As the party approached the nineteenth floor, Astrid had two thoughts occur to her. The first was that they really needed to come up with a party name. Every member was finally officially Iron tier, and once a party got to Iron, they were official enough that they needed a title. That wasn't as important right this moment, though, since they were still in the Wandering Trials and wouldn't be coming in contact with civilians any time soon. But by the time they came out, they really probably should Know what they were going to call themselves. After all, if they came out with a shiny, new boon and no name, Astrid didn't want to be stuck with some title like "the Nameless Wonders" or something corny like that.
The second, and more pressing concern, was that she really needed to experiment with the way that her mana and the much more oblique-to-practice-with stamina could strengthen her body. Barring getting any new Skill offerings that were significantly better somehow, Warrior's Awakening would be a marvelous Skill to get at level 28, and if she could get it at Bronze instead of untiered, then she would, once again, get a boon at the final watershed of her current tier. Yes, finishing Iron was a long way away, with Muti at the highest experience count at currently about halfway through the second level, 22. Getting all the way to 50 wasn't going to happen anytime soon. The real question was how fast the party could gain levels on the twenty first floor. According to the brief, they'd find groups of three hobgoblins with the occasional shadow leopard there. The relatively weak monsters ranging from level 21 to 25 wouldn't be especially threatening to any member of the party, but the three hobs and one leopard would provide over 800 experience to each member of the party.
Again, Astrid had to pull herself from her planning for the future. Ever since she was a child, she was prone to her mind wandering, and now that she was in the Wandering Trials, she especially had to keep her mind from imitating the name of the Dungeon. Astrid refocused herself on how to go about strengthening her body with mana and stamina. She'd always thought of stamina as a more oblique thing, that it was just the energy that she had in her body. After all, she could push herself and exercise, and thereby get stronger. Mana was… magic, right? Until recently, stamina and mana didn't feel like the same kind of resource.
Now that she had a Skill which drained her stamina, though, combined with Immortal Warrior's Body, or Quick Recovery as it once was, she could understand that stamina wasn't quite her physical resilience. It was that, but there was also something more than that that was what fueled Spectre Burst. This better understanding allowed her to try to influence her stamina, to limited effect. Her thoughts were consumed with this as the party left their camp on the morning of the fifth day.
When the party strode into the nineteenth floor, though Astrid had known what was coming, she felt her face twist up under her helmet.
The floor was a graveyard, as stereotypical as graveyards and undead coming as a pair were. A cloudy, moonless night provided little to no additional light, and Astrid thanked her lucky stars, as well as the Guild, for the helmet that had been provided to her. It gave her significantly better night vision than she regularly would have had, and her party members' Acumen helped them all to better perceive the world around them than she could. At least, everybody but Felix. He'd long since been forced to accustom himself to struggling a bit on the darker floors, though Skandr had created an enchantment to help the poor man see. The source of the light was a fist sized stone that Felix carried in his hand and could push a little mana into to make glow. What light it shed was a harsh white, but not so bright as to be blinding. Muti did demand that Felix stay behind her from the moment that he took it out until the moment that the party was getting into battle positions, though.
"I will not be blinded because of your blindness. If I am to see our enemies coming, I must be able to see!"
The discussion had been had several times already, and Felix didn't have any complaints anyways, so Muti ranged no more than five meters ahead of the rest of the party. As soon as the party entered the floor, it wasn't long before she came back.
"I do not think that my assistance in searching for our enemies will be necessary for a short while."
She darted into position on Felix's left flank as Astrid listened to the clacking sound of hundreds of bones approaching. Looking forward, it wasn't long before the shape of over a dozen figures shambled forward.
A regiment of at least 30 skeletons came forward, a ghoul obviously commanding them. The skeletons wore patchwork armor, some with a pauldron and leather shirt, others wearing only tattered pants with boots and gloves, and others still holding only a large cudgel with nothing on. Regardless, every monster was armed, and Astrid remembered the ghoul's two primary skills: Strengthen Subordinates and Command. Together, they would make these Bronze skeletons significantly more troublesome than they would be otherwise.
"This is a lot more numbers than we expected," Felix said as he readied himself. "We're going to need to deal with a good amount of these really quickly. Skandr, you got that?"
The only response the Wizard gave to that was a chant accompanied by the growing sound of wind and thunder.
"Let me see what I can do here." Astrid said, as she pushed some Power-aligned mana through her left glove and into her shield while channeling Spectre Burst into her hammer. Felix simply stepped back to give her the opportunity to make her attack.
Astrid grinned widely as she mentally commanded Spectre Burst to only affect a single individual. There was no telling what exactly it would do, so she wanted to limit the effect. With her shield, she smashed one skeleton to bits, its bones flying everywhere and a kill notification flashing in her vision. As her hammer smashed into the back of another skeleton, Astrid felt the bones crunch as Spectre Burst flooded the monster's spine.
Then its spine reformed with such force that it threw her hammer back.
Having not used any mana in her greaves to keep herself steady, Astrid spun back as the monster's spine reforged itself better than before, growing thicker until its ribs slotted together like armor and its shoulders broadened as it swelled to over 2 meters tall. The skeleton pulled back its spear and stabbed at Astrid faster than she anticipated from a Bronze. She twisted, her Alacrity and higher tier allowing her to keep the blow from striking her solidly. The spear shattered against her Dungeon Silver armor, but still the force of the blow still smashed against her collarbone so hard that she felt the bone creak.
"Duchess above! No Spectre Burst on undead!" Astrid screamed as she activated Immortal Warrior's Body, and felt the bruising on her muscles fade and the bone of her left collarbone ceased its complaints. She spun her hammer, using regular Power-aligned mana as she smashed the skeleton's spine. Combined with the boost from Immortal Warrior's Body, even a glancing blow became deadly. Fortunately, with her strength, Power, and mana, though the skeleton dodged back, it still took enough of a blow that half of its spine disintegrated into powder. It toppled forward, and Astrid whipped her shield's edge into its neck. As the monster's spine fell into three parts, its kill notification flashed in Astrid's eyes, notably different.
Necrotic Skeleton Warrior slain. 1000 experience gained, split among party.
"Astrid!" Skandr shouted as he finished summoning his storm and called the lightning down on the ghoul in the back lines. "You made that thing an Iron tier!"
"I'm well aware! Not doing that again," as she said as much, Astrid had already recovered most of her mana through her use of Immortal Warrior's Body, and used her hammer and shield liberally as she tore through the rest of the Bronze tier skeletons on this flank. Without her accidentally strengthening the ordinary soldiers, her hammer and shield's edge both made short work of the monsters. Muti had less success as she tried to chop through the monsters to notable effect, but not as well as she'd obviously hoped. Her seax chopped through bone easily enough, but her shortsword wasn't made for chopping so much as slicing and stabbing, and, when only eight regular skeletons and the ghoul remained, the Ambusher growled in anger as she pushed formless mana into her seax and threw herself forward at the ghoul.
The monster dodged her first attack, swiping back with clawed fingers, but to no avail. Muti twisted her body perfectly to avoid the attack while chopping its arm off at the elbow with her sword. The skeletons went to try to support their leader, but Felix forced all their attention onto him with Guardian's Wrath as he repositioned himself closer to his ally. He continued chopping through limbs as the party dispatched the last of their enemies, but for the Iron. Corpses fell, once again unmoving as Astrid panted and looked at her party members. The ghoul was the last remaining, its severed arm twitching on the ground as it continued to pursue Muti. With a grunt, she feinted left and skewered with her right. The ghoul, impaled on her short sword, flailed madly as Muti lifted it into the air above her head while still staked through on her sword. It couldn't evade as she whipped her left arm forward and decapitated it.
Ghoul Captain slain. 1,100 experience gained, split among party.
"Hey, Astrid?"
"I know what you're going to say, I get it," Astrid responded to Benedict.
"Even if you know, I'm gonna say it. Don't do that again."
Astrid waved off the Bard's complaints as she looked at the corpse of the skeleton that she accidentally evolved, as well as the ghoul. The ghoul, as a creature, was fundamentally different from a skeleton. The ghoul's body was covered in desiccated flesh, some of it with just enough moist enough to be decaying and disgusting, its face was almost inhuman, with sunken eyes and long, sharp teeth. Both hands had five fingers and were tipped to with four centimeter-long claws, and the creature's jerky movements have been off putting, to say the least. On the other hand, the skeletons looked, to Astrid's untrained eye, to be human skeletons. Of average height, with nothing particularly remarkable about them, except for the Iron tier one.
Somehow, Spectre Burst had infused the corpse with more vitality and strength than it'd had beforehand. The skeleton's bones everywhere on its body, not just it's torso, were thicker, denser, and darker than all of its other bronze brethren. It was fortunate for Astrid that the evolution she'd triggered hadn't granted it a more potent weapon, or else she might have sustained a more severe wound. Interestingly, she had already learned that if she wasn't careful, the Dungeon silver that made her armor wasn't an especially protective material without her mana. As soon as it had even a small amount of her mana flowing through it, the Dungeon silver was effectively impenetrable, but due to her carelessness, she'd taken a heavy blow that she shouldn't have that hadn't really threatened her, but reminded her of the need to be more careful. Days in the Dungeon spent fighting mostly monsters a tier below her had sapped Astrid of so much of the key caution that she needed while delving.
"Do you know exactly what happened?" Felix asked as he cut the pinky from the two Iron tier monsters.
"I'd guess that, just like how a fire element attack will strengthen a fiery monster, I accidentally strengthened the skeleton," Astrd's answer was dry, as much stating the obvious as anything else. "I don't have any other insight than that."
Felix was obviously less than completely satisfied with that, but he didn't complain. Instead, he cocked his head to the side and asked Astrid, "I know that, usually until Steel, delvers gain attributes faster than the monsters they fight. How does that work with people like us, who have higher tier Classes? I mean, you had only a one level difference from that skeleton, and it took you by surprise to got a good hit in on you. Sure, most of that was the suddenness of what it was able to do, but it seems like the 'necrotic skeleton' had more attributes than it should have."
"There's two parts to that," Skandr answered as he continued looking at the surroundings. "The first is, of course, that whatever Astrid did to the thing gave it a massive buff. The instantaneous evolution, whatever it was at its core, effectively put a bunch of her mana into the monster and forced it to evolve. That made it significantly stronger than it would have been otherwise, taking it from an ordinary monster to a more elite one. But a more literal answer to your question is the exact function of the scaling of monster levels."
"And you know this?" Astrid asked with a surprised smile.
"Always learning." Skandr gave a wide smile. "And as an explanation to you, Felix, it's complicated. With a party of very rare Classes, we'll be punching above our weight class, or our levels, I suppose, for as long as we're in Iron because of how monsters grow at this tier. Already, we're seeing this in overcoming threats that most Iron tiers would maybe not struggle with, but would need to be a lot more cautious about. Instead, due to our stats and our Skills' tier and rarity, we can just throw ourselves forward and continue to tear through what's in front of us without much planning. For regular monsters, things like orc, skeletons, goblins and hobgoblins, kobolds, and so on, that difference will grow even more stark with every level we gain. More specifically, I glanced through the brief and it's explained there that an Iron tier skeleton gains something like 20 attribute points per level? Just slightly less than a common Iron tier Class does, which is 22. I don't remember what the ghouls get. Astrid?"
"24," she answered immediately. "They're technically a slightly higher class of monster. Something like the gnoll shamans back in Kznietch."
"So even an ordinary Iron tier party wouldn't have issues with these monsters." Skandr continued. "On the other hand, us four, discounting Miss 'already-has-a-boon' over here, all get 40 points every level. Basically, we're getting twice as much as the skeletons do, every level. Those extra three points that a ghoul gets compared to other basic monsters every level? Insignificant. On the other hand… out of curiosity, I also looked at the last floor that we have data on. There are drakes on that floor, which I thought was particularly interesting, given our history." As Skandr continued to explain, even Astrid felt herself get drawn in, though she knew what he was explaining. Muti continued to keep an eye out on their surroundings as she listened and guided the party onward, but they moved slowly to their next target.
"Every level? A drake gets 34 stats at least, with the leaders of packs regularly gaining 40 or more per level, though those'll be Bosses if they're found in Dungeon branches instead of the Trials or the Dungeon proper. They're one of the monsters with the highest relative strength in Iron. They're basically dragons, if dragons could be Iron tier. There are, of course, Bosses and more elite variants of monsters, but an ordinary drake will keep up with anybody with a rare Class in Iron, except their growth from levels 1 to 20 is effectively higher than any person's would be."
"That's all interesting," Felix answered, "but that doesn't answer what my actual question was."
"I figured giving you a reference point would help better explain the general growth of monsters, if you'd allow me to take a second." Skandr raised both hands as he finally got to the conclusion of his explanation. "So, a goblin in Bronze? They get something like four to six stats per level. Same goes for wargs, most kobolds, and so on. Each watershed sees a marked increase as well that keeps the disparity between people and monsters from becoming too wide. Then, gnolls get anywhere from 7 to 10, if they're not an elite variant and orcs'll get something like 9 to 11. Trolls? I think they were getting about 12 per level. Trolls are among the strongest monsters in Bronze, and are still gaining less per level than anybody in Bronze. Of course, they're immensely specialized in attributes that make them more dangerous than you'd expect, but that's not the point. Also of note is that there aren't any rarities for Classes in Bronze, so that doesn't matter, but there we are. Anyways. I got distracted there.
"Ordinary Iron tier monsters will gain something around 20 attributes per level, like I said before. We can move on to Steel, unless there's any questions?" Skandr asked the question, and Felix sighed as he gestured with a hand for the Wizard to continue on his explanation.
"In Steel, the weakest monsters will gain stats at a rate of a person that got an uncommon Iron class and an uncommon Steel Class. That is to say, 40 stats per level. That would be lower than any of us, even if we get only a common tier Class when we evolve, but that'd be just a regular skeleton. In Steel? That's an additional monster that the real monster can summon with mana. Then, looking at one of the elite monsters in Steel: wyverns. They gain stats at 20 per level for every level in Bronze, so faster than any person. For every level in Iron, they gain 38 stats per level, as if they'd gotten a rare Class, plus those bonus stats they have as a wyvern. Finally, in Steel, they continue to grow as if they'd gained a very rare Class, so another 24 per level, taking them to 62 per level. Again, all of this isn't counting the bonuses that all monsters get at every watershed. Effectively, not counting the bonus four stats per level that they get for being elite monsters, a wyvern grows as if they were a person who was regular in Bronze, then got a rare Class in Iron and a very rare once they entered Steel. Of course, that's discounting the extra bonuses they get at every watershed."
Felix squinted. "This difference in attributes—it continues growing?"
"So far as I've been told, yes. In Mithril, which is the highest tier that anybody has ever been willing to share, the regular, weak monsters gain as many stats as if they were uncommon, then uncommon in Steel, then rare in Mithril. Which means a goblin at Mithril, which, so far as I know, doesn't exist, is gaining 58 stats a level. That's almost the same as the Steel tier wyvern. Yes, a wyvern who gets to Mithril is going to be much stronger than the goblin because it's been gaining more stats per level, but the idea, I think, still makes sense. Right?"
Benedict cursed under his breath, the words unintelligible, but the meaning obvious. "And Bosses? They keep getting more and more terrifying?"
"Exactly." Astrid spoke up. "So, even if we keep up our current rate of improvement, we'll be struggling to compare to the strongest Bosses and monsters in Mithril and beyond. Interestingly, this means that past the first watershed of Iron, when we get our next Skills, we'll start to thoroughly outclass the monsters we fight. Getting attributes so much faster than them will mean that the higher level we get, the faster we'll progress, possibly the fastest we ever will in our lives. That's even compared to back in Bronze, because our current growth outclasses just about every monster we'll come across until we get past the fortieth floor and everything we encounter will be elite."
"I wonder what a 'regular' monster in Arcanite gains," Felix murdered to himself as Astrid's explanation died off. "The way it's all cascading…"
"We don't know," Astrid pulled him from his thoughts, "but that's not happening anytime soon. For now, let's focus on killing the next group of skeletons, shall we?"
He laughed as he put his hands up in surrender. "Sounds good."
"That is a good thing that you are ready now. Another group of our enemies approaches." Muti's announcement pulled the party from their explanations as Astrid pushed a hint of Power-aligned mana to her hammer and shield. She'd made the mistake of evolving a monster once, she wasn't going to do it again. Unless…?
"Each time we exterminate one of these groups: do we want to leave a skeleton or two alone, then have me buff them to Iron? Get some more experience for free?"
A series of satisfied noises answered her, and Astrid laughed, deciding to reserve as much of her mana and stamina as she could in this fight. After all, the extra Iron in the back would be a better challenge.