Thunk was grumbling to himself as he made his way up the stairs hidden behind the illusionary wall. The meeting with Lorna had gone much as he had expected. Other than their vast differences in work ethic, the main reason Lorna was hard on her brother was his Devouring Stride. She saw it as a mark of great potential, but her useless brother was only interested in a life of leisure. There were only two things that ever got him moving, the exorbitant price he charged for an assassination, and the chance to increase the level of his Devouring Stride.

His work on his Devouring skill wasn’t based on making it stronger, but instead on making sure he didn’t die when he stopped feeding it. While Thunk believed that the skill wouldn’t devour its owner after consuming one hundred fifty skills, the truth was that the possibility never truly went away, it just became so small as to be almost impossible. For Error, almost wasn’t good enough. He had what most would deem an irrational fear that Devouring Stride was going to be the cause of his death, but Error had his reasons. He just never shared them with anyone.

When Thunk reached the top of the stairs he saw a wheeled trolley covered in booze and food outside of a door a little to the left. Smiling at the prompt and accurate service he headed over. With the first of many dwarven ale tankards in hand, he knocked on the door. When he had finished the first tankard without any form of response from inside, he hollered, “Hey, Lazy Ass, it’s me. Open up, I got work for you.” It only took two more mugs before the door opened. With the excellent service of The Bloody Knife, they were all replaced before Error appeared.

Thunk looked at his friend pensively. Error was taller than most, although almost everyone was taller than a Dwarf, and disturbingly thin. Although these were normal for those of his race, the pallid look of his skin, and sunken eyes hinted at a man who had neglected to eat for some time. Or he had been cursed. A bit of a toss up there. The dwarf raised a hand and snapped his fingers. It wasn’t magic that caused the second food covered trolley to appear, but he simply motioned the invisible server away, and pushed both trays into the room himself. Once the door was closed, he turned to his elven friend and said, “You look like shit. Eat now, talk after.”

Some thirty minutes, four trays, and an unknown number of alcoholic beverages later, the two friends had satisfied their hunger, and were enjoying a slight buzz. Thunk let out a wall rattling belch, patted his stomach, and asked, “So, what happened?”

Error just sighed and quietly muttered. Eventually his voice grew loud enough to actually hear, “She’s being a bitch. I turned down a job from one of her ‘friends’,” he actually made the air quotes with his fingers, a habit he’d picked up from Thunk, “and she decided I didn’t have the authority to do that. I explained that she didn’t have the authority to send me into an obvious trap, and if she wanted to kill me that much she’d have to poison my food. When she stormed off, I realized the mistake I’d made, but it was too late. I hadn’t eaten in five days.”

Briefly Thunk pondered asking why Error didn’t just go out and get his own food or keep some in his storage, but remembered it was against his morals. They were simple morals. Kill people so that he could have servants, through fear or money, fetch him everything he needed to live in his idea of luxury. Mostly represented by staying in his room and having servants bring him booze and food, sleeping the rest of the time. He wasn’t concerned that Error would have died from his hunger, Lorna would have fed him as soon as he passed out from hunger, or apologized. She didn’t care which, she just wanted to prove a point. There was no point getting more involved in the sibling rivalry than he already had, so Thunk dropped the entire idea. Instead he started in on his pitch, “I’ve got a new arrival that needs some training. He-”

“I’ll do it,” Error interrupted. The man was already on his feet and searching for his gear.

Thunk was amazed. Every time he had ever tried to get Error to help with a trainee it had dissolved into shouting and begging. This time he never even got into any of it. He could only figure that this last spat with his sister had really rubbed Error the wrong way. Nothing else could really get the man moving. Easy victory or not, there were still some things to discuss. “Do you want the basics on what he’s got?”

The elf didn’t look up from his task, but answered anyway, “I assume he’s got a Devouring Skill, so I’d like to know which one, as well as whatever else you can tell me. The better head start I get on his training, the better job I can do.” He paused his search efforts for a moment to shudder. “Maybe if I drink enough I can ignore Tuti this time.”

“Ha! There’s not enough booze in the world to ignore that psycho, but you won’t have to worry about it this time. The new guy killed the tiny bitch during the tutorial, so she’s not here.”

The much taller man whipped around and grabbed Thunk’s shoulders before he could react, face so close they were almost nose to nose, grey eyes wide. “Seriously? Please tell me you aren’t lying to make me feel better, I don’t think I could take that.”

The dwarf just shook his head slightly, and patted Error on his shoulder, “Calm down, I wasn’t lying. He said he drowned her in a fishtank.” His voice took on a dreamy quality for a bit, “I can’t wait to sleep and have happy dreams of her drowning for eternity.” His happy sigh made it clear this was a long time dream of his. Error’s sigh matched his perfectly. The two men enjoyed their moment of contemplative murder.

Taking his hand off the taller man’s shoulder, Thunk said, “Alright, back to work. Trainee’s name is Dix. He’s actually got Devouring Stride, just like you. Already up to thirty five skills down the hatch, and ideas for another twenty or so I’d guess. He seems older and more mature than his young age would normally indicate. And there’s some issues.” He sighed again, this time more frustrated. A quick search of the last trolley pushed into the room revealed an unfinished tankard of ale, so he quickly downed half of it, then stared into its depths.

When he hadn’t spoken for a minute, Error looked over to find his friend pensively studying his ale. It was an odd thing for the dwarf to be doing, but the elf had a suspicion about why his friend was upset. For now though he needed to focus on this new arrival, as it was the only way to help his friend. He went back to searching for his things, to give the dwarf his privacy, but still asked, “What sort of issues?”

Thunk coughed, startled out of his mood, then finished off his drink. Setting down the mug, he turned to watch the elf look for his things, leaning against the door jamb. “Well, it’s mostly his skills. For one he’s got some Necromancy.” Seeing no reaction to that statement, as expected, he continued. “Two, his class based skills are almost entirely basic. And three, he wants to be a hybrid.” That got a twitch for a reaction, but he pressed on. “Melee, ranged, and magic.” That got a full body lock up. He waited, knowing Error had to think through the implications of it all.

Standing to his full height, Error started sending the things he had found to his inventory. For those that actually had an inventory, it wasn’t bottomless, so it was better to have a place to store things you didn’t always need to have on hand. A bedroom above an assassin’s guild that masquerades as a restaurant was about as safe as it could get. His head tilted to the side in thought, formulating what he needed to know. The questions followed soon after. “How basic are we talking on the skills?” Thunk quickly rattled off the list of skills that Dix had, then expounded on them. Error quickly locked onto the details that he heard, and slowly a smile grew on his face, confusing the priest. Seeing his friend didn’t understand, he started to explain.

“I know you are looking at these Enhanced attacking skills as basic, and without the quality of most attacking skills, but you are missing the point. In what situation is an attack that is faster, stronger, or more precise a bad thing? And if it can be all of those things at once? You are looking at it as not having any of the elemental effects that have become the standard, but I see it as not having all of them, yet.” The confused look on Thunk’s face had only grown, so Error kept going. “Tell me, how smart is this new arrival? Did he make that Empower skill you told me about on his own and with a purpose, or was it luck?”

Not knowing the answer to the question, Thunk could only shrug. “I don’t know. He seems sharp enough, but he plays things pretty close to the chest. Why?”

Thinking some more, Error grabbed a couple more items he thought might be useful. “Making a Devouring skill is more about determination, instinct, and personality than anything else, as far as I can tell. But something like Empower? To actually put something like that together takes either brains or luck. If it was brains, then I might have a way to turn his so-called basic skills into incredibly dangerous weapons.”

Flabbergasted, the dwarven priest threw his hands in the air, “By the Gods, how are you planning to do that?”

An enigmatic smile on his lips, the elf ushered him out the door, saying, “By using another basic skill. I’ll explain later, not now. We’ll talk about it with my new apprentice when we all make it back to your office. I hope you at least gave him the basic rules?”

“Of course I did. He agreed easily, and already headed off to the training dungeon”

“Hmm. How much does he know about the style of skills people use around here?”

“Nothing yet, he just got here today. But he is in the dungeon, so who knows what he’ll see there.”

“Excellent. Hopefully he pays attention.”

--------------------

Dix was, in fact, paying attention. He’d found another group of rats, but they were already under attack by a group of teens that looked to be about his new age. As soon as he spotted the other dungeoneers he’d spread his Risen rats out to keep him informed of anything else approaching, but far enough that they wouldn’t be spotted by the people fighting nearby. Settling down to watch the fight he was a bit mesmerized by the differences between their fighting style and his own. It wasn’t as simple as group combat versus singular, but more about the fundamental approach to fighting.

When Dix fought, his goal was to kill as quickly as possible. He aimed for eyes, hearts, brains. Failing to make a killing blow immediately, he instead aimed to cripple or wound, find a way to slow down or impair his enemy. He would throw downed enemies at those still fighting to disrupt their movements, or attacks. He shoulder checked others to knock them off balance enough to get a strike in. Other times he would grab a limb to open an enemy to a fatal strike.

The teens fighting the rats at the end of the hall weren’t aiming to kill the rats, they were just damaging them. The difference was subtle, but very important. The group down the hall was simply spamming their skills with intent to cause the health of the enemy to fall. There was no specific target they were trying to strike, no intent to kill with a single blow. No trying to cripple, maim, impair, or slow. For all of that they relied on their skills.

The group had a number of different types of skills, all infused with different elements to cause damage and some sort of status effect to their targets. However, no matter how impressive those skills were, they were wielded by uncoordinated idiots. Watching the small group battle the rats was the very reason he didn’t want to work with a group at all.

Sword swings infused with fire set the fur of the rats alight and caused ongoing damage, but cauterized the cuts so they took no bleeding damage. That same fire would also stop the damage from the ice attacks of the archer. Sure, the cold still slowed the rats movement, but the frostburn damage would stop everytime the rat was struck with fire. Another fighter used a spear skill that would release a flash of lightning on strike that would briefly paralyze the target. No one else attacked while it was paralyzed, and the teen would be pulling back for his next attack. By the time he could attack again, the rat would move and counter attack. Why didn’t anyone else attack while the rat was paralyzed? Because they were so blinded by the flash of lightning that they couldn’t see well enough to attack without hitting their friends.

As for the last two members, they were the tank and the healer. The tank had a small buckler, and a two handed hammer. His armor was so heavy he could barely move, so he had no chance of actually blocking anything with the tiny excuse for a shield he had. Not that he ever actually tried to block. Instead he was more like a berserker, charging in as best he could under all that weight, and swinging his hammer around like an epilectic. He wasn’t actually tanking anything on purpose, more like restricting access to the healer with his bulk. His buckler was also too small in comparison to the range of his hammer, so when he used his shield attacking skills he never hit anything with it.

If it wasn’t for the uselessness of the entire rest of the group, Dix would be hard pressed to see anything useful in fighting in a group at all. However, the fact that four out of the five people in the group were constantly in each other's way, fought like deranged morons, and couldn’t actually kill anything in a reasonable amount of time simply showcased exactly how useful a healer could be. In this group, the healer sat at the back and tossed out a never ending series of small heals, short term buffs, and shields. Dix was unsure how long he could hold out before he was tapped out of mana, but he certainly seemed to know what he was doing. Excellent at the job of healing or not, he was an enabler that was more likely to be a long term curse than anything else.

No matter how he looked at it, these five, even in training, were doomed to die horribly. Yes, their healer was doing a great job of keeping them all alive, but he also wasn’t ever letting them get low enough on health to realize that they were taking stupid risks, and leaving themselves open to enemy attacks. As their dependence on him grew along with their assurance in his skill, they would eventually attack something that did more damage than he could heal through and they would die. The tank wanted to be a damage dealer, but was so buried under armor he couldn’t actually move fast enough to hurt anything. He also ignored his main responsibility of keeping everyone alive, and attracting the attention of enemies. The damage dealers refused to let the tank soak up any damage by each attempting to kill their targets faster than the others. This led to them inevitably taking all of the hits from whichever enemy they were attacking. Adding to the problems, they were also trying to steal each other's kills while their own target was still alive.

Other than the skills themselves, there really wasn’t much to be gained by watching this walking tragedy. After analyzing the layout and combat style of the group, Dix focused more on the skills. None of them ever made any attack that wasn’t a skill, so he got a chance to see quite a few of them. Simply shaking his head at the realization that none of them actually just attacked something, he was almost as confused by the skills themselves. The damage dealers all had elemental attacking skills, but they were significantly less impressive than he thought they would be. Even the skills that he had lost were better than this garbage.

Each of the skills focused more on the area of effect blast of their specific elements than anything else. Even the more precise skills were focused on the element, leaving the weapon as just a delivery system. Flaming Slash used to set things on fire, rather than as a boost to a sword sliced through the heart. Icy Arrow used to slow and cause frost damage as opposed to freezing a lung, or carotid artery. Lightning bursts to briefly stun, or blind an enemy, instead of increasing the speed of a spear thrust, or used to flow a constant current keeping an enemy stunned long enough for a finishing blow from a partner.

Dix sincerely hoped that these kids were just trainees that would have all of these bad habits beaten out of them before they lost the chance, but he had little hope that that would happen. It looked like the people here loved their skills for the vanity of them, rather than their usefulness. Dix learned that lesson from his duster, and he’d never make it again.