“A bit more to the left.” Ben said.

I turned a bit more, and Ben gave me a thumbs up. I used my Phantom Phalanx and the boar crashed against a fake Darryl suddenly appearing in front of it. Angling that just right was harder now that I had to work with 120 degree angles. I turned around but didn’t join the fight, as Alexa began to pelt the creature with her magic orbs.

The boar seemed more annoyed than in pain, but they got up and jumped at Alexa, who quickly flew a bit higher to stay out of the boar’s reach. One of the orbs flew up the monster’s nose, and for a moment their whole head lit up with a red light that showed their skull and main arteries.

“Nice! Level up, you son of a pig!” Alexa cheered, throwing the orbs with renewed vigour, their damage noticeably reducing the boar’s health a bit faster now.

Her sceptre enabled her to cast an attack called Mana Bubble, which Livia said was a weak and basic but reliable attack that would scale with her charisma over time. It didn’t consume any mana, requiring only for Alexa to swing her arm.

The attacks were weak, but would scale with her spell level which started at lvl1 and was now lvl3. It levelled rather slowly, but Livia said that Alexa would need a ranged attack to fall back on. She couldn’t rely on weapons like her rapier that went against her build for too long, unless she’d spread her stats out too much and ended up weak in all regards. So an attack like this which didn’t need intelligence was a godsend, and she should definitely grind it up now rather than later.

Her schoolgirl outfit didn’t actually enhance her attack aside from the raw intelligence boost, rather it increased her skill training by 10% for all skills of lvl1-3. Which was very useful as long as she had any of those, even if Alexa herself preferred to deal more damage now by using a different outfit.

But for the mana bubbles she had to use this one, as her Dress-Up unlocked the additional skill ‘Textbook Example’. The skill allowed her to choose one of her skills or spells every 30h and use it with the proficiency as if it was at 5th level. No gain of power and without the 5th level skill bonus, just the muscle memory that the skills somehow gave you. It enabled you to train obscure or hard to use skills, and in this case it enabled Alexa to fire the bubbles with any accuracy instead of having to learn the timing of her swing. If it weren’t for her schoolgirl outfit, she might hit only one in ten bubbles.

The idea was for her to grind up this cantrip-level spell today and get it to lvl5 before the 30h were over. A sensible plan.

Unfortunately, Alexa was eleven.

“Darryl, my arm starts to hurt. Can I train something else now?” Alexa whined.

Livia: Come on, dear. If you keep at it, this will be over soon. Spread out training to all of your skills, and it will take forever before you master anything. Also, you should get the grinding over with before you get too many fans.

“But it’s booooooring~!” Alexa said.

Livia: Your schoolgirl outfit buffs your skill training for levels one to three, including lvl3>4. Just one more level. And then preferably another one, but one more is a good start.

The boar, still at two-thirds of its health, huffed and puffed as it tried to climb up the walls to reach Alexa.

Livia: Keep attacking it, or it might turn its attention to Darryl. You’re not a tank, so your aggro is pretty low and fades fast.

“And remember what Livia said. You get a lot more experience if you defeat this thing all by yourself.” I said. “I already stopped its charge with my phantoms, if I block it again I’m going to take away even more of your experience.”

“But my arm feels like jelly…” Alexa said, reluctantly swinging her arm again. She grabbed the sceptre with her left arm and began swinging that one instead, her attacks immediately losing much of their accuracy.

The boar grunted as it climbed up the ruined wall, a remarkable feat for a creature clearly not meant for climbing with hooves instead of nimble toes.

Alexa flew a bit closer, and the boar awkwardly tried to angle to launch itself off the wall at the same time without just falling. She smiled, and took a pose.

“Star Struck!” Alexa said, flashing the boar.

It shrieked and covered its eyes with one hand, a 6 second timer appearing above its head. The duration was a lot lower for creatures that weren’t used to living in complete darkness underground, even after she doubled her Charisma. I suppose the ability had been rather OP against the Krutnik.

Alexa landed on the human hand that the boar was using to hold on to the wall, and began to Mana Bubble the fingers from point blank range. The boar’s grip failed and it fell down, falling awkwardly like a bag of bricks. Alexa was on it not a moment after, charging up her sceptre to strike it down with a full blast.

The boar, still panicking from being blinded and disoriented after the fall, rolled over ‘by happenstance’ just as the blast was about to hit them, causing the energy to smash against the pavement.

“God freaking damn it!” Alexa cursed loudly. “Screw this, I’m burning it all down!”

Alexa’s old golden necklace appeared in her hands, and her tiny wings immediately buckled under the weight of the ornament meant for humans. She didn’t seem to care and aimed the centre ruby at the boar as she fell more than hovered under the weight.

“Super-awesome Fire Princess Blast!” She shouted, unable to do her little unnecessary Power Rangers hand movements while holding on to the heavy necklace with both hands. In fact, she technically didn’t have to say the magic words either.

The necklace spat out a Scorching Ray and struck the boar in the back of the neck, the monster squealing like a pig and spreading the scent of roasted pork almost immediately. For the low-hanging fruit kind of jokes that the AI liked to pull, that one might’ve quirked my lips if I had any.

The necklace disappeared and Alexa tried to steady herself before she’d crash into the beast, succeeding only at the last moment and having to use her legs to land on the boar’s back before jumping back into the air again.

The boar tried to turn around and grab her, but I stepped forwards and just placed my foot down on its shoulder to keep it on the ground. Alexa dodged its outstretched hand and quickly managed to get out of range again.

“Alexa, Mana Bubble. Don’t try training a hundred skills at once.” I said as I stepped back.

“Yes, dad.” Alexa sighed, but she took out her sceptre and swung it again.

“Damn, this is so hella boring!” Alexa complained as she kept pelting the boar with the red orbs, slowly shaving off its last sliver of health as the boar tried to get back up again. “This takes forever, and doesn’t even look cool!”

“That’s true. But if you don’t train it, it will always remain like this.” I said. “Remember what Livia said, once this skill hits lvl5 you’ll add your charisma to the damage. You just need to soldier through until you reach that point.”

Alexa just sighed in an overly dramatic way, and flew over to sit on my shoulder. “But you don’t have to stab this thing like a bazillion times before it dies. And Ben can kill them in one hit!”

“Ben has some crazy damage modifiers, and I too trained my attack skills.” I shrugged. “Even if mine are a bit behind the rest, I have several spear skills already at a higher level. You trained with the axe, and the skills you grinded for it are now useless. You have to catch up from scratch, while fighting creatures with the same level as first floor Neighbourhood Bosses. That’s why we’re focusing on grinding some levels for you. Had I suddenly switched to archery, I probably would’ve been this weak too.”

“But I don’t wanna be weak!” Alexa whined. “And Charisma is terrible for combat. Intelligence would increase my spell attacks right away, like it does for Miho, but I’ve got to attack a stupid boarman like six quadrillion times because I have to be sooooo suave now.”

Livia: Fans don’t like whiny girls, Alexa.

Alexa just sighed overly loud and exaggerated again, and sprawled herself over my shoulder like a wet rag. “They do if it’s all the way over the top.”

Livia: Sometimes they do, but let’s not bank on that.

“I wanna train something else now. I’ve got like two more outfits to try out. Can we do that?” Alexa said.

I held in a sigh. I told myself that Alexa was still eleven years old, it made sense that she didn’t have a very long attention span or couldn’t focus on training the same skill endlessly. I was honestly surprised that she defeated half a dozen of these boarmen before she started to rebel.

“You could try training your Meep Meep skill.” I said. “Run away from the next enemy we find, and then fight it. Better that we train that one now, rather than when you really need to use it.”

Alexa sighed loudly again. “Naaaaaaah~, that one is lame. I meant my other outfit. The nurse one.”

Livia: That one comes with the support buff, right? That’s fine, you can rest your arms a bit and train buffing Darryl as he fights.

Livia: Or better yet, do both. Run away from a mob in your light Krutnik, and transform into a nurse after getting back to Darryl.

Alexa groaned and turned to lie on her belly while she lavished like a cat. “Fiiiiine~. Let’s do that. I wanted to be a freaking rockstar, but noooo~. I didn’t get a kick-ass rockstar outfit and have to use stupid schoolgirl energy blasts and nurse healing powers.”

Livia: Idols don’t do rock, dear.

Darryl: What about babymetal?

Livia: Baby-what?

Darryl: Heavy metal rock, but with cute idol girls as the singers.

Darryl: The Syndicate is a million-year-old government with quadrillions of inhabitants, but no one ever tried combining those two?

Livia: Who in their right mind would ever even try such a thing?

Elise: Japan.

Livia: Your Earth cultures have come up with the most ridiculous things…

“Alright. Ben, you read the chat?” I said.

Ben’s hand came out of the wall and gave a thumbs up.

“No need to bring them in one at a time, find a group and we’ll let Alexa draw them in all at once. I can take on more than one, and you can step in if I can’t. That ought to speed up grinding.” I said.

Ben’s shadow dashed off, and a few minutes later he texted us directions. Alexa put on her light Krutnik armour and walked away, while I remained where I was to make sure that she’d find me back.

I looked up at the skyscraper that we were slowly inching closer towards. The walls on one side had been torn off by time, exposing layer after layer of floors, but the tower itself looked sturdy.

I couldn’t see anything move in there, but it made sense that there would be something there. Possibly even something bigger than a Neighbourhood Boss, in which case we’d just leave again, but probably also a lot of regular mobs.

The boars out here weren’t that tightly packed and we had to walk several minutes between encounters, so if the enemies there were manageable then they’d make for faster grinding.

Alexa: Incoming!

I got ready and listened for the sounds of enemies approaching, waiting for Alexa to get behind me before I’d engage.

A few moments later I heard her, followed by sounds that didn’t seem to come from the boars we fought before. Or those skinny-armed bears we occasionally encountered. A new mob? Well, it would probably be fine. They were just lvl9-10 around here anyway, and Ben hadn’t seen any reason to alert us about them.

Thomas: Guys, let’s regroup. We’ve got sentient mobs incoming.

Shit. Great timing.

Darryl: Ben, you go ahead. Alexa and I’ll be right behind you.

Ben: You sure? I can stick around just in case; these are new mobs.

Darryl: And sentient mobs carry weapons for you to steal, these monsters aren’t grinding your class features.

Ben: :O Good point. Bye!

Alexa appeared from around the corner and ran towards me with enhanced speed, kicking up a dust cloud behind her. For a regular sized crawler the trail of dust would likely blind any pursuing enemy, but for tiny Alexa the dust was but a minor nuisance. Still, Meep Meep also boosted her running speed as long as she ran in a straight line.

Then her pursuers rounded the corner, two giant centipedes rushing ahead while a hideously deformed half-man half-bug spurred them on.

“Darryl, help! These monsters are actually super creepy and gross! Save meeeee~!!!” Alexa shouted, jumping through my legs to relative safety.

I readied my shield and prepared for battle.