Chương 59: The Guardians

Not much changed with Lord Ceonwin's presence. Training continued as normal, but now, there were far more regular Dupes running around, carrying orders and patrolling the walls—and I couldn't forget the thegns, who often practiced their Arts in the fields outside the castle. I watched carefully. There were a few factions crowding the castle now—regular Dupes, sappers, and the Subtle Men.

All seemed to keep their distance, but every once in a while, I caught a senior sapper grumbling about the looming presence of the Subtle Men and how they were making it difficult to do anything. But by far, the biggest change was in Sage. She had fallen silent, and rarely spoke unless spoken to. Whenever she went outside, unless it was for training, she made it as quick as possible before dipping back into the cover of a building.

In the next Labyrinth run, we helped Anchor train some fodder skills, and then it circled back to me—it was my turn to focus on acquiring skills while the others kept watch and distracted anyone watching us. I had my Art, I had [Labyrinth Delver], and a few fodder skills. To improve my Art and push it in the direction I wanted, though, I'd have to merge it with my [Personal Motion Redirection] Skill.

The problem was, my redirection Skill needed to be Apprentice tier before I could merge it, and three of the five total skills had to be Apprentice tier. So, either I had to merge [Personal Motion Redirection] up a tier, or I had to increase its strength manually by just using it more and practicing with it. Although we had the library to draw on for knowledge, we also received what felt like lectures from "advancement advisors."

They were sorcerers from a nearby Order who had studied Dupes closely and learned how our advancement worked. Once a week, they gathered to give us endless advancement suggestions and to explain more about how the System worked. In the end, my biggest takeaway was that using a Skill to increase its tier was far more effective than merging to strengthen it—when it was below Journeyman.

Merging was important to create high-tier Skills, so you should try to start with Apprentice tier ingredients—there was no sense in wasting your time collecting and merging a bunch of novice fodder skills unless you really had nothing better to do, or you wanted to clean up your status a bit. Plus, a Skill that you took to Apprentice had a far better chance of staying in your memory.

If I was doing all this work to learn motion redirection, then I had better actually retain it after I merged the Skill and turned it into an Art. In my Labyrinth runs, I continued practicing. Instead of just attacking the skeletons with jerky movements, I relied more on the suggestions the gravity-enhancement book had provided. I rushed forward, then transferred my weight and shifted my motion, turning without losing speed, and put myself in a position to smash the skeleton.

At this point, I didn't try to hide my new movement style. I was fighting and taking the lead, which was exactly what the Drillmaster and his lieutenants should have been hoping to see. And this way, I would build toward an upgrade to my Art—I needed to be able to change the direction of my gravitational fields. The problem was that I needed ten Focus to make the upgrade work, and that I needed to alter [Slinging] slightly.

The second purpose of Skill merging was to acquire skills you didn't necessarily have, or modify them into something more specific. If I continued practicing flinging rocks, it would simply increase [Slinging] to Apprentice tier. But I needed it to specialize. Right now, it was general. A balance between speed and marksmanship. But what I needed was to push it closer to the marksmanship side. Because increased accuracy and control was going to be one of the critical ingredients in specializing my Art.

It would improve the precision of the gravity and let me intuitively change its direction. Lastly, there was [Commanding Presence]. Although I didn't need to use it, the book suggested it might be complimentary to gravity-based Arts down the road, so I wouldn't complain. Now that I had six Presence, and soon to be seven, it gave me a lot of time to practice. I could resonate my sling for now, which gave each stone I launched a far greater impact, and sometimes, I destroyed three or four skeletons at once.

I couldn't let myself get used to it, though. Resonating the skill helped take it from Novice to Apprentice faster, but when I merged it, I wouldn't be able to resonate it anymore. The longer my experiments went, the more apparent it became why we had to merge the higher level skills. Even with the help of the Labyrinth, it took about ten times as much practice to go from a Novice skill to an Apprentice skill as it did to create the novice skill in the first place.

Yes, I could spend months practicing, but even just raising a Skill to Journeyman manually would take more time than I wanted to spend. Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more. Plus, the tiers went far higher than Journeyman. Novice, Apprentice, Journeyman, Advanced, Expert, Prodigy. Few sappers ever ascended beyond an Expert tier Skill in their life, and even then, they only had one. The rest stayed around Journeyman.

Some members of the Warlord's Guard had Prodigy-tier Skills, and no one knew precisely what the Warlord himself had, or if he could even access the System—he wasn't a Dupe, but if he built the System, why wouldn't he use it for himself? Unless, of course, it was designed to make us weaker than the other Path-walkers… But I didn't know enough to make a judgement either way. For now, I'd do what I could.

At the end of my week (the week when it was my turn to advance my Skills), I led the others up to the top of an old tower to survey the underground city. The tower's stone was weak and threatened to crumble under our weight, but it held for just long enough to get a better overview of the Labyrinth. There were four quarters of the city, and it was far more massive than it looked from the edge. Once you were actually immersed in it, waves of red tile roofs rose and fell for what felt like miles.

But at the center of the city, there was a plaza—and a route down to the next level. A spiral staircase delved into the stone and dipped deep below the surface, but I couldn't see beyond the rim. It didn't matter, though. A giant, lumbering pillar golem patrolled the central plaza, guarding the stairway.

"What's that there for?" I asked.

"It's the level guardian," Sage replied.

"A Gold, so it's out of our reach. The larger problem is getting to it."

"I'm picking up on at least a hundred other Silvers in the surrounding city blocks," Anchor said. He had earned himself a perception Skill like Shave had used, except with greater range.

"And they're our guys, I can tell you that much. Of course, there are also plenty of Titaniums and Steels." I nodded.

"Alright, so the real test is how much Presence we have." I needed at least three Presence to take down a single Titanium bone dragon, so I couldn't pave the way on my own, and I hadn't tested myself against a Silver. Even with the others, we couldn't even get to the level guardian yet.

"But if the level guardian is there," Brawl asked, "then how come other Dupes have made expeditions down to the second level in the past?"

"Guardians emerge about once every year," Sage explained.

"That's how long it takes for the Labyrinth Keepers to rebuild them. It's part of the test for us. If we can take down the level guardian, then we'll have a year to sneak down into the bottom of the Labyrinth and explore the untamed depths." I nodded.

"And that's why it takes two years to make a sapper, then. One year to train us to defeat the level guardian, another year for us to loot the bottom level—the lower city."

"Exactly," Sage said.

"But only one squad usually defeats the level guardian."

"Is there a reward?"

"You get to keep the loot. And our ranking will probably be unchallengeable unless we really mess up."

"And the better our ranking, the better choice we have of where we get deployed," Anchor said.

"As well as more Presences every week."

"We get a choice?"

"Somewhat. But the higher ranked squads get better deployments."

"By better, he means stronger foes," Brawl said.

"Not that I am complaining about testing myself against them."

"Let's just finish up our run," I said.

"And let's see if we can't find any good loot. Then maybe we can think about how we'll actually take down the level guardian."

"Don't get ahead of yourselves," Sage told us.

"We still have to defeat all the quarter guardians before we can even consider challenging the level guardian. You're not going to want to go after the level guardian until you clear out the quarter guardians."

"Hm?" I tilted my head. She pointed to the nearest city quarter, where, perfectly at its center, there was an open plaza, just like the central one—but it had a smaller golem in it, too.

"If you can't take out the quarter guardians, they'll enhance the strength of the main level guardian. It's probably more like an Emerald at the moment, given how all the quarter bosses are still here." At the center of this quarter's smaller plaza, there was a smaller pillar golem.

"It's a Titanium," said Anchor.

"And there's the same issue as before. It gathers a bunch of Titanium-tier monsters close to it. Either they're looking for something to eat and can sense it, or it's manipulating them."

"How's everyone's Presences doing?" I asked.

"Not good enough to attack a quarter guardian, brother," Brawl said.

"I have three points left." Myself, I had two, and that wouldn't be enough either to even get to it. Anchor and Sage were similarly low.

"Right," I said.

"Let's find some smaller monsters, gather some loot, then get out of here. We can't get too greedy. But next week, we make a beeline for the quarter guardian." I paused, then looked at Sage.

"Why do they not tell us any of this?"

"They aren't expecting us to be ready so soon," she answered.

"It's not even halfway through the year."

"Then why do you know?"

"I know everything."

"I doubt it."

"Yes I do."

"Who's Batman's alter ego?"

"Huh?"

"Exactly," I replied, crossing my arms and giving her a smug grin.

"Now, let's just finish this run before we get in trouble."