After the End: Serenity

The next morning, Serenity saw Rissa eating breakfast with Echo and Lancaster - but she’d already left the room by the time he had gotten his food. Echo and Lancaster were still there, though, and they were happy to talk while eating. He could tell they had questions, and promised to grab lunch with them in his room to answer questions. There was a lot they still didn’t know; he’d told them about the Final Reaper, and let them assume that was the reason for all of Serenity’s weirdness.

Only two people showed up to work on gaining a Death affinity. Serenity worked with them for an hour while the regular trainees practiced moving bones, then started going over the general theory of Death affinity.

The biggest thing he needed to teach was that any rule could be bent, but that was a hard thing to teach when bending them the wrong way could result in dire consequences.

The end of the morning was having each of the trainees feel what he was doing as he raised, controlled, and laid a skeleton to rest. Some of them would use it to control armies of undead while others would put the unquiet dead back to sleep, but Serenity wanted them all to know that it was all a part of the same process.

Lunch proved that no matter how much he explained, there were always more questions. Lancaster and Echo now knew about his memories. Both agreed they couldn’t just be a dream, given how accurate they seemed to be.

They didn’t know how he could heal so quickly, or how he had survived Moira’s attack. Serenity just froze every time he tried to talk about it. He knew that it wasn’t likely to bother them and yet he just couldn’t bring himself to admit that he was a monster. Not to anyone else - certainly not to people who mattered. And at this point, Lancaster and Echo were the only friends he had.

After lunch it was time for Trials. Each of the three of them was willing and able to escort groups through the early dungeons. All of the afternoon groups were on the goblin dungeon; they were hoping to spread the mandatory trials out and ease the load on Serenity on the next Trial Day.

Serenity, Echo, and Lancaster weren’t the only people escorting people through their dungeon runs. Raymond had shown back up, and he was doing a few - though apparently some groups were refusing to accept him as a fifth. He was known to be overbearing, and a lot of people didn’t like him. It was also getting to be known that there was some sort of feud between him, Lancaster, and Serenity - and some people were starting to pick sides.

Three other people had stepped up to help - Doyle, Nightwitch, and Liuyedao. Doyle was in his fifties, ex-military of some sort - Serenity wasn’t sure which branch. Nightwitch was a pilot, and young enough that she was probably still in the military, though it was possible she’d moved over to commercial aviation. Liuyedao was a university student, but also a martial artist - apparently some art with a sword. Serenity had met them and they all seemed like nice enough people, but he hadn’t had time to spend with them yet.

Serenity emerged from the third Trial of the day to see

[Time Remaining before Mandatory Trial: 14.23]

They’d settled on a pattern - mornings for classes, the first two hours of the afternoon for escorting parties, then running their own dungeons until dinner. Since Serenity had ended up missing a couple of days, the others had ended up grouping together. They were hoping to finish the tenth Dungeon Trial that afternoon, so Serenity sent them off on it and Sillon chose to accompany them while Serenity waited on the timer.

The mandatory Trial started the same way as the ones of the 4th day - a group of people teleported to a small room with only a single door. Unfortunately, the people were ones who had tried a Trial early on - but then not gone back to do another.

“Nonononono. I am not doing this again! I hate the dark!” One of them was muttering to himself as he stood with his back against a wall.

Two of them seemed to be trying to look at anything but the door, while the fourth watched Serenity.

It seemed like Serenity would have to be the one to break the ice. Maybe he could use his reputation to help? “Hello everyone. I’m Serenity. What are your names?”

That got everyone’s attention. They gave their names as Jack, John, Michael, and Thomas. They seemed relieved, although one of them asked “Why is it just you? I thought there was always an instructor?”

“Not always - not now that we know the format.” Serenity didn’t mention that one wasn’t required if he was there, because what he’d said was true - they were now outside the first four days, and an instructor didn’t always go on a Trial.

“So … you can clear the Trial for us, right?” Michael looked hopeful.

“Did you talk to anyone who went through the Day 4 Trials?” Serenity asked.

They all nodded.

“Did I ever clear the Trial for them?”

Three of the men looked a bit disappointed, but Michael just grinned. “Had to try.”

Serenity was glad they were feeling better. He doubted it would always be this easy. “First things first, do you all have weapons?”

Three of them did; the fourth took a dagger from the weapons rack. Serenity scolded the weaponless one. He really should be carrying a weapon, but even if he hadn’t been, he could have gone to the training arena and picked one up once he got the Trial notification.

Serenity then asked about their magical capability. It turned out that only one of them had the ability to call a ball of Light, and none had any magical offensive capability.

“Before we leave the room, a few things about this dungeon. First, it will likely be dimly lit. Second, I took a sixteen-year-old through here, and she did fine. Third, I’ll take the lead first so you can see what the regular monsters are like, but we’re going to rotate. This is a training dungeon, so it’s not hard, but it is something everyone should learn.”

“The sixteen year old you took through here is Echo, isn’t it? That’s not a fair comparison!”

Serenity just looked at Jack, then opened the door.

The first goblin charged straight at Serenity. He swatted it out of the way with his staff. “As you can see, it’s goblins and they charge you. They’re very weak, so almost anything will kill them, but you do need to try to keep them from hitting you.”

Two of the students managed to get themselves hurt on the way to the boss.

Serenity had them all look into the boss room. Two small goblins and one larger one with an axe instead of a dagger. “So. Any suggestions on how we do this?”

“You head in there, kill them all, and we leave?”

“Serious suggestions, Michael.”

“I was serious!”

Serenity shook his head and waited. After a few minutes, they did start coming up with ideas that used the four of them. He let them settle on a plan - two of them would charge the side goblins, while the other two went after the big guy. It wasn’t elaborate, but it might work, especially if Jack could manage to stick the big goblin with his spear.

It didn’t go as planned.

One of the people going after the side goblins - John - stepped in too early and all three goblins charged. Jack set his spear and managed to get the big goblin to run up on it.

John tripped while backing out of the room, but Michael managed to kill one of the side goblins as it reached him. The entrance was so full of people that Thomas couldn’t get up to hit anything. Serenity sent his staff through a momentary opening and knocked the last goblin off John before it stabbed him.

“Any thoughts on what went wrong?” Serenity looked at the group.

Everyone looked at John, but no one said anything.

“Yes, John stepped in too early. That wasn’t the real problem, though. The real problem was that you were all caught up in the entrance that there wasn’t enough room for us all to fight. Choke points are great if you need to protect a back line, but what this did was let the enemy fight while not all of us could. It’s an easy mistake, but please, do think about positioning. In this case, rushing them as planned rather than backing up would have been better.”

Serenity quickly cut the cores out of the monsters. He presented the boss core to Jack as a reward for his quick action with the spear. The other two went to Michael and Thomas.

Goblin Dungeon 0.1 Complete

5 Participants

Rewards reduced for repeated completion.

Monster extermination: 31 XP

Boss Killed: 25 XP

Dungeon Cleared: 25 XP, 25 Ev

Echo and Lancaster weren’t outside, but Serenity wasn’t surprised. For all that it had been a very green group, they’d rushed the dungeon once he got them going and they hadn’t even tried to kill everything. It had been quick.

No other groups were waiting, so Serenity headed off to see Margrethe.