Side story: Leaf's point of view

We've been adventuring for a few more months now. Leon is… Well, he's still depressed obviously. His future wife died and no one expects him to even recover from what has happened... I often console him over her, I've seen him cry more than I fee comfortable with. Gargarz, the gnoll white mage Kite gave us is an extremely adept healer... The healing difference isn't noticeable between the two but he can support far better than Kattie could. Even though he is better Leon kind of holds a grudge against him… Maybe because he's the one who replaced Kattie? I'm not sure… I hope it doesn't escalate though...

Every day I wake up I go for an hour long run, before everyone else wakes up. I've gained the early bird skill because of this. I've been secretly training for years now. If Kite can get so strong by training everyday... Maybe if I put in a fraction of the work he does… I can stand close to him without being embarrassed…

I lied to him about my stats, I've actually gotten a much higher strength, dexterity and stamina stats then I told him. I don't think guys like strong women though... So I tried to make myself sound more girly... I have started sword training and crossbow training recently. Both increase my stats in both strength and dexterity. I doubt I'll ever use either weapon over magic. It is just something else to practice and make me stronger.

We've started clearing tier four dungeons. We could before when Kattie was in the group but with a new member... We had to clear weaker dungeons until we all got accustomed to how everyone works… Leon… Leon is openly mean to Gargarz. It wish I could stop him but it is just him grieving… Lance has started sticking up for Gargarz though… So that's good.

The first tier four dungeon we did almost ended in Leon's death. He rushed the boss before Lance could make the first attack and was almost crushed. Gargarz manage to shift the earth enough for Leon to hide in a pitfall he made. The small damage he had taken was reduced because of barkskin cast on him. We all had haste on us since before the fight started from Gargarz. To top it off Gargarz started filling the hole Leon was in with Healing water both healing him and making a potential health regen spot for later. The fight was a long and drawn out one. Leon constantly risking his life with Gargarz barely controlling the situation enough to stop his death. Gargarz had somehow managed to keep all of us alive even while focusing that hard on keeping Leon alive… He is an amazing healer. After the fight Lance asked why Leon was being so reckless.

“Gargarz can handle this much, if Kattie was still alive she could handle twice as much danger as this.”

Lance spoke up.

“No she wouldn't Leon, she wouldn't need to because you wouldn't be trying to injure yourself.”

Leon instead of getting mad at Lance walked over to Gargarz and hit him. He hit him a few more times before Lance pulled him off. Leon screamed.

“WHY ARE YOU SO DAMN GOOD! I can't even get mad at your healing because of it!… Why wont you just let me die...”

This entire time, the whole time we've been dungeoning... Leon was trying to kill himself… I don't know what to say… If he wants to die… The choice is up to him… He spoke again.

“If… If you'd have just let me die, I could be reborn right now. The memories of Kattie wouldn't be in my head anymore. If I died fighting it would be less embarrassing than killing myself… You though… No matter how hard I tried you just wouldn't let me die. So I guess I'll quit adventuring with this group… I'll join one without an amazing healer.”

With that, Lance started walking out of the room… None of us moved. Lance motioned like he was going to but he didn't have an answer for Leon either… Finally he grabbed Leon's arm and yelled.

“LEON! I don't have the answer you're looking for… The only thing I can tell you is I don't want you to kill yourself. I can't say it will ever get easier but... You just have to keep living Leon! Nothing will bring her back! If you want to stop anything like that from happening again, you need to get stronger. So strong no one ever wants to kill anyone close to you! Get so strong they have to change the rules of this world!”

He let go… Leon crawled into a ball on the ground and sobbed uncontrollably... I'm not sure he'll ever be normal again... There will always be a darkness in him he won't be able to fix because of whats happened… If something like that happened to Kite… I don't know what I would do… I don't know what I would do if Kite answered my question…

We made it out of the dungeon and rested outside that night… The next morning when I woke up to go for my jog I saw Leon still up. I talked to him instead… He wants to start training with me from now on. I don't know how I feel about that. Before I was a shoulder to cry on for him. We've never done anything together besides talk… I don't want him to get the wrong idea… I'll train with him for now I guess.

We've continued to clear dungeons and train... Leon's started teaching me some tricks to being a rogue. I feel like I can handle my sword swings faster because of that... While running I got a new skill.

Secret Summoner skill gained minion power- Can now sacrifice fatigue points as well as mana points to increase the strength of familiars.

Using fifty percent of my fatigue points, I can summon a greater familiar around twice the size of my previous one... My greater familiar was about twice the size of my regular familiar. I can summon greater familiars bigger than normal humans now. It works with conjure elemental too. I have a fire elemental almost twice the size of one without the aid of fatigue points. I might be able to make a bird big enough to ride on now. One of my dreams is to fly. So I'm getting closer to that dream.

As a group most of our classes have started to reach rank-up. My black mage did and I switched to dark mage, my summoner already had. I chose advanced summoner over elemental lord summoner. One reason because elemental lord summoner you have to form a contract with the elemental lords by beating them in a fight… Research while I was still in school made it very clear that it would take several raid groups to beat an elemental lord. Plus you would have to travel to it first. I don't know where any are and it would be impossible for me to get an army… I could ask Kite for help… But I don't want to be a burden...

We've decided to try our first tier five dungeon. Mainly because of my new greater familiars. I can potentially increase the size of our group by five members with my greater familiars. It took almost a week to summon them since I used up so much of my fatigue points on each one every day. Doing this has reserved half of my mana but it will be worth it to have such an increased amount of group members.

I summoned three normal classed looking people and an animal and my elemental. A white mage, a warrior, a bear, a warden and a fire elemental. One weakness we have going forwards, is that enemies in tier five dungeons are far more powerful. Each being of a similar strength to a whole pack of enemies from a tier four dungeon. So any help on reducing damage is necessary. That's why I made the warden, even with short shields and shells. It will help stop Lance from dying.

We make it inside, it is a water dungeon… These are extremely dangerous high level dungeons because traps in this area are far more difficult to notice when they're submerged underwater. With Trice as a scout, we should be fine with her leading the group… As long as we don't fight and step on traps that she hasn't seen yet… So I suggest to get the attention of each group and move into a room with no traps in it…

The enemies are far harder than normal. If I hadn't have summoned five greater familiars we would have been wiped out… Leon keeps praising me for how strong they all are… I'm embarrassed by how much he compliments me. He keeps commenting on how closely they resemble humans.

We keep pushing, the enemies are all weird gross things though… Like a giant slime, it's hard to kill… Big lizard men, normally in groups of three to five. Some even have classes and are far harder to take down. Even as difficult as they are, our group is far stronger than it was when we started adventuring together. Everyone has put in more work to get stronger. Especially Leon. He's gotten so strong he can fight alongside Lance without much fear of injury. Well that was in tier four dungeons, a tier five dungeon he has to be careful.

We make it to the safe room on the seventh floor. Most of us are completely tired, except for me and Lance... One of my greater familiars died making it here… While sad, it is better than one of us… I can't afford to waste fatigue points tomorrow on making it so I spend most of the remaining I have on making one that night. It's a far smaller bear than it originally was but it's better than nothing.

The next day we start pushing towards the final boss room. We see a trapped pressure plate with a rare on it… It's too much of a risk to go after but Leon wants it… This could end badly, he pulls it off but nothing happens… Could it have been a dud trap? When I think that the room starts to flood! Lance rushes for the door and manages to prop it open with his spear. If the door would have closed we would have all most likely drowned… What was Leon thinking? Lance spoke up.

“Close call, I hope that rare is worth it Leon.”

“Of course it is. I wouldn't risk dying for a bad rare.”

Not much difficulty getting to the last level… On the last level we start fighting different enemies. They're invisible so we can't see them. You can only see the water ripple when they're moving. Even after we kill them they don't change back into what they normally look like… That's not how the invisibility spell works… They must be constantly camouflaged then.

It takes us far longer to clear this floor than any of the other ones. We have to be extremely careful and thre more of my greater familiars have died. Leaving the white mage and warden left… While getting the mana reserved back is nice… Losing a potential party member isn't… The warrior had taken a hit from the back line, so it might have saved someones life by being back there. We make it to the boss room doors… No one has any idea what type of boss this is going to be. We head inside.

It's a surprisingly cute giant turtle! I think they are called Terrapin turtles. As cute as it is I know it's a threat. It is possibly a slow moving enemy, but we're also waist deep in water. So our movement is also going to be slowed. As I think that the ground we're standing on starts to rise. Gargarz started raising the land in certain spots to where it was only ankle deep. We should be able to move faster tha-. The turtle charges extremely fast! Lance barely gets in front of it blocking its sharp teeth with his shield. That caught me by surprise.

I can't use shock magic in here. Fireball magic wouldn't be as effective because the slashing water might weaken it. Ice bolt magic might also cause collateral damage. I go with dark mage level one skill magic missile. It's the upgraded version of magic arrow that shoots a giant mana arrow at the target. My moves do nothing to the turtle. Of course its shell would be too thick to do anything against.

Leon ran to it's side and managed to cut its hand. The turtle is too strong to tank so we're going to have to run from it. Lance backed off. He jumped into the air and launched one of his extra spears at the turtle with lancet. It couldn't pierce the turtles shell either.

The turtle turned and started chasing Trice, she's been struggling with this dungeon. The spider silk she can shoot out loses stickiness when wet. Poison spit was completely unusable on most of the enemies getting here. Even Lance and Leon coating their weapons in it only helped against the lizard men.

She uses feral roar and runs away. The turtle chasing after her. She's far too fast with the movement speed boost plus the scout class. Trice is definitely the smartest person in the group. Normally she would be shouting out attack plans to use against the turtle… She can't because she's running though.

The turtle gave up on her instead turning towards me… Oh no! I quickly summon a frog greater familiar, big enough for me to get on. It jumps away once and I fall off… I should have picked something easier to ride. The turtle is right over top of me!

Lance comes flying down onto one of its arms crippling it. While this was happening, I felt the ground shift underneath me and start moving me away from the turtle. Breathing a sigh of relief that Lance had saved me again… He saves me far more than I'd like to admit. Even Gargarz is starting to get accustomed to saving me…

That was certainly not the first time conjuring something has backfired against me. Finally Trice calls out.

“It doesn't have any weaknesses, just focus on any part of it that isn't covered by shell!”

Kind of obvious but with no weaknesses targeting the only exposed body parts is what we should have been doing instead of making two attacks towards its shell. Leon runs to the side and injures the arm he had already injured. It's in far worse shape now than before. The turtle will struggle with chasing us now. I fire another magic missile at the same leg Leon just hit and cripple it completely.

Only one of the turtles front legs and one of its rear legs work now. Lance is whittling it down slowly, with quick thrusts from his spear. Trice stole it's defenses at some point during the fight. It was after she had been chased. Weakening its defenses while strengthening hers, it is a very helpful spellthief move. She had crawled up the wall with spider silk and was in a safe position. I hate to say it but she is fairly useless this fight since the enemy isn't the right match up for her classes. The single move she could use to help she already did. So she was just staying out of everyone’s way.

We managed to get the boss weakened and into its second phase. The turtle had died and it erupted a few dozen mini turtles to attack everyone from it's belly! My stupid frog familiar got killed right away. Lance jumped into the air and Leon had run away from the group... If only I could use shock magic, I could potentially kill all of them in one go. I call it out.

“Trice get the walls sticky! If everyone can get out of the water I can use shock!”

With me yelling Trice quickly covers the walls near her in spider silk. If we don't handle it this way, the turtles might overwhelm us. I'm on the opposite side of everyone else with no silk to climb on… I get an idea though. I summon another frog familiar and ride on him again. He hops me enough out of the water for me to cast shock down into it. BZZZT, frying over half of the turtles in one go. The other half should be paralyzed. After a minute of cleanup duty, targeting the remaining living turtles we've finally killed the first tier five boss!

Advanced Summoner level 16 to 19

Dark mage level 3 to 6

Time mage level 98 to 100

Level 100 Time mage skill gained Time stop- Able to stop time within a fifty foot area around you, drains ten percent of your mana every two seconds

Class limit broken, can learn another class

Rank up requirements met choose your rank up

Advanced time mage | Space mage

Before I pick I'll talk with Gargarz since he's also a time mage.

“Gargarz I hit one hundred with time mage, what did you pick?”

“I haven't hit one hundred yet, what are the options?”

“Advanced Time mage or Space mage.”

“Hmm, I wonder what space mage is about… I'll pick the opposite of what you pick.”

It sounds like he doesn't want space mage... I'll pick that so he can have the more normal class to upgrade to.

“I'm picking space mage."

New class unlocked Space mage

Level one Space mage skill gained Expand- Increase the size of any non organic thing by up to three times it's normal size for one minute (five minute cooldown)

(Leaf's stats when Kite asked) (strength- 450) (dexterity- 400) (intelligence- 1700) (stamina- 500) (total = 2950)

(Leaf's current stats) (strength- 500) (dexterity- 550) (intelligence- 1850) (stamina- 650) (total = 3550)

I'll have to experiment with expand later, to make the most use out of it… It doesn't seem like a bad class after all though... I wonder if it works on familiars? We left the boss room, making our way out with no real troubles finishing the dungeon. Leon approached me later that night.

“Hey Leaf… Can you do me a favor?”

“Yea Leon what's going on?”

“Well… Can… Can you make a familiar to look like Kattie for me?”

Why? What is he going to do? I'll make one for him I guess... It won't be human colored though. Familiars have a particular color too them... I try to use the perfect amount of fatigue points to get her height right. Finally doing that I form a Kattie familiar.

“Kattie, I know this isn't you… But I didn't get a chance to say goodbye to you. Just please… Realize how sorry I am… I wasn't there to protect you… I love you still… I always will… I'm going to try and make this world a better place… I know you're out there somewhere, having been reborn… I'll make you safe even in your new life… I swear it...” Advertisement Support "Master of Learning (Color coded)" PayPal Patreon Previous

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