After school was done, I met up with the rest of the party and the girl who was named Paige, something I discovered when we exchanged numbers.
"So, as I said before, this is Paige and she'll be coming with us to the dungeon. Paige these are Derick, Aimine, and Umirica." I introduced them.
"It will be my pleasure to work with you." Paige smiled at the others.
"Y- Yeah! D- Definitely!" Derick who couldn't be blunter with the way he was looking at Paige's chest stuttered in excitement.
"Urgh!" Umirica hit him with her elbow discretely, before going forward and saying. "The pleasure is all our..."
"... Freakin cow tits..." Umirica mumbled under her breath with a fake smile.
"I could say the same to you, but I really need to know... Are those natural? Cause if not I need the number of whoever did that! They look amazing!" Aimine got closer to her and shamelessly observed Paige's boobs before commenting.
"Thanks, I guess... They are natural..." Paige was flustered by Aimine's enthusiasm and responded.
"Bullshit! They all say the same thing!" Umirica remarked in response to Paige.
"Hey, hey... Relax, it's just some boobs... Some freakin massive tits... What was I saying?" Derick was trying to calm Umirica down before he got distracted by Paige's breasts and lost his train of thought.
"That's just rude! Can't both of you see you're making Paige uncomfortable?!" Aimine pointed out.
"It's fine, I get this kind of reaction quite often, I've grown used to it." Paige expressed.
"That doesn't make their behavior any more justifiable." Aimine insisted.
"Hey! We all get it, Paige has beautiful breasts, can we go now?" I couldn't let them keep going with this or who knows how much time would be wasted on this discussion.
Hearing what I said, Paige blushed and hit her face behind her hands with a bit of heavy breathing, while the rest of the group focused their attention on me, and realized we'd been wasting time. So, I looked at Derick who I made the leader, as a way to signal he should take the lead.
"Yeah! Dudes, let's go. We've already eaten up enough time!" Derick took my signal and we finally got to move.
While we were making our way, Paige stuck to me as much as she could, and I didn't really mind it, since because of my hero years I became very used to having other people's attention on me at all times, something on this level could never bother the current me. Umirica didn't let Derick do anything too stupid while Aimine was trying to make conversation with Paige.
Happily, my charm aura got contained by me containing my aura in general, or I would be having a much worse time, in terms of having eyes on me. Not that it would have mattered anyway.
The trick wasn't that long and we were soon in front of the dungeon. Passing through the guards was easy after showing the documentation, and once inside I immediately received a notification.
[System Notice. Dungeon ascension progress: 43%. 67 Dungeon Points were accumulated while you were absent. All your midway bosses on the 5th floor, have reached level 7. Fainith has reached level 12.]
That aside by looking around could now see the level of all the people with me. Derick was level 4, Umirica was level 8, Aimine was level 7, and Paige... She was definitely an asset to be had... She was level 29... That's quite unexpected considering she should be around my body's age and not a slayer.
(How strong would you say she is?) I asked Leah about Paige.
{About that... It's hard to say, if talk purely physically, I would say she's half as strong as you, though she might be just as fast as you. In terms of abilities, I can't tell since you are lower level than her.} She responded.
Having this piece of information, lead me to the conclusion that Paige is perfect to be my Vigilante, with her stealth skills, and the fact she reached level 29 on her own only reinforces that point, then again she might actually belong to some organization, but I'll be able to figure that out, for now, this at least means I didn't completely waste my time, and already have one human pawn to make things work.
From then I became the guide and choose a path that lead to meeting enemies, using my knowledge gained from exploring this place the last time I was here, and as planned we soon came across a group of three giant cockroaches. As a group of five, we decided to take a formation that has Me, Umirica, and Aimine at the front, while Derick and Paige support from the back. This was due to Derick being a healer since his ability was
The ability I chose to reveal was my
Finally, there was Aimine, and even though she refused to tell anyone her abilities, they were still in the school records, and honestly, I don't understand how they let her stay, but that's not my problem. She had two similar abilities
If this was a luck-based system I would say that she's unlucky, but the Reality Balance System made sure the first abilities you have are related to your bloodline and desires, so if you got unhinged or deprived skills, it's probably your fault. Anyway, due to that, she's pretty physically capable, and thus at the front.
As we went to battle with the formation, each of the front liners stood in front of a giant cockroach. Pretending to be on about their level, I don't install kill the roach and instead observe how the others are doing while dodging the roach's attempts at headbutting me or slashing at me with its members.
The situation was a bit less balanced than I thought with the information I had on them, Aimine was at standstill with the roach as both were pushing each other like some sort of sumo fight, and I'm pretty sure that if she wasn't wearing gauntlets right now, it would harm her to touch the roach directly. While Umirica on the other hand had the strength to kill the roach easily but refused to touch its body, so she was instead hoping that swinging her sword at random would just kill it... Derick in the back had a mace but was just standing there waiting for something to happen, while Paige was ignoring everyone else and you just shot her arrows at the roach I was fighting, and it seemed her arrows didn't damage the target, and instead added a temporary binding effect.
All in all their abilities themselves aren't terrible, but Paige aside I don't see the others surviving even this dungeon if I left them alone here... Then again, normal people aren't supposed to be able to do that. It will take a lot of work, but I'm sure it's possible to mold them into proper pawns that can be used later on.
"Paige, go and help Aimine, I can handle this! And you Derick don't just stand there! Umirica needs a distraction to win!" Seeing that things wouldn't improve if I didn't say anything, I gave some very basic commands.
Following what told them to do, Paige began shooting at the roach fighting Aimine and the results were immediate as she then began a barrage of punches until the roach's head was smashed. Derick was a bit different, not that he didn't do what he had to, but as soon as he got close enough the roach headbutted him in the stomach and sent him flying against the wall, even still his efforts weren't for nothing as Umirica used this opening to stab the roach, and maybe because her boyfriend was just defeated by it, she used too much strength and cut the roach in two.
(Yup, with a bit of training this will work. Though it's too soon to judge, let's go to higher floors.) I thought to myself as I killed the roach fighting by reflex accidentally since I lost focus of it for a bit