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The seventh floor was different from before. It took us a few days after we came back to get down there, and by that point, the government, the corporations and the guilds had taken action. The quests notices were everywhere, detailing how much each shard and core from a landfang was worth. There were other minor lists too for other fae, but the notices were dominated by the landfang information.

It was frustrating, that our own orbs had been taken away, but we weren’t particularly interested in turning the landfang orb into our party orb. For one thing, the spider orb was still useful, giving us added mobility and helping Yorrick handle his fear of heights a little better. For another, paying for another enchanter to rebuild the orb would be too expensive, even if we resold our own.

Right now, our orb sat in the academy’s orb vault, connected to us via etheric threads, safe from being stolen. It was one of the advantages of graduating from the academy, and a way for them to tell if we still lived. Useful – but it also meant that the academy received our orbs if there was a total party wipe.

“We joining the hunt?” Sophia asked, as we made our way through the impromptu mini city at the start of the floor. The gaping hole that led right from the next floor had a wall being built, made of broken stone and mortar and already three feet high. It was impressive how fast it was coming up, now that the government had chosen to take action.

The only real question that I had was whether they’d keep the walls here and the guards when everything was over. Not that it mattered much to me, since they were not stopping the outflow of adventurers.

For now, the new seals were not being utilized, not enough adventurers having them. Eventually, we knew that would happen; the small silver-and-gold etched, shard infused item would emerge from the stores of the city in waves. Supposedly, each of the medallions that they were utilizing could give a minor boost to physique too, linked as they were to the main city war orb, but in this case, they were just a useful tool for differentiating human from landfang.

“No,” Kira said, firmly. “We have a lot of levels to do. We can earn more by hitting the tenth floor than doing anything here.”

She waited a beat, looking for objections and finding none. Brand in particular looked uncomfortable, idly rubbing at his head where he had been struck. I made sure to shift to stand near him, leaning over to mutter as we pushed through the gates.

“You feeling up to this?”

“I’m fine.” Brand lips thinned. “Only way to get stronger is to keep pushing down, right?”

“Not exactly,” I said. “We could take things slower, give you time to improve on your skill.”

“I need more potential. More energy.” He waved his hand around, nearly striking another adventurer, who glared at the kid. This guy was a miner of some sort, and, after noting our weapons, chose to stay silent. Resource gatherers knew better than to pick fights with us real adventurers.

Among other things, we generally had better and more lethal skills.

“That means going down. I can’t… I won’t… I need the orbs.” He dropped his voice, almost snarling. “My idiot father took out another loan – put my brother as collateral. If I don’t repay them, they’ll take him.”

“You can’t—”

“Oh, don’t worry. I’ve dealt with him.” The way Brand said the last sentence made me shiver. I wasn’t certain I wanted to know exactly what he had done to his own father, but if he noticed my hesitation, Brand never showed it. “He won’t be racking up any more debts for us. But I can’t stop them from taking my brother, not now. Not without paying them off.”

I frowned, the idea of the indenturing of a kid sitting ill with me. “Maybe I can—”

“I have it handled,” Brand cut me off. “You just do your job, and so long as we keep descending, it won’t be a problem.”

Somehow, I doubted that, but that’s the thing about kids. They all figured they had a handle on things when they didn’t, and you couldn’t convince them otherwise until, well, it was all too late. Still, I’d keep an eye on him.

Just like I would the others.

Once free of the crowd, Kira led us at a decent pace away. We weren’t the only ones moving with purpose, there not being a need to keep much of an eye out for danger. The earlier groups had all but cleared the monsters from the vicinity, such that making our way to one of the four exits to the next floor was simple enough.

Well, technically, there were more than four exits, with at least a dozen other smaller ways down. Some of those, however, were tightly controlled by various groups, the descent leading to particularly rich hunting grounds. Since there were other ways to descend, no one really ever contested such actions, other than other groups.

Which left the four main exits for us to descend via.

Once we left the nearby groups, making much better time than before, we had to start slowing down. With the surplus of adventurers on this floor, the bramble goats were having a hard time of it, but the creatures were dumb and repopulated fast and aggressive enough that they kept coming no matter what we did.

So we had to keep an eye out for them, even as we pushed onwards. There was nothing to learn here, and with so many killed, and the rewards from farming for shards and orbs were insufficient to justify us going out of our way. Instead, we kept moving forwards, focused on heading for the exit that Kira had picked.

If you had not realized it, Kira had taken over much of the planning and upfront leadership roles for the group. At least, when things were running smoothly. She had a tendency to hesitate and reevaluate, to overthink situations when reality conflicted with her expectations. A lot of that, I knew, came from her age – in time, with experience, she would learn how to handle unexpected situations better. She would make even more plans, perhaps, to cover contingencies that she had not quite expected.

In the meantime, when that happened, I took over. However, for the most part, I was more than happy to leave her to the dreck work, the everyday management of the group. I noticed I was not the only one, with Yorrick only occasionally raising an objection and Brand happy to fall in line, playing follower to her leader.

It was Sophia who conflicted the most in the group. It was not surprising; the four of us had run the entire of the academy’s fault together, while Sophia was an imposition from another group – filling the space our old watcher used to fill.

Could we have had more people in the group? Probably. The size of a group was generally limited to five or so by the size of party orbs, which at the earliest levels could not handle more than that number, usually. It made little sense to expand your group to six or more, and then realize a few dozen levels later that you needed to shrink the grouping down because the new party orb could not handle the extra load.

Some groups chose to go over-sized immediately, fluctuating in the space of seven or eight members and basically running two different parties but working closely together as one. That had the advantage that when – if – they lost party members, they could just downshift and it gave a greater degree of safety. The negative, of course, was the lower income, the problems in tight spaces where individuals could only fight one or two at a time, and general party dynamics.

In the end, most such groups either broke up after a while and expanded to two different parties, becoming a loose coalition during larger runs, sometimes even forming a guild later on, or they split off entirely. All these kinds of dynamics, of course, were a concern in the earliest stages, before we hit the nineteenth floor. At that point, the major test that was the portal demon and the creatures that appeared after the twentieth floor drove most to stay away.

Parties reconfigured quite often after that, as the increased risk and the need for a good skill along with a willingness to take damage and keep going separated the adventurers from the deep delvers. There was, frankly, not a lot of delvers willing to risk their lives, deeper and deeper – even if the rewards scaled proportionately. Not when the dangers did too.

Frankly, it had been one of the major reasons why I had avoided partying up earlier and it was only due to the way that the academy had forced us into groups that I even joined with them in the beginning. Afterwards, I had continued with the process, realizing that some of my own views about how easy it would be to survive the dungeon were a little warped.

It only took one bad run, one mistake – a hard blow to the head that knocked you unconscious, an attack that caught and trapped your movements at the wrong time, a deep wound or a broken limb – and you could be dead.

Sure, if you were tough enough, strong enough, powerful enough, you could avoid the vast majority of such things. Given enough time, my skill might provide me failsafes against all that – momentum could drain the impact of an attack, stored health would fix broken bones and shattered limbs – but there were no guarantees.

I was not ready, not yet. But that wasn’t forever, and at some point, I would be strong enough to go alone.

Till then, this party was what I had and I just had to make sure to keep it functioning.