him to move and react, even to speak.

Conveniently enough, that meant that he sounded out of breath when he spoke, just like a human would. “That is… the last of them. [Monster Sense]

“No fuckin’ kidding,” Misa groaned, flopping down onto the ground with a

“Five hours,” Vex said. He leapt nimbly down from the platform he’d been standing on, but stumbled slightly as he straightened; Sev quickly grabbed him and steadied him, and he flushed slightly as he nodded at the cleric. “Thanks. We’re lucky, I think; the countdown’s down to about twenty minutes. I knew crystal processing would be faster, but I didn’t realize it would be

Vex called up the window again to confirm, glancing quickly through the displayed information.

“We’ve shaved about twelve hours off the initial reported time,” Vex said. “A grade 2 can sustain a village for a week. Should we stay for a grade 3?”

“If it keeps speeding up, we should,” Sev said, but he bit his lip. “I hope the Guild hurries up. It’d be better if multiple parties could take advantage of this, and that mana concentration is going up way faster than is normal.”

“There’s no guarantee that any adventurers will be close enough, anyway,” Misa grunted. “Though at least with a job like this they’d actually pick up the quest.”

“The mana concentration is significant?” Derivan asked curiously. “Vex mentioned earlier that the quality of the resulting dungeon depended on mana concentration, but I was unaware that it had an effect on the time taken for a dungeon to form.”

“Dungeons always form a certain amount of time after the process begins, but reaching a hundred percent usually triggers the process immediately.” Vex looked at the status. “Sev, you said it was two or three days away?”

“It was,” Sev confirmed, flicking a finger through his own status with a worried scowl on his face. “I should’ve noticed it before, but it’s accelerating. And not just because of the monsters we fought off — that contributed only about three percent of the mana concentration. We’ve gone up the other sixteen percent in five hours.”

“Worrying,” Vex said, his brows furrowing; he wondered if it had something to do with the amount of mana he was throwing around. “Then I think we should definitely stay. There’s no guarantee anyone else would be able to get here in time to take advantage of the bonus.”

“I agree,” Misa said, and Derivan nodded as well.

“We’re staying, then,” Sev decided. “Anyone need healing? I’m about topped up on mana.” Sev glanced around, checking the party for injuries. No one was significantly hurt… a low-cost

The glow of his heal rippled through the party, reflecting briefly off the walls of force that made up the small defensive structure Vex had built. Everyone let out a small sigh of relief, and the party settled in to wait.

Surprisingly, the wait was uneventful.

A pause, and then the screen updated, reflecting a new upgrade time for the next grade of crystal.

“…Ten minutes?” Vex said, staring blankly. “That… can’t be right.”

“It’s not.” Sev gripped at his staff, his face suddenly pale. He glanced at a screen no one else could see. “I changed my mind. We should leave. Now.”

“But… ten minutes. A Grade 3 crystal will keep a village topped off for at least a

“We cannot,” Derivan said softly, and the other three all glanced at him. He gestured to the the edge of the crater that made up the Nucleus.

Past the force walls Vex had conjured, mana was swirling, the concentration so thick it was visible as streams of glittering light. It would have been beautiful if not for the fact that it was beginning to form into solid, physical structures. It began from the outer edges of the crater, where towering walls of light were beginning to solidify.

“We are best protected here,” Derivan said. “If we leave now—”

“We’ll get stuck out in the open with no defenses,” Sev breathed. He shook his head. “Okay. Shit. Ten minutes. We can do this. Once the dungeon finishes forming, we can leave. I have

“Incoming!” Derivan shouted, and everyone scrambled into position. The first monster burst into view, burrowing up from just outside the

“I’ve got a level 32 Earthwyrm!” Misa shouted; her voice was pained, the wyrm having managed to squirm past her guard for a moment to dig a deep gash into the flesh of her arm. She saw her health ticking rapidly down in the corner of her vision —

There were more monsters.

The corridor of force itself was narrow enough that neither Misa nor Derivan needed to fight off too many of them at the same time. But the monsters were hard to kill, and they were slowly getting pushed inward, closer towards the center of the corridor where Sev stood. Even with Vex desperately casting spells, even with Sev’s support magic flooding through them and gifting them with divine strength… It felt like they wouldn’t last three minutes, let alone the ten they needed to last for the dungeon to finish forming.

It was going to be a long fight.

Misa grit her teeth. The wyrm she was fighting was ten levels above her. If it was the only enemy she had to fight, she could handle it; level differences didn’t matter as much as Skills did, and monsters in particular didn’t usually have the intelligence to take advantage of stat differences. But she had to do more than fend off the wyrm: she had to fend off every enemy in front of her, and make sure none of them could get past her.

There were

But that was fine. She could handle this. There was a reason she was their tank, over even Derivan and the ridiculous durability of his armor.

On the best of days, Misa disliked her class. It was rare, sure, and she had no doubt that others would kill to get it — but it was a reminder, too. A reminder that she’d failed, once upon a time; a reminder that she’d once stood before a horde of monsters just like this one, her fellows dead and beaten.

A reminder that for all that she’d fought, she was only one person, and she could do nothing against a horde. She fought until she was

She’d

But when she’d come to, she’d seen how her status had changed. She’d been given a class.

The name was a reminder of her failure, and it never stopped hurting — but at the same time, a part of her was grateful. She’d be able to prevent that from ever happening again.

You guard the gate, and none shall pass while your blood still flows.

If you would fail to block an enemy, you do not.

It was a powerful skill — vaguely worded skills like that always were. It had its weaknesses, of course, and anyone that knew precisely how her skill worked would be able to subdue her all too quickly. But against monsters, with a healer at her back?

As long as ten of them weren’t attacking her at once, she would be fine. She trusted Sev.

With that in mind, Misa

Skills provided by the system were some mixture of natural prowess, knowledge, and physical or magical capability. Rarer skills allowed the users to break past their limits, either granting them with greater knowledge or — particularly in the case of skills that were not explicitly magical — allowing them to perform impossible physical feats.

This was one of the latter types of skill. Misa had neither the stats nor the reaction time to block three wyrms that were over level 30 all at once, but she somehow still

The cost, of course, was that her body could not truly handle those speeds or feats of strength; her muscles and ligaments tore with every movement.

It was a small price to pay. This was still on the lower end of what the skill could do, in any case.

Misa twisted. A wyrm was launching itself towards her, teeth gnashing in the air; she leapt to meet it, sword impaling it through the mouth and into dark, bitter flesh. In the next instant a wyrm threatened to cross the line she held, and Misa found herself

Without pausing, she spun and

Misa breathed. She felt healing trickle in. Part of her was worried that they wouldn’t be able to keep this up; ten minutes suddenly felt like a long, long time.

Another part of her was falling back into an old state of mind, letting all her worries and fears fade away. There was no space in battle to think about any of that.

All she had to do was hold the line.

Derivan was

…It was easier not to think about.

Despite the warning on

The second problem was that skills themselves were never completely disabled; the most they would do was be restricted to grade one. But some of his skills were exceptionally effective even at a grade of one; it was one of the perks of being an elite monster, as much as he hated the thought.

Grapple a target. If the target does not break out of your grapple in seconds, absorb the target, refilling your HP and MP by of their remaining HP and MP, and gain the [Satiated] buff.

It wasn’t a skill he enjoyed using. But for this battle, while he was still restricted to level 26…

The average Burrowing Spider or Earthwyrm, at level 35, took him 30 seconds to kill without assistance from Vex. Grappling would restrict his movements slightly, but not

Derivan had three enemies headed for him; one level 32, one level 40, and one level 37. This was a small enough crowd that he could handle them, even with his current stats.

The level 37 Burrowing Spider reached him first, and he ducked underneath its leap, catching its exoskeleton on the wicked hook at the end of his sword; he spun his blade forward, smashing it into the ground and stunning it.

Before it could recover, he ran forward. He grabbed the level 40 wyrm in the middle of its body, ignoring the razor-sharp teeth and making sure it didn’t have the leverage to twist around and bite him. He activated

It was a trick Misa had taught him. If the skill or weapon was stronger than his stats, it could give him more power and speed to leverage than his stats would.

The level 32 Burrowing Spider was scrambling over the still-struggling body of the first; they were getting tangled with one another in their desperation to get to Sev. Derivan didn’t give them the chance — his sword slammed into the two wriggling spiders, cracking carapace and splattering insectoid goop.

Not enough to kill them. But enough to wound them badly; they retreated briefly, hissing at him.

He opted to wait. The spiders were circling his position, wary of him; the other monsters were looking for an opportunity to attack. The timer continued to tick down.

There was a flash of darkness, and the wyrm he was holding on to abruptly vanished.

7.5% of the stats of a level 40 monster was not an incredible boost, though it also wasn’t insignificant. More important, however, were the skills.

Or, more accurately, the skill. There was only one skill that he cared about receiving. The

Move underground at normal movement speed.

The other ridiculous thing about

The armor dove into the dirt, feeling it part easily for him; his feet landed on platforms that didn’t exist, and he felt the earth almost pushing him forward as he aimed towards one of the two Burrowing Spiders. He swung hard as he exited the dirt, still moving at twice his normal velocity—

Carapace

Derivan would have smiled grimly, if he could. That spider still had more than half of its health. This was

It wasn’t quite enough yet. But he could make this work.