Training With Paige

Waking up in my palace is an amazing experience. The bed, for one, is incredibly comfortable. We didn’t get much of a chance last night to pay attention to it, but it also appears to be self cleaning. A quick observe of the sheets confirms my suspicions of that. My beautiful girlfriends lying next to me, I turn my attention to the rest of the room.

It’s just as pristine and beautiful as we left it, with the large windows letting soft sunlight into the room as the artificial sun rises over my kingdom. From our bedroom window, I can see a mana fox walking around lazily through the snow, it’s colourful tail shimmering in the gentle morning sunlight. I smile at the sight, as my girlfriends stir beside me.

Walking downstairs together, Mia stops to knock gently on Paige’s door. “We’re gonna have some breakfast hun, if you’d like to join us.” A muffled thud sounds from the room. “Just a minute!” Paige calls back. Mia giggles and turns to us. “She’s adorable!” The aeromancer whispers. Ivy and I continue downstairs, eager to check on our cats.

As we get to the living room, it appears that Luna and Sol both haven’t moved from their safe space the entire night. There also isn’t any mess for us to clean up, so I’m hoping we won’t have to worry about training them to use their litter box. We made sure to fill up their food bowls before we went to bed, and they have a mana powered refilling water fountain.

The food bowls are mostly empty, and upon seeing us, Sol pads gently towards us, stopping a few feet from us. She meows loudly at us, looks at the food bowl, looks back at us and meows again. The message is clear, so Ivy and I refill each bowl while the two cats watch from a distance. Once we step away, they each go to their bowl and start eating. Sol meows once at us again, before she eats.

Satisfied that they’re happy, we walk to the kitchen and Ivy begins making us a hearty breakfast. Paige comes downstairs with Mia, the terramancer looking slightly frazzled and tired, but happy to be here. The breakfast that Ivy serves us is pancakes, topped with blueberries, strawberries and a drizzle of maple syrup. We dig in happily.

“You’re an amazing cook Ivy.” Paige compliments, smiling at her. Ivy smiles back happily. “Thank you dear.” “We’re gonna train a bit today Paige, wanna join us?” I ask. She nods. “I have a while to go before I catch up with all of you.” She says, looking around at us slightly embarrassed. “Please don’t stress about that. It’s nothing to be embarrassed about.” Mia says.

“I-I don’t know, I kinda feel like I can’t really contribute much without being stronger…” Paige says, trailing off and looking down. Mia puts her arm around the gothic terramancer. “Your presence here is the only contribution we need. Everything else is just a bonus.” Mia says and Paige blushes. She starts to play with her hair as Mia returns to eating.

We decide to take Paige into a dungeon that we’re all familiar with: the giant rats. There is an unfortunate side effect of me now being level 51, that being that I can’t open dungeons at lower levels that would be easier for Paige to face. All four of us are there to protect her, but that doesn’t mean that these enemies will be easy for her.

We lock down the dungeon fairly easily. One thing we’ve picked up on by this point is that in this particular dungeon, the enemies only spawn at a certain rate, and only ever spawn more after one of them is killed. This is there to ensure that too many won’t spawn at once. It’s pretty trivial to catch the rats and hold them in place.

With Skylar binding one of them, and Mia binding another, that leaves one for Paige to face. “Show us what you can do.” I tell her simply, with Ivy and I at the ready in case she shows the slightest sign of getting overwhelmed. Paige nods, a determined look appearing on her face. The rat charges at her and she uses her magic to draw up large rocks from the ground, with each of them looking like they weigh a couple of kilos.

Focusing intently, she flings each of the rocks at the rat, hitting even the charging creature with ease. The rat squeals in pain and stops for a moment, shaking it’s head, before continuing it’s charge. She changes tactics, concentrating for a moment before the ground reshapes under the rat’s feet, trapping it’s front legs underground and rendering it immobile.

Mia whistles. “Impressive.” She says, and Paige blushes at the compliment. “Thank you. It took me a long time to figure out how to do that for a moving target. It helps that these things aren’t particularly fast. My trainer is a lot faster, and I can’t usually trap him like this.” She explains. “Still a pretty useful skill to have.” I say, and she smiles at me.

“What else can you do?” I ask. “Most of my power is centred around being able to move earth, things like dirt and rocks. I can create walls and other things, I can throw heavy rocks, crush things and I can reshape the ground like you just saw. Doing bigger things requires more mana, which I don’t have a lot of right now, so I can only do a couple of bigger attacks.” She explains.

“Sounds pretty cool! We’ll have plenty of time for you to play around with that and train your powers.” I tell her. She nods again, smiling happily at the praise. She looks down at the still struggling rat and pulls a knife out of one of her boots. Paige is not letting that thing escape. She walks over and stabs it right between the eyes. It takes a couple of stabs before the rat vanishes into dust.

I rub my chin thoughtfully. “It might be beneficial for you to have a bigger weapon than that.” I propose. She shrugs. “Maybe. I’m used to this, because it doesn’t get in the way of anything. It takes me a lot of focus to do some of these things, and I feel like a bigger weapon would take away from that.” She says, more confidently this time. I nod in understanding. “Whatever you think is best for you.” I tell her.

Skylar pipes up. “Is it all good if I sit out this session after we finish this dungeon? I have something I wanna do.” She says. “Don’t burn the palace down while we’re away.” I joke. “Says the amateur fire mage.” Mia shoots out and I giggle. “No dramas love, just stay safe.” I tell her. Skylar nods, smiling at me.

We power through the dungeon easily, keeping awareness of how Paige is fairing against the enemies that are a much higher level than she is. Her tactic of binding the rats to the ground and stabbing them is pretty effective, regardless of the fact that her level is lower. She has to take a lot of care not to get hit though, because as is demonstrated when she slips up, she’s still not very durable compared to the rest of us.

Luckily with Ivy on hand to heal her, it’s not much of a problem. With the vigilance of all of us to make sure that she’s never in danger of dying, she can practice and train against one rat at a time, slowly getting used to this style of fighting. When the rat queen comes around, we make sure that she keeps her distance.

Instead of getting up close to fight it, she keeps well away and works on trapping the queen. It’s a lot more difficult with the boss, given that it’s stronger and faster. Even if the goth girl manages to trap it, the rat queen breaks free within a few seconds. Still, it’s something helpful, and she keeps at it.

3000xp

Gaia that’s a lot of XP from the dungeon. Doing the math quickly, I realise that each dungeon at this level is giving 5000XP. Levelling up has suddenly just gotten a lot easier. With that happy revelation in my mind, we exit the dungeon for a break. Paige in particular is quite tired due to the stress and pace of the fight, so I can guess we’ll be resting for a while.

As we get inside the castle, I check the party screen and find that Paige has gone up a level. So while this training is clearly difficult for her, it does seem to be working somewhat. We take a long rest, regenerating our mana, having some water and snacks, while we watch tv. Ivy and I check on our kittens, who are happily sound asleep.

Well that’s definitely something to work towards. I have no idea if it’s achievable, but with those rewards, I’m definitely going to be trying. Once we’ve all recovered, four of us go back into the dungeons, with Skylar staying behind. We decide to keep going with the giant rats dungeon for now, just so Paige can get used to it.