“I say it isn’t right!” Franco yelled, bashing an orc across the face with his kite shield. In doing so, he left his back wide-open to the assault of a second of the creatures, however.

“Song of Destruction; 1st Poem, 4th Stanza—White Lightning,” I hastened to chant. I imbued the spell with as much mana I could given the amount of time, and although weaker than I would have liked, the beam of white electricity still tore through the monster’s flesh with ease, stunning the creature into a stupor.

Having noticed his mistake, Franco quickly spun on his feet, dragging his long sword behind him in a horizontal slash, which soon sent the orc’s head rolling on the ground.

“Why aren’t you saying anything?” Franco asked, looking my way once he confirmed all the monsters were dead. “They took all our cores and left us what—the all-clear to explore the Orc’s Lair for an entire month? Fuck that! Those were two rank B cores, for God’s sake! Not to mention they even requested we hand over the lindworm’s! We could have earned a small fortune by selling that one only. Aren’t you mad?”

“They said they would give them back once the lab has finished analyzing them. The free-pass to the Lair was a reward—not a pay off for the cores. We just have to wait a few days.” Franco scoffed at my words. “Besides,” I added, hoping he would see reason. “With how much our Guildmasters spent on our equipment, even if they confiscated them, which they won’t, we still would be indebted to them.”

“I know,” Franco said after a short pause, deflating. “I just… I really need the money. I’m close to advancing to the next rank, and I need to find and purchase the refined core of a suitable B-ranked monster.”

It took me a second for what Franco was saying to sink in. When it did, I started. Franco and I awakened roughly at the same time. Had I been a C-ranked mage, it would have taken me from an entire year to four, maybe even five times as much to advance to rank B. And that was if I was lucky—many Awakened never advanced at all after all.

Franco was a knight. As a rule of thumbs, knights needed at least twice as much time a mage of the same rank needed. The reason behind it was that, while mages only had to raise their resonance to the ambient mana, warriors and knights first had to increase the affinity to their respective energies, which in turn, in due time, would raise their resonance with mana. For knights the process was even more time consuming than it was for warriors, as prana was the by-product of qi and mana working together. Thus, after clearing the first obstacle, they had to wait for their resonance with qi to rise as well—then, and only then, would their resonance with mana increase.

I knew of only two avenues by which Franco could have increased his compatibility with mana so rapidly. The first possibility was that, when he awakened, his resonance with mana was already almost on par with that of a B-ranker, which was unlikely, to say the least; almost every person who awakened did so at the early stages of their rank after all. The second was more realistic, albeit not by much. Franco had to have fused with a very close to completion rank C core; it was common knowledge that the closer a core came to be a sphere, the faster the person who fused with it could increase his resonance. To have a core reduce that time by more than half was unheard of, however.

“Hey, did you hear me?”

Franco’s voice startled me, breaking me out of my thoughts. “I’m sorry?”

“I said, are you up for the next cave?”

“Are you sure?” I asked back. “We are already pushing it as it is. B-ranked orcs have been spawning more frequently in the latter caves as of late. We could run into one.”

“Oh, come on!” Franco whined. “You never take any risks. You need to loosen up.”

“Are you an idiot?” I queried. “What if we meet with something stronger than the basilisk or the cockatrice? Besides, it isn’t as if we would find anything of value to bring back with us. Our guilds scoured the first part of the dungeon clean of anything valuable, and I doubt we will find any monster with a core seeing as how they raid this place almost daily. The blood of a few more C-ranked orcs is hardly worth the risk—or even the effort.”

“Come on!” Franco implored. “Stop thinking about money for a second. We are doing it for the thrills.”

“You are the one who complained about them in the first place!”

“Yes, but now I’m not. One cave,” Franco hurried to add, seeing me ready to assault him. “One cave is all I ask. Pretty please?” He begged, batting me his long eyelashes—I tried not to puke.

“Fine. You stop doing that thing, though. It gives me the creeps.”

“That is my charm working on you. Don't fight it. Embrace it.”

"Seriously, stop it. You are giving me the goose-pimples."

Franco chuckled, moving to the passage leading to the next cave while I followed. We walked in silence, accompanied only by the sound of our boots crunching on the dry dirt of the floor. The passage was darker than the rest of the dungeon. Here, the fluorescent green moss decorating most of the ceiling and walls was less present, leaving the place in perpetual shade.

My heartbeat echoed in my ears in a crescendo; the closer we got to the exit, the faster it beat. I tried taking deep breaths, to keep calm and relaxed. Yet, I couldn’t. It was in this cave Alessandro and I met the high orc. It was in this cave I came the closest I had ever been to die. I was not panicking. I hadn’t a trauma. I just couldn’t feel safe knowing I was here without someone who could bail the two of us out should things fall apart.

When we reached the end of the tunnel, I stopped Franco from waltzing inside. Closing my eyes, I focused on the clusters of corruption closest to us. The refined anathema was hard to track, but I knew where to look, and soon I found them. I heaved a sigh. The monsters I could feel were on the same level of the ones in the previous cave. We were dealing with C-ranked orcs at most.

“What are you doing?” Franco asked in a whisper.