Chương 51: Delving

At the end of the week, we were expected to participate in an unguided Labyrinth delve, which would help determine our rankings. Although the public rank board updated every week, when they distributed the weekly Presences, we could check our slates for daily updates. Before the delve, I was ranked number twelve. It was probably a good thing we were listed with just our identification number, because being an Atoning at number twelve would put a massive crosshair on my back. This way, no one knew who I was.

After eating breakfast and gathering my equipment, I met my team in the entryway to the Labyrinth. Now that there weren't as many of us, we could all fit into the cellar if we packed close together.

"Your task is simple," the Drillmaster said.

"You will enter the Labyrinth and navigate down to the city below. In the ruins, you will hunt as many monsters as you can find. The skeletons have gathered weapons and gear from the Age of Laurels, and you'll want to gather as much of it as you can get to contribute to your scrap allowance.

"You are not likely to find powerful equipment in the upper tiers of the city, and most of the old imperial weapons are made of bronze—even if they are in good condition, you won't find it effective for modern military engagements. We simply trade it to merchants and award you with a proportional scrap allowance in steel.

"After you return from your delve, we will send a crew of experienced sappers after you to harvest any presences. Stealing from other squads is greatly discouraged… and, and of course, harming or impeding them in other ways is also forbidden. Good luck, and be careful not to do anything that would decrease your rank."

He hadn't actually told us what was a rank-decreasing offense (or maybe he had, but on one of the many days before I had arrived), but I figured the strategy of 'be fast and kill lots of stuff' would probably work out fine. That didn't change the fact that I had other plans, too. I had stuffed my kitbag with equipment that didn't seem immediately useful, like a few books, some string, some stones, as well as leather scraps and fieldstones.

After all, I needed a very specific set of Skills if I was going to merge the next step of my gravitational abilities properly. Over the course of the past week, I'd spent every evening studying in the library, and in my studies, I did my best to plan out how I would get the next evolution of my Art. I hadn't settled on what exactly I'd do, but for now, I just needed to start accumulating Skills to merge. And they needed to be the right Skills.

One by one, the teams set off into the Labyrinth, and I stepped to the head of my squad.

"Formation one," I said. It was hard to develop formations that would work with every squad of sappers, but formation one was a general formation that we had instinctively used last time. Put the heavy tank up front—that being Brawl—and a skirmisher second—me. Ranged members would stay back, flanking your healer and protecting them from attack. For the most part, our delve proceeded the same way as before. We descended through the halls of the upper fortress.

I assumed that the traps and defenses were designed to keep out invaders, protecting the cavern city—hence why there were no traps in the city. We took a similar route on the way down. Although there were no maps to guide us to a specific objective, we had three hours to demonstrate our prowess and what we'd learned. As soon as we were safely out of earshot, I said, "I have a strategy for earning Skills quickly, and I have a plan. I've got my eyes set on target, and I want to get myself a Journeyman tier Skill.

If it works, though, I plan on alternating weeks through you guys, each trying to get you a new Skill or two that we can use for merges."

"I can't learn skills the same as you guys can," Sage said.

"Alright, so then just the three of us will rotate," I said.

"You get to go first?" Anchor asked.

"I'm the guinea pig."

"What the hell is that?"

"Uh…" I scratched the back of my head.

"Call it a test subject. It's just a turn of phrase." For the most part, I knew this was going to work, but I wanted the others to trust me, and I wanted to make sure that I could do it without looking too suspicious. It was better to let the blame fall on me than anyone else. For a moment, I considered my [Labyrinth Delver] skill. It was just a knowledge skill, even though it was the result of a merge, so it was mainly fodder for my next skill.

It wouldn't really help me in the Labyrinth too much, especially if I merged it into something useful and retained the knowledge. For the Art I was targeting, I'd need two fodder Skills and three specific Skills related to the art. This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience. And of those skills, three of them had to be Apprentice-tier to ensure that the result would come out as a Journeyman skill.

So, I decided I'd use [Labyrinth Delver] and [Basic Gravity Manipulation], and I'd need one more Apprentice skill. [Labyrinth Delver] would be fodder— But I was getting ahead of myself. I could organize that later, once I had all the other Skills in check and enough fodder to make it happen. The first skill I needed was called [Slinging]. Once we made it to the bottom floor, I used the materials I brought to create a sling for myself.

Not a slingshot, but a band of leather that I could whirl around and use to lob stones. I said, "If I practice the skill in a combat situation, it has far greater potential to become a proper Skill, upper case S. In theory, I can use the same trick to condense a bunch of other Skills as well. But if we're not working toward our objectives, the Drillmaster is probably going to dock us rankings, so we have to be subtle about it."

I had a bunch of skills that went into [Labyrinth Delver] which I could potentially lose when it merged into my Art, so I had to be careful. I didn't want to erase it.

"Let's head to the narrowest alleyway we can find," I said.

"Hopefully, we can track down some skeletons." I didn't trust my ability to use a sling and a stone as it was, not without some guidance—and narrow walls to ensure that I didn't aim too far off-course. Plus, it would make it harder for the Drillmaster to see me. I warned, "I don't really know if I'll be able to control it the first few times, so you guys should probably stay back." As we navigated the lower city, I looked up, identifying the little watchpost on the ceiling.

It appeared only as a glowing speck of light from this distance, but I knew the Drillmaster and the lieutenants were watching us. Which meant that I couldn't be too obvious about it—a narrow alleyway helped me. Sure, gaining skills was important, but if I looked to be prioritizing gaining skills over helping my squad or gathering scrap, then that would be a cause for concern. When we found our first party of skeletons, we lured them to an alley, and I spent a few minutes fiddling with my sling.

I sent a rock flying backward once, much to Anchor's anger, and launched another straight into the side of an old building. [Slinging] didn't seem like too useful of a Skill, but given the Art it was going to merge into, it made sense.

Getting used to speeding up an object, then launching it at the right time, while mastering angles and forming a more intuitive understanding of centrifugal and centripetal forces would help with my intuitive understanding of gravity—they weren't the same, of course, but they were similar. My attempts improved rapidly, until finally, after a few minutes of effort—of dodging the skeletons and avoiding their strikes—I had taken them all down with my sling.

There was no time to check if it had condensed a skill, but it felt about the same as a novice level skill. I proceeded through the rest of the delve in a similar way. With the next batch of skeletons, I worked on a different knowledge Skill—motion redirection. Unlike how it sounded, my goal was to redirect my own motion. To actually leverage my increased Agility and stop myself before I crashed into things, to improve my motion in combat.

This time, we all entered the narrow alley, so it would look like we were working as a team, but then I took all the skeletons at the same time. I darted between them, getting unsafely close and stopping myself, or charging as if I was about to impale myself on their spears, then stopping at the last moment and evading. Once they were all destroyed, Anchor said, "You look drunk."

"Maybe our illustrious sergeant just has terrible balance," Sage said, and Morph mumbled in agreement.

"You didn't fight like that before, brother," said Brawl.

"What changed?"

"It was just something from the book…" I muttered.

"It was a suggestion on how to earn the Skill I needed…but I think I need to work on the footwork a little more. I don't think it's working."

"No, I don't think it is," Anchor said.

"Why, though?"

"Well, I think we can take risks, prioritizing Skills, while still completing the mission. This is supposed to be training us, but they have to standardize everything. I don't think we have to be standard."

"You're not a very good soldier, brother," Brawl said. I shrugged.

"Yeah. But maybe that's what we need." And so we continued on. We loaded up a tarp with scrap, having peeled the armour off the skeletons, and Brawl carried it, dragging it behind him. Along the way, we crossed paths with a few other groups of soldiers, and once, we found a squad fighting a pack of ruin-hounds, which we ignored. They were doing fine.

For today, the only loot we found was scrap from the skeletons, and with each batch of monsters we found, I practiced a different skill—be it slinging rocks, movement alteration, or another fodder Skill. I couldn't get leather etching again, but I tried for a different skill with the chunks of leather I had. Folding them, using a dowel to put holes in them, shaping them into ringlets that could slip over my fingers and offer me slightly better protection than just gloves.

By the time we finished, Brawl's tarp was covered with bronze scrap, and we carried it up to the surface with us. I deposited it with the lieutenants and the Drillmaster, who were waiting for the teams to return, before continuing back to the surface. Our Presences would be distributed at the end of the next weekly Labyrinth run, and they would always lag a week behind. First, I rushed to our room in the barracks and used the reading slate.

Sure enough, I'd gained two new Skills: [General Leatherworking (Novice)], and [Slinging (Novice)]. My footwork and agility practice was going to need a little more work, and I needed to read up on it, but I was well on my way to improving my Art. And most importantly, it listed my rank. Number thirty. I grinned. A good start.