Tibs was less apprehensive, as he approached the gate with the other Runners and would-be Runners, but no less alert. The weave at the gate hadn’t reacted to him the day before, so shouldn’t this morning. But he couldn’t know if something had changed throughout the day, so he was ready.
He headed for the training hall, instead of the testing building, ready to offer the admission paper, ciming he was lost, to anyone questioning why he was there.
The building was the rgest, abutting the wall on the sunrise side. And before it, fields were set, with Runners already training. Inside, the entryway ended at a junction with a rge hallway on the left and right. Too many doors for him to bother counting, opening to rooms for trainers to instruct Runners in how to use their elements. He sensed many trainers with Earth, Water, Air, and Fire. Fewer for Darkness, Purity, Light, and Corruption, and less than all of them combined to handle the other twelve elements. Possibly not even all of them.
Some, like Potentia, Force, and Binding, didn’t seem to be trained at the any of the dungeons.
He peered through an open door.
The woman leaning against the wall looked at him, bored. “Come back if you live to get your element.” She had Water, and like a lot of the trainers here and throughout the dungeons Tibs had tried to gain access to was in the high Delta to low Gamma range.
“What do I have to do to survive a run?”
She snorted. “If you have to ask, you’re already dead.”
“Isn’t learning as much as I can about it how I’ll survive?”
She looked at him again, with only slightly more attentiveness. “You don’t look like you’re a sorcerer.”
He looked himself over. “What do sorcerers look like?” He wore the same as he had the day before. A good set of travel clothes. Thick fabrics with patches to reinforce pces that saw more wear. It wouldn’t be great as protection in a dungeon, but compared to what the guild had handed him and the Omegas they’d thrown into Sto to be eaten, it was much better.
“Books,” she said with disdain. “Pockets and packs full of them. Always thinking the answer’s those, instead of out here.”
“Why are there guards by the door? Don’t the guards patrolling the courtyard make sure no one causes trouble?”
Her expression turned suspicious.
As he’d slowly aged, and went from being a child to a young man, people’s willingness to answer his every question had shifted to questioning his motives. They couldn’t seem to believe that he’d kept that unending curiosity. That he wanted to learn just for the sake of knowing.
That he had motivations behind every question, same as he had when he was a child, didn’t keep him from wondering what happened to them, that they no longer thought curiosity was…normal.
But, since she’d already decided he was a would-be sorcerer, he had the freedom to ask, even if it annoyed her.
“Because they’ve been assigned there.”
But freedom to ask didn’t ensure he’d get usable answers. He moved on through the hall. No one was as brusque as she’d been when he asked them questions, but no one bothered replying with something useful. The sense he didn’t belong in that building, because of his ck of an element, was palpable.
The hall ended at a door leading outside, and he walked the grounds. No one questioned what he did there. Some of the booths now had merchants, and Runners perused the wares.
When a team exited the dungeon, injures, tired, but in good spirits, he angled his walk toward the loot table a few steps away from the path leading to the dungeon’s door. They were Omegas, although the young woman being supported by the fighter had slightly denser essence. She might test ready when an adventurer checked her for an audience.
He timed his arrival for when they walked away from the table after handing over items and coins. “How was it?” he asked with a quiver in his voice.
“Hard,” the fighter in the lead said, his accent marking him as a local. His armor was the kind Leathersmiths sold, instead of what the guild offered to those who didn’t have their own. It had multiple repairs, but all looked well done. He could afford to have it repaired. The sword at his belt, as well as the shield at his back, were pin, but the metal of the bde and of the binding around the wood was of good quality.
“But we’re making progress,” the girl behind him said with an accent he couldn’t pce. She was the one ready for her audience. “We almost made it through the sixth room this time.” While she wore armor, something lighter than the fighter, her ck of weapons meant she was the sorcerer. Clerics trained at the purity dungeon until they were Rho.
“How many rooms are there?”
“Depends on the route,” a younger version of the sorcerer said with a simir accent. Her freckles gave her an innocent look that the mischievousness in her pale green eyes contradicted. Definitely the rogue. “We’re taking the longest, so we need to go through twelve rooms.”
“Isn’t it easier to reach the boss room if you take the shortest one?”
“Easy isn’t the path to gain,” the other boy said in a monotone that reminded Tibs of the people living around the purity dungeon, but his accent was local. The maces at his belt marked him as another fighter.
“It isn’t the way we picked,” the third fighter said. The girl was the same age and height as the fighter who’d spoken. They looked enough alike they too could be siblings.
A Runner of each css wasn’t the standard Tibs had learned it to be from how the guild ran things in Kragle Rock. Just like each guild had its own way of handling how access to the dungeon went, they decided how Runner teams needed to be formed.
With one exception, few guilds cared who was on a team. So long as the team had five people on it. Always that abyss cursed number.
It’s how things are done.
Always that same answer.
He understood the guild couldn’t allow so many people on a team they would overwhelm the dungeon; there was a bance to maintain. But why couldn’t they let smaller teams in? Wasn’t it their decision how much risk they were willing to take?
No. Always five.
He pushed the anger aside. It would get in the way of gaining information.
He looked around, then leaned in. When he spoke his voice was a whisper. “What did they do to you? The guards by the door? They always put their hands on the people going in.” The pair was different, but also Epsilon. Their etching wasn’t as crude as the two of the day before.
“They just asked what our goals are,” the leader replied with a shrug. “If we liked the king, if we were going to help her when we were strong enough. Boring stuff.”
“Did you lie?” he asked conspiratorially.
They exchanged a disbelieving look. “No.” The leader said. “We don’t care about kings. When I’m strong enough, I’m returning home to protect my town from bandits and the animals.”
“Us too,” the sorcerer said, pulling her sister to her with a smile. “Our vilge is so far from anything, it took a month by caravan to reach a city.”
“They’d been gathering electrum and silver since before we were born,” the rogue said. “And we were the best of those who wanted to come. When we go back home, everyone will be able to rest easier.”
Tibs wanted to warn them about the guild charging for the essence training, but he had no way to convince them. How could an omega like him know anything of how the guild worked? And wouldn’t the guild have told them if there was a cost to the training?
Some did, Tibs had found out, but they were rare. And even they were set up in such a way that if Runners wanted to survive. Oh, training wasn’t required to enter the dungeon, but now that they had their element, they wouldn’t gain much from the first floor, and facing the second without being trained? Not enough managed to be worth mentioning. In the end, they had to take the training. Pay if they had the coins, indenture themselves if they didn’t.
He nodded as they parted ways. He couldn’t work up the strength to wish them well. What would they do when they realized they’d be working for the guild for so long they wouldn’t recognize their town and vilge when they were finally able to return there? Would the guild send someone to protect them? Would they be allowed to send messages to let their families know why they weren’t returning as hoped?
He didn’t think this guild cared about what happened to pces that needed months to reach.
He finally headed to the testing area. He handed the admission paper, along with the fifteen electrums. They were local, Cartirian stamped coins, as he’d been instructed. He’d taken two silvers from his own coins to get exchanged, and had received twenty-six electrums, instead of the thirty he would have if they’d been Cartirian. If he pnned on settling, it was best to slowly remove the coins from other kingdoms before he needed to use too many of them when paying for the help he’d need.
Even the criminals looked askance when it seemed an agent of another king bought their services.
The woman who looked the paper over had crystal as her element, and in the mid-range of Epsilon. Clerical work, within the guild, seemed to be done mostly by Epsilon adventurers. He figured they’d just passed their test and weren’t ready to be sent out, or had no interest in progressing beyond that.
The tests were the same bashing at an Epsilon adventurer with various weapons, being handed a lock and tools to crack it with, shooting a bow. Draw complex designs and answer questions only those who read a lot could answer. Some had different test, like here, where he needed to bandage a wound.
He always picked a weapon he had little experience with and answered questions badly. He always did his best with the bow and failed horribly. He failed to open the locks or keep the traps from triggering. He was decent with bandages, because he’d had to learn to convincingly apply them to cover the occasional healing help he gave.
His ck of skill and any of the test meant he ended up as a fighter more times than as a rogue. The guild didn’t waste the power crystal on someone who couldn’t formute the mental symbols to activate it and fire the bolt, even if they’d charge him for it. Making someone who couldn’t hit a target an archer was a waste of a meat shield.
Tibs spoke with the others taking the tests as he went through his, as well as with the adventurers administrating them. This way, he confirmed that the pair of adventurers at the door were there on the king’s coins. The guild didn’t care about allegiances to kingdoms, but didn’t object to the adventurers earning extra coins. And it used the experience as training.
It meant the etchings the pairs did would be imperfect. If he studied them, Tibs should work out ways to ensure he had his own to protect what he didn’t want them to discover, even by accident. An Epsilon Darkness Adventurere shouldn’t be so adept at sensing their own element, they’d be able to sense the one covering Tibs’s forearm.
He didn’t like dealing with ‘shoulds’.
So long as the questions were only toward Tibs’s intent toward the king, he wouldn’t have to lie. He didn’t care about kings.
The sun was well past its zenith when the testings ended. Tibs was decred a fighter, and he picked the mace and shield as his tools. He and the others then headed to an assignment area, and it was quickly apparent that most of them were fighters.
He hung back. Those who hadn’t already formed their teams were grouped, mixing the csses, until only fighters were left.
While a fighter team would easily win any fights on the first floor, they’d fall to the first trap. The guild might not care about the Runners, but it wasn’t so wasteful as to send them to certain death if there was no gain in it. With a dungeon who had at least seven floors, Tibs figured that omegas falling to its traps didn’t gain it much.
They were instructed to return the next day, where they’d been assigned to teams who had lost their fighters. Most would. The reason the guild made anyone they couldn’t fit easily fit in another css a fighter was that they were the ones who died the most.
He made it to the gate.
“Really?” Baricron said. “You’re leaving again?”
“Didn’t think you were paying attention,” Tibs whispered.
“I have other things to deal with, you know. But I did gnce your way here and there.”
“I’ll be back tomorrow.”
AnnouncementBottom Rung is avaible on KU: https://amzn.to/3ShmXzW
You can read the previous arc in Tibs story here
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Thank you for reading this chapter.
If you want to watch me writing this story, I do so on Twitch: https://v/thetigerwrites Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, from 8 AM to 11:30 EST
If you want to read ahead, you can do so by finding Stepping Wild, on Ream Stories where the story is multiple chapters ahead even at the lowest tier, and the support helps ensure I can work with a minimum of real-life interruption.
