The rest of Column 5 went smoothly.
Oakley was able to keep the monster’s attention on himself, and Frederica didn’t try to assassinate the boss; instead, she worked with Ula to clear the frogs while Penelope picked off the spiders. Marlow was almost exclusively healing instead of using the pair of hand crossbows that he’d claimed. Dawson ignored the spiders, choosing to focus his poisons on the frogs and bosses.
Penelope hit level ten while they worked on 5E, giving her a final point of Speed and upgrading her Light Affinity. There wasn’t any gear for her, since all she was missing was a helmet and an enchanted belt.
Each fight took them over half an hour because of how slow they had to move. The spiders covered the ground with webbing, and Penelope was the only one with a skill that could clear a lot of webs at once, which forced them to either move slowly or switch her from dealing with the spiders.
Despite the early start, there were numerous breaks in between squares, and it took them until noon to finish.
Patrick had started taking apart the frogs and pulled Judah off of target practice to start roasting the legs. The two of them had arranged spider legs like ribs for a grill. Judah was destroying the legs after a few uses, but there were a lot more spider legs than frog, so he wasn’t going to run out of a surface to cook on.
The pair had carved out one of the beetle shells the day before and sterilized the inside with fire to create a large bowl to stick the cooked meat in and a second one to put the raw stuff in. An interesting quality to the dungeon was that there weren’t any bugs other than the monsters, allowing them to be able to leave the cooked meat out in the open without fear of contamination.
Penelope lay down in 5A, close to the barrier to 6A. She’d already eaten and had no interest in the small talk that the others were engaging in at the camp that Judah and Patrick had made in 5E.
“You know, being antisocial is how you get rumors started about you.” Jeru floated above her.
“It’s asocial, not antisocial.” Penelope sighed. “Being around them while we’re fighting monsters drains my people energy enough.” She narrowed her green eyes. “Plus having you in my head.”
“Me?” The blue Elf feigned being insulted. “I’ll have you know that most loopers have thought I was a delight.” He waffled his head. “I guess there was Moses. He kept calling me a demon, and he’d start screaming whenever I tried to talk to him. Took me almost a year to convince him to pass on the card.”
Penelope chuckled. “See?” She turned to look at the group, then back at her bestiary. “How are we doing?”
“You’re halfway through on the middle of the second day.” Jeru shrugged. “Others have done it faster, but you’re still on track to being able to keep this one.”
Penelope suppressed a shiver and sat up. “This stone gets cold.” She turned to her companion. “Is that because the next floor is ice?”
Jeru snorted. “No, it’s just like that. You could carve out all the stone beneath you, and you wouldn’t reach the second floor. All that’s down there is about ten feet of rock, then a stronger barrier.” He cocked his head to the side. “I thought you looked down the mole holes?”
“Nope.” Penelope shook her head. “I pushed the monster parts into the holes. Didn’t look too much after that.”
“Oh well.” Jeru clicked his tongue. “You’ll get a chance at some point.” He nodded south. “Once the locals find this place, they usually send stonecutters in here to harvest the floor to make a barricade on the outside to try to slow the Demons down in case there’s an outbreak.” He shook his head. “Not that some first-floor material is going to hold back an unrestricted demon any better than wet paper.”
“Really?”
“Well… no.” Jeru bobbed his head. “But most of them can punch through it. There’s plenty of more productive ways to spend their time, but it’s not like they’re going to listen to a human.”
“Why?” Penelope looked up at him.
Jeru floated to sit down next to her. “Humans haven’t had powers in almost two-thousand years.” He shrugged. “There are a few humans that have managed to make a name for themselves because of their tenacity over the millenia, but to most of the universe, humans are the weak, powerless cousins without a homeworld.”
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“You mean there are humans that aren’t on earth?”
“I mean, New Earth is the seat of the humans, but it’s considered an Elf colony complete with an Elf Governor, so any votes that they cast on the galactic stage have to go through the High Elf Alliance.” The blue Elf shrugged. “A lot of races have long memories, and the running joke is that a human can’t do anything without an Elf holding their hand.”
“Oh.”
Jeru eyed her. “People usually have a lot different reactions than ‘oh’.”
Penelope turned away. “You can read my thoughts, and that’s all you picked up on?”
“I mean, the barrage of questions is there too, but most loopers have gotten insulted, especially when it was an Elf that dragged them into this situation.” His voice was barely above a whisper. If it hadn’t been inside her head, she might have had trouble hearing him.
“My life has been full of being underestimated and that I’ll never become anything because of my deficiencies.” Penelope took a deep breath. “After a while, I accepted that no one is going to believe in me and that it’s easier for people to sabotage me than to accept that I might be able to make something of myself.” She sat up. “Going it alone was easier than having to panic all the time waiting for the person I let close cut me off at the knees.”
There was a long pause.
“So why open to me?” Jeru looked away to lessen the pressure she felt from his gaze.
“You’re stuck with me.” She dusted herself off as she stood up. “If you sabotage me, then you stay locked in here a little longer and I get a redo.” Penelope looked at the group that was approaching her. I know you’re keeping stuff from me; with two thousand years of loops, how could you not? But at the end of the day, you’re just a voice in my head. I’ve dealt with my own for over twenty years, so I’m just thinking of you as another inner voice.
Penelope turned to look at him. When I clear this place and you get free, then things will be different, but until then, you’re basically just another part of me.
The blue Elf nodded. “Never had it put like that.” Jeru looked at the other humans. “Look, I’m not sure what of what the others have been through will be helpful to you. At the end of the day, you’re going to have to find a way that works for you, and the deeper we get, the less useful I’m going to be.” He held out his hand. “But I’ll try to help you however I can.”
Thanks.
“What have you been doing out here?" Frederica folded her arms as the others approached.
Penelope shook her head and pointed at the monsters. “I’ve been watching the monsters to see if I could learn anything that might help us.” She paused. Jeru, do you have a way that I could show the others like a monster card?
“Sure, but you really only want to do it for the smaller monsters and not the Demons.”
Why?
“Because the little ones are pretty easy to figure out later on. But if you show them the stats of the Shadows, they’re going to start expecting it before every fight, and you can only give them what I’ve seen, and I don’t have all the information on all the Shadows on this floor and none of the information on the next ones.”
“Okay.” Penelope nodded and flicked her hand to them. “This is what we’re up against.”
The others stared at the stat cards that appeared in their menus.
“How long have you been able to do that?” Oakley gaped.
“I’m guessing since I hit level ten.” Penelope shrugged. “I was just playing with my menu and found it.”
“This is…” Ula scrunched her brow. “What about the Shadow?”
Penelope shrugged. “No clue. It only has the monsters for the last five columns and nothing on the seventh column. I guess I have to get closer to scan them.”
“Well.” The tanned grandmother looked at the square. “Let’s see how we can use this.”
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