Rix didn’t kill her.

  There was too much of a difference in levels and stats. Not to mention skill. Rix had been scraping her way through bandit country, trying to stay alive, while Pixie’s fighting experience was essentially wrestling with aunts and uncles. They were technically her nieces, and nephews sometimes with a great or few attached in front of it, but because of the age gap, most of the time she was treated like a little sister or niece.

  Which amounted to me spending a good part of the afternoon near the two while Rix kept holding back to not completely thrash my little sister. I wasn’t actually sure which one of us was older, but she was as annoying as I’d always assumed a little sister would be, so I went with it.

  I took a break from looking at the dungeon guides to look at her stats. Gesai had added her to the party, so now we had eleven. We’d finish out our twelve once Astrid woke up, then we’d be able to head back to the Cathedral and the Green Team could start training for their first Adventurer Games. When there were four teams, usually only one got sent, but Trent was trying to get the committee to change the rules so that each Ward could send two classes. We weren’t able to compete because Rix was level seven and the maximum you could be for tryouts was five. We could get up to seven by the time the Adventurer Games rolled around at the end of the year, but having someone with that much of a level difference could be huge.

  I chuckled. Rix had killed a bandit whose level was in the high teens. It wouldn’t matter if she was the lowest level person on our team. She was still going to be dangerous.

  I isolated the screen to just show the two women’s stats. Neither one had their true stats showing, but I was able to trigger my screen so that I could see their actual stats beside what most people could see.

  Their power was almost the same, but the big difference was in their speed. While twenty speed didn’t mean that Rix was twice as fast as Pixie with her ten, it did mean that Rix was a lot faster. I got to watch Rix throw Pixie around the mat for over an hour before my sister gave up and sat down on my left.

  “She’s a monster!” Pixie pretended to be out of breath. “Whatcha looking at?”

  I rolled my eyes. My little sister hadn’t started breathing hard until she sat down next to me. I thought about pointing out the flaw in her dramatics, but was able to realize that would only help her get better at it and I’d rather know when she was faking.

  “I was just looking at your stats while I took a break from reading about the monsters…”

  Pixie grabbed my arm so she could see the loadout being displayed on my CB. She looked up at Rix who was walking over to us.

  “You’ve got twenty speed?” Her excitement was bubbling out of control. “How did you get to level seven already?”

  “PK.” Rix looked at me. “You figure out the monsters?”

  I took my arm back from my sister. “The info packets that the Scarlets gave us actually have multiple strategies on how to beat each of the monsters.” I pulled up the lists.

  “Temple Dungeon is nothing but plant monsters. Fuzzy, Forest’s Revenge, and Living Trees are the bosses there. Fire and Ice destroy pretty much everything. The monsters are Vine Golem, Mini Fuzzy, Bramble Sheep, Man Eater, and Leaf Lizard. The lizard is the only fast thing and the Man Eater is stationary. Bringing some oil to dose the bosses first before lighting them up is said to be a very effective way to go, though they recommend using an oil spell, otherwise, it just gets expensive. Vine Golems are on every floor with the fourth floor having the lizards.”

  I flicked my hand to the next one. “Dispatchers have a super simple one here. Nothing but slimes, oozes, and cubes. Nature, water, and acid are the three elements, but we’ve dealt with those before and there’s nothing to it. Difference here is we’ll be fighting in the forest and they can drop on us from the trees. But nothing difficult.”

  I switched to the last one. “Last one is a Taray Dungeon. It’s nothing but bugs. Fire and Wood Ants, Wood Bees, Giant Bees, Killer Wasps, Metal Crickets, Wood Spider and Toxic Snails. Most are weak to acid or fire. We’ll need blunt weapons and there are a few tricks…” I saw her face and chuckled. “I take it you’re not a fan of that one.”

  “The plant one is my vote.” Pixie shivered. “No bugs or slimes.”

  “We’ll have to do all of them at least once.” Ether leaned forward so she could see Pixie on the other side of me.

  “Which means another gear run…” I shook my head as I tried to think about what gear we actually had. We’d gotten prepared to go into the Mive Dungeons, but never did. I’d have to take inventory of what everyone had, then go from there. I could see why the Ward schools waited until the second year to start traveling to the different Dungeons in the Ward.

  “Ugh…” Pixie leaned against my shoulder. “That doesn’t sound like fun at all.”

  “Shopping?” I started to be surprised, but given her wardrobe, I wasn’t surprised.

  “Yeah.” She pounded her fist into her hand. “I’m ready to go smash the monsters to bits!”

  “You do realize you’re supposed to be the Healer…”

  “I can do both.” Pixie sat up and pointed at her teacher. “Look at Miss Gesai! She’s a Healer that fights!”

  I couldn’t argue with that. I’d seen first hand what the silver woman was capable of. Despite having shed her shirt, she still had on her elbow-length white gloves to hide the nasty scars that had melted her skin because she’d used a weapon way outside of her Tier Level to kill someone to protect my secret.

  “I guess she’s kind of the best teacher for you…” I shook my head. The rest of this year was going to be interesting.

  Rating, Review, Follow, Favorite, or Comment does wonders to boost my morale. If you want to help support my writing or check out advanced chapters, head over to my .

  Immersive Ink

  RR Writer's Guild