New Dynamics

Ivy goes to the front door to let Skylar in. She comes back to the dining room, with the umbramancer in tow. “Hi! It’s good to see you.” I tell her, standing up and hugging her. She hugs me back and smiles brightly at me. “Good to see you too Gemma.” Mia steps out from the kitchen and yelps happily, hugging her tightly. Skylar giggles at her reaction, hugging her back.

“It’s only been like a day!” “Shhh, I’m happy, let me be happy.” Mia banters back playfully. The bond between Skylar and the rest of us has grown exponentially over the past week, since she decided to fully trust us. Mia grabs our lunch from the kitchen, and soon all four of us are sitting at the table together, happily munching on the delicious chicken pies.

“These are amazing Mia, thank you.” Skylar comments, smiling at her. “I’m glad you like them! Somebody else certainly seems to be enjoying them.” Mia turns to look at Ivy, who looks up in confusion from wolfing down her serving of pies. “What? They’re good.” Skylar shakes her head. “I still can’t believe you can eat human food and actually taste it now. That’s basically unheard of for an artificial spirit.”

“Guess my powers are just special.” I joke cockily. “You said a while ago that you heard somebody put a bounty on your head, right?” Skylar asks. I nod in response, taking another mouthful of pie. “I feel like we’re strong enough now that we could probably do something about it. Maybe try to track down whoever’s responsible and pay them a visit.” She suggests. I take a few moments to consider the idea. She’s definitely not wrong that we’re stronger now.

Skylar is the weakest here in terms of level, but she can still hold her own in the dungeons we run together. Mia’s higher level and Skylar’s lower level seem to balance out the difficulty fairly well. She’s not wrong that we’re quite a bit stronger now than we were the last time that we had a proper encounter with a gang. Skylar had a run in with a gang a couple days back, but she didn’t have to fight, thanks to that terrifying woman Belle coming along and slaughtering the entire gang.

In addition to being quite a bit stronger since the last time we fought a gang, we also didn’t have Ivy last time. With a healer on our side, we have a lot less to worry about. After considering our options, I nod. “I suppose it’s time that we ruffle a few feathers. Any ideas on how?” Skylar grins. “How about tomorrow, we all go to class together and use ourselves as live bait? If a gang tries to trap us, we can try to get information from them.”

I look at Ivy and Mia. “What are your thoughts?” “As long as we do our best to be safe, let’s do it.” Ivy puts in her view. “I think you’re strong enough. You both held your own fairly well last time, so this time should be a piece of cake. Just don’t make me save your asses.” Mia jokes. “I guess we’re going to class tomorrow then.”

“Oh yeah, how’s Paige by the way?” Skylar asks, changing the topic. “She’s good, I don’t know when she’ll be ready to meet the three of you though.” Mia replies. The two of them have hung out together twice more over the past week, and from what Mia’s said, Paige seems to be getting less shy around her. She hasn’t told us much else aside from the fact that she’s cute and fun to be around though.

We finish our lunch and Skylar helps with the washing up, then we move onto more dungeon running. For the afternoon, we figure that if we can get through two dungeons, then we can get Ivy and I to level 41. Each dungeon currently gives 2500XP total, save for the goblins dungeon which gives 2000XP due to it being the quickest dungeon to run through.

For our first dungeon, we pick the ogres dungeon. In the time since Skylar became close with us, Mia and I have showed Skylar and Ivy the Shrek movies, as well as that cursed video that the boss references. They were both horrified, much to our delight, and so every time that we run through this dungeon, they groan along with me, with Mia cackling at our reactions every time.

“SOMEBODY ONCE TOLD ME-” “WHY DID I AGREE TO THIS DUNGEON!” Skylar screams and I can’t help but double over in laughter. “This is priceless, holy shit.” Mia had started to sprint at the boss resembling Shrek, but the sudden outburst from Skylar sent her into a cackling fit. Skylar sighs and suppresses a smile at Mia’s laughter, before rushing the boss and unleashing a wave of spears at it.

1000xp

“Shrek is love. Shrek is life.” The voice echoes out through the dungeon, and Skylar groans, and even Ivy chuckles at her reaction. We gather up the loot and head out of the dungeon for a break. The nice thing about finishing this dungeon is that I’ve now gotten to a nice milestone: I am now a millionaire. This is mostly because I haven’t bought anything from the auction and have just been saving the $20,000 I get from each dungeon. It’s cool though.

Once we’ve recovered and Ivy has regenerated all of her mana, we go outside for the next dungeon. We choose the elves dungeon this time around, and soon we’re walking in formation through the fairly dense forest of this dungeon. We’ve long since figured out the little cues that we can use to tell when an elven archer is somewhere up in the trees.

Soon we make it to the boss, the elven army. Mia is able to decimate the archers quicker than ever before, thanks to the addition of swords to her arsenal. Skylar focuses on disabling the catapults while I go after the spear wielders. Our strategy works perfectly, and we end up defeating the army with minimal injuries.

2000xp

We gather up the loot and exit the dungeon. I refrain from spending my stat points for the moment. I’ll spend them on libido later tonight, once Skylar is gone. I spend Ivy’s stat points immediately on wisdom though, pushing her base wisdom up to 80, her effective wisdom up to 92 and her mana regeneration up to 23.45MP per minute. Satisfied with our progress, I close our character sheets and head inside with the others.

It’s only mid afternoon by this point, so we spend the rest of the time before Skylar goes home, playing video games and spending time together. Over the past week, she’s gotten immensely more comfortable with us. She’s getting better at Mario Kart and we’ve branched out into showing her and Ivy some different games, like some of the Lego games.

“Condiment King? Are you serious?” Skylar says, raising an eyebrow in amusement as the character comes on screen. “Oh honey, there are a lot of strange characters in the DC universe. Arm-fall-off-boy for example.” I reply nonchalantly. Skylar lets out a snort. “There is no way that’s a real character.” “Look it up. Comics have done strange things over the decades to try to stay interesting.”

“Pink kryptonite turns Superman gay.” Mia chimes in. “You’re making this stuff up.” “Also in some versions it alters the chromosomes of kryptonians.” She continues. I laugh and look at Mia. “I didn’t know that part, holy shit!” Skylar looks back and forth between us, trying to figure out if we’re pranking her or not. I pull up the pages on my phone and show her. “What the fuck? What’s….I am so confused.” Skylar shakes her head, laughing. Mia and I cackle at her befuddlement.