"Team FABLE said to hand you their thanks."
"Fable?"
"The team you saved from a chain."
"Ah."
He shook his head as he took a sip.
"Begin your debrief."
Reina pushed my back.
"We started the dive at approximately 1:06 PM. We proceeded for the next —"
"Five." Vera graciously supplied.
"Five kilometers when we came across sounds of combat. We rushed in to find Team Fable locked in combat with around fifteen goblins and were on the verge of being overrunned. We assisted Team Fable in dispatching the goblins."
"We allowed them to copy our map, courtesy of Vera, so they could make it back to the surface. They informed us that a team of four men brought the chain to them while they were in the middle of fighting a group of goblins, before fleeing into an off-beaten passageway."
"As a group, we decided to investigate the matter and entered the passage. We came across an exit that led to a pitch black cavern that had a sudden drop. There we saw forty-six blind goblins and a team of four, two of which were moderately injured."
"After clear consideration, we conducted a rescue operation. We slayed all forty-six goblins before administering first-aid. We judged them incapable of resurfacing on their own, so we escorted them outside the dungeon."
I slumped into the sofa. I was feeling a bit parched after all that so I took a gulp of water.
"So you decided to give up on reaching the checkpoint?"
I nudged Reina, trying to pass everything else to her.
"Yes."
"Why?"
Reina paused.
"Lives matter more."
"Even if those you saved started a chain?"
"That is mere conjecture for now, and, even if they were, the answer's still yes."
"You didn't question them?"
"It wasn't our place."
He nodded as he smiled, his long elongated canines peeking out.
"You did good. Great even." He chuckled. "We'll handle it from here."
"Will they be punished for the chain?"
His smile thinned. "Yes. Yes, they will be."
He took another sip.
"More than that, they'll likely be the first shifters in your year."
"Shifters?"
"Students who realize that the life of a combatant isn't for them. There's always some of them every year. Add that up with those who die, and that's why the total number of combat students in a batch gets reduced year by year."
That made sense.
"Since we didn't reach the checkpoint, do we fail the dive?"
Berthard face took an incredulous look at Reina's words. "What the fuck? You really think that?"
"No. But I wanted to clarify."
"Of course not. Fuck, you'd even get a perfect grade. Any dives that end up cut short due to conducting a rescue operation will nearly always get a perfect grade after investigation."
"Investigation?"
"So fuckers don't abuse it and just start 'saving' people when they actually didn't. Scenarios like one team encountering a team and then threatening them to cooperate with the story that they were saved. It's also why the grades for dives are kept secret."
"But what about those who will abandon other teams and just continue their dive?"
"Nothing. Every team is well within their right to prioritize their own safety. Outright ignoring other team's call for help, however, can and will lead to ostracization."
He finished up his glass of whiskey.
"Now, get out. Go home. Get some rest. Whatever. Dismissed."
He shoo'd us away. "I'll let you know of any development on Monday or Ilmarë will tell you."
With everything done for the day, we went home with Reina in tow. Ever since the first time Vera invited her over, she'd practically come with us and stay over nearly every other day. Though she was staying in one of the dorms in the pentagon — the pentagon in the middle of the star-shaped academy — she hadn't been staying there a lot.
I didn't really mind since it was Vera who kept inviting her over, it wasn't like she was forcing herself in every time. Reina also used her time there extremely productively. She was always asking Ilmarë or Petra for help with her magic.
She wasn't making much progress yet, but it certainly looked promising. She was training to learn Ritual Magic for Close Combat which needed a lot of practice and repetition to get right.
Ritual Magic for Close Combat was a style of magic that tries to substitute chanting with a repeated pattern of movement that basically hypnotizes your own mana to move as it would with a normal chant.
An example of it would be following a specific form like bringing back an arm at a specific angle and throwing the punch. By linking this specific motion with a certain spell, every time you did this motion with that intention, you would cast the spell without having to chant at all.
If she could manage to learn and master this style of magic casting, her destructive potential would shoot up to the roof. She would have avenues to deal with a mass of weak fry just like what happened earlier.
She could've just jumped right in and dealt with all the goblins on her own without having to wait for Vera's initial burst of magic.
We arrived at home with little trouble. I opened the door and we got inside just to be greeted by someone lying on the sofa, with her head and upper back hanging from the side of the sofa.
Dressed in a thin shirt and shorts, Ilmarë looked every bit as relaxed.
"You're finally here! And you brought Reina! Good."
"What do you want? What are you even doing here?"
"How'd your first dive go? I'm already hungry. What made you so late? You took longer than we expected that even Petra's food's nearly getting cold." Ilmarë whined out. Clearly just asking for formality when she really just wanted to complain about our tardiness.
The day's been super stressful already and here's one individual who's all too happy to add to that pile. I walked and pulled her ear up.
In a show of flexibility, she curled herself up and straddled my arm and quickly locked me into an armbar, forcing me down to the ground. I tried to extricate myself out from the hold, but her grab was too tight.
I circulated my mana to boost my strength and exerted... and nothing.
I still couldn't win against her.
We've been having these impromptu grappling sessions for a while now and damn was she good at it. She was the dean of the College of Mana, so why the fuck was she so physically strong and good at fighting.
I was left with no choice, but to tap out. When the pressure only my arms finally relaxed, I immediately started moving it around to check if it was fine.
"Weren't you a mana major?"
"Yup. Artanis was too!"
"Then how are you so good at this?"
"Because I just am, obviously. As talented as I am, picking up combat is but a mere breeze."
"She trained excessively hard during her time in the academy as a double major in combat and mana."
"PETRA! SHUT THE FUCK UP!"
We nodded. "I see."
"No, you don't."
"Yes I can."
"I'll make you blind."
"Okay, I don't."
"Good."
Petra popped out of the kitchen to call us for dinner. A hearty spread was on the table. It was apparent that Petra specifically went with these in consideration of our dungeon dive today.
"But, why are you ashamed of being a double major?"
She glared.
"Fine. Why don't you just say you learned how to fight?"
"Being seen as someone who's so good without putting in the effort is much cooler, obviously."
I furrowed my brows.
"I find hard-working people much more admirable than those who don't." Reina spoke up, putting to words what I felt.
Ilmarë scrunched her face. "Still not cooler."
"What are you? A child?"
"Anyways! Why're you three so late? Look, the food's nearly cold."
The food wasn't at all. It was still hot and fresh. Even if we took too long, Petra had a spell that preserved the freshness and heat of newly cooked food which is exactly what she did to our current dinner.
"We couldn't make it to the checkpoint."
"Huh?! Say what?"
"We had to rescue a team after they started a chain."
"Ah. How was it?"
"No fatalities, thankfully. We had to rescue them from like fifty blind goblins."
"Blind goblins? Where was it exactly?"
Vera took out the map from her pouch and showed it to her.
"Huh. Over there? If I recall correctly... there's a cliff there."
"Yeah, the goblins were there below the decline. It was pitch dark."
She tilted her head. "What about the manaliths?"
"There were none."
"Impossible. That's a level deep enough for there to consistently be manaliths present."
"I don't know what to tell you. The manaliths just grew scarcer and scarcer as we went down that passage until zero manaliths remained to give us light. Vera had to cast a light spell for vision."
She was stunned to silence.
"They were blind? Nearly fifty of them..."