A New Star Chapter 84 (Patreon)

Emmanuel

I had been tailing the kids for their entire run, and I had to say, I was rather impressed. Oh, not with their performance in fighting through the dungeon, that was rather abysmal, and Alex had to step in and save them several times. Speaking of which, Alex did exactly what we had thought she was going to do, which was fine, but she was clearly too skilled, knowledgeable, and overall powerful to fit in with a team like this or run this rank of dungeon. Setting her to the side as the anomaly, or perhaps hidden-in-plain-sight chaperone that she acted as, I was impressed that the rest of the kids had managed to, with a bit of help from our set aside wonder, pull themselves together and act as a cohesive team. Setting Jhan in charge hadn’t been so much a test of the whole team, though it slightly had, as it had been a test of Jhan, one he had managed to fail with flying colors, which I’m sure his father would be particularly happy about. Luckily, the man, the father that is, was still young and full of vim and vigor. Oh, and he had three other children that could inherit the business and barony without cocking it all up.

The rest of the kids had performed well, considering their relative fresh skills and inexperience in tough combat situations. Luckily, Alex was both there to ensure that nothing too bad happened, and she was also experienced enough, given her carried over memories, to let the kids struggle and succeed on their own without trampling over all of them. I was thinking that her past life really must have been more extraordinary than I had first thought, but it was so hard to judge. Her discussions of things like sailing the Black Ocean for a thousand years were so confusing; perhaps it was some other place on this world, a place we didn’t have access to, being currently bound to just this continent. That was a frustration all of its own; we had enough understanding of physics, the sciences, and mana flow to understand the shape and general composition of the world; we knew there were other lands and other peoples, and we understood the movements of the moons and suns. Work had even been done recently showing some of the bright stars in the sky were other worlds circling our own sun, work that seemed to match some extremely old documents in the royal records of my home nation.

Whatever the case may be, this wasn’t really about Alex. I am sure there would be plenty of praise, and plenty of questions, for her once the kids started returning. They’d bump into the harvesting teams rather quickly, each of the three of them protected by skilled guards from the noble estates. It wasn’t always how things were done in dungeons, and there could be reasons it wasn’t possible, but this dungeon didn’t have instances or entrance restrictions, making it a good demonstration of what many standard runs would be like. Well, standard runs for noble teams; poor teams would do all the functions, including the harvesting and transport, with whatever members they had to hand. Only teams that were rich, or doing very well for themselves, at the least, would hire secondary help. With how hard scrabble everything was these days, fewer teams than one might think were using secondaries, though it wasn’t a privilege left entirely to the nobility. That was mainly the realm of large guilds and merchant houses these days, something else the kids would have to learn about going forward.

Alex had surveyed the boss room, finding that the dungeon had spawned a treasure chest; often the dungeon either kept one in the boss room, or moved it there after the boss died. Why was endlessly debated, but the full logic of dungeons wasn’t entirely understood, though that their methods were very consistent was well-known. Alex displayed a lack of interest in the chest and returned to the entrance, surveying the team still recovering and working on starting to take apart the boss. Not all the kids were as spoiled as they let on.

She moved back into the tunnel a way before looking directly at where I was standing, and I emerged from the wall with a gust of wind and a sigh. Of course, the young prodigy with the mind of an old monster living inside would have some way to figure out I was there, and I certainly wasn’t a stealth specialist of any kind, but I had worked on an illusion affinity for some time now and thought I was rather good with it. Before I could speak, however, Alex beat me to the punch.

“You hid your breathing and did well with blocking vision, but your illusion either wasn’t strong enough or complex enough to hide the electrical signals that pulse through your nervous system,” she opened with. While it was a piece of unsolicited advice, it was quite good, and I found myself stroking my build.

“Electrical signals, you say?” I asked, thinking. “Hmm, I had even thought to mask sounds using wind and small applications of pure mana, thinking my breathing or heartbeat would give me away.”

“Most people would be fooled, even stronger people,” Alex said calmly. “You forget, I have quite a sensitivity to electrical signals. I also have very, very powerful senses. Your methods would easily fool those without an electrical affinity, people below a certain rank, but I am not those people.”

“Well, I don’t even have an electrical affinity unlocked,” I muttered, running through scenarios in my head. “I shall have to talk to Jeanne about that. She’s reached Z-rank in hers, after all.”

“I take it you’re down here for more than hide and seek?” Alex said then, giving me a quirked eyebrow. She was both incredibly irritating and yet, somehow, retained a certain magnetic charisma. Perhaps it was just the sheer force of her personality; she knew who and what she was, and was always one hundred percent confident in what she was doing and why she was doing it.

“Yes, yes. Much as I enjoy they game, I feel the competition isn’t up to it, or that’s what I would say, if a little monster like you weren’t running around,” I huffed.

“Not so little anymore,” she replied, casually withdrawing that godly relic she kept hidden about her person and throwing it across her shoulders, wrapping her arms around each side as it jutted outward.

“Yes, yes, physically and mentally, you’re approaching adulthood. Congratulations,” I said, deadpan.

“It matters not,” she replied, shrugging a bit, and I warily watched the spear move up and down. The thing had basically bitten me several times at this point, and I wasn’t taking any chances. “Let’s gather up the kids—er, rather—let’s gather up the team and get this over with. This after action report is not going to be pleasant.”

“Is that what you call them?” I asked, striding forward towards the boss room, tapping my cane along the rough floor as I did so. This dungeon had a stone floor throughout, fortunately, though it was rough and patchy. The walls were a mix of stone and dirt, and the ceiling was packed dirt with some roots and small plants embedded within. All in all, a fairly standard dungeon layout, particularly for one of these cave-like ones, but it didn’t make it all that pleasant to be in. I constantly felt like I needed a bath when under the dirt ceiling, even if very little of it fell. In some dungeons, the dirt was basically an illusion, a sort of painting of the ceiling to look natural, but it might as well have been stone or metal. That wasn’t the case here, and I would be cleaning up as soon as we were out of this blasted place.

“Come now, children,” I said, enhancing my voice with wind, seeing them all jump, some of them quite high. Alex had not jumped or reacted at all, other than to give me a long, flat look, making her lack of amusement at my antics clear. “Oh, give an old man his fun,” I said to her, which only got a slight frown and shake of her head. “Ahem, anyway, gather round children! We shall have a walk back up the tunnel and meet with some of the support staff. We’re going to have a bit of an impromptu lesson here, and then we shall be out of the dungeon and back to camp. Does anyone have any questions, or, more concerning, any injuries or issues to report?”

“No, Your Grace,” Gorge answered for the group, bowing to the count. While the moniker would normally be reserved for higher nobility in several of the countries, my status as a Y-ranker superseded almost any other title or honor, and many used the high noble terms and references for us. It was a habit that we didn’t try all that hard to break; the nobles among those few of us with this power were used to such things, though we monitored it carefully, and the commoners that managed extraordinary feats got a good feeling of accomplishment when they were treated with high respect.

“Good. Come along, then,” I said, seeing many of the children eying Alex, but we didn’t have time to stop and show off her amazing abilities or weapons. The kids needed some more work and I needed out of this dirty cave.

We strode through the tunnels for a few minutes, myself taking the lead and Alex taking the rear. There was only a single incident along the way in passing a side tunnel, one that had a single beast within. I killed it without a thought; now was not the time for the children to perform, and the last few stragglers of the dungeon weren’t worth the time of having them setup and engage. I heard a few whispers at the casual ease with which I had killed such a powerful beast, but that was to be expected. Once one got beyond The Wall, their power was really on a whole different level as compared to those who had climbed over or smashed through it. Even then, those at The Wall at T-rank, or those just before it at S-rank, were still incredibly powerful. A bunch of H-rank kids just really didn’t understand how the ranks scaled; it was one thing for their parents and instructors to talk to them about it, it was another to see live demonstrations, and even what I had just done was only a tiny fraction.

The only one not impressed, of course, was Alex, but based on Jeanne and my guesses, it was likely she was special in more ways than one. Even assuming the lowest of the low, that she only had a tier four body, she would already be impossibly powerful. It was another the kids didn’t understand, though that ignorance was shared by very many these days; body cultivation was looked down upon, but anyone with a higher tier body that pursued it was bound to turn into a real monster. Alex was already proof of that, considering she both had a very high tier body, likely tier five or even more, and she pursued the cultivation of it. Jeanne had sat in with her several times when she used medicinal baths to strengthen her body, which Alex always referred to as unpleasant but necessary, about as stoic a take on something so gruesome as one could have. Jeanne had described it to me afterwards, and the amount of pain and disturbance to the mind it must have caused, and for hours at that, must have been totally overwhelming, but she reported that Alex had not even gasped or grunted. Considering the report of her punching through mana-reinforced stone many years ago after one such tempering adventure, I genuinely shuddered to think how great her strength now was.

I needed to think less about my student, who was not in any way in trouble at the moment, and think more of the other kids. I had been impressed with both Gorge and Miriam, especially after they had received a bit of coaching from my student. Normally, I would be proud, a grandmaster passing teachings down through a master to a disciple, but Alex gleaned very little from me. Not that she learned nothing; she had a sharp and cunning mind and picked up new information at a frankly horrifying rate, but she was very well experienced herself without any help from me. Her teachings to the kids were entirely her own, and her instructions, not just of the shield warriors, but the rest of the group, had seen a marked improvement in them all, even the ever-detestable Jhan, though attitude was something the boy was going to have to have some special training to correct. That was my department, however, so I continued on.

“You will find here the first support team,” I said to the kids after another minute. We had been walking very fast, but I had also been propelling us along with magic. Most of the kids seemed unaware of what was happening, judging by their expressions and reactions, though Alex was giving me yet another one of her patented flat looks. I knew she could move far faster, but I wasn’t sure what her capabilities where for moving others, so I used a bit of one of my own tricks.

“I don’t want you to get in the middle of this, but I want everyone to observe their skill and the process they use in breaking down a fresh kill,” I instructed, taking the group to where two women were just starting on one of the beasts. The four guards with this team had all come to attention, and the captain moved to speak to me, but I waved him off. “You will notice the captain wants to have a word, and while you should normally check, I have been monitoring a large section of the dungeon continuously. What the captain has to say, I already know, though I would take his report if we were in a higher-rank or more complex instance.”

The captain gave me a quick salute and returned to his post and his attention to the surroundings. Good man. I turned to the kids and began explaining the process of breaking down the kills and how the parts would be stored or wrapped and transported out. Much of this they had already gotten from their days in academy, and I had seen Alex chop apart beasts the size of large houses in a few minutes with the skills of a seasoned butcher, so I knew I was essentially preaching to the choir here. At the same time, there could very easily be bits and pieces in what I was saying that they were unfamiliar with, or things that the support team were doing that the kids hadn’t ever seen before. While I was a big proponent of learning by doing, I was just as big a proponent of taking advice and feedback from those more knowledge or experienced than yourself and trying to understand what they had to say or what they did.

I kept the kids there for a handful of minutes, enough to watch the process and ask a couple questions, before I started us moving again. That was just a quick lesson along the way, but now we were getting out of here, and I was getting a bath. The after action report, as Alex termed it, could wait a few minutes while we all cleaned up, considering no one was dead or seriously injured. Not that I had expected different, but someone limping out barely alive, or us carrying a corpse out would have made the priorities different. With both Alex and myself their, that wasn’t going to happen, and the kids had done well, overall, and now it was time to get cleaned up before the bickering began.

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