Emily steps out of the portal, pulling free from the swirling bck mass of mana to appear in the cave system once again. Her gaze is instantly drawn to Juliana, standing with their friends, cautiously surrounding the doorway with spells at the ready. A small tension she didn’t even realise she still held rexes as she sees her safe and sound after the dungeon’s pletion.

  Everyone dismisses their preparations the moment they see Emily, and Juliana rushes forward, cheg her for injuries and instantly notig her uneven gait.

  “Are you okay?” she asks with . “What happened?”

  Before Emily answer her, the door behind her shudders, sliding shut and reg into the wall, being repced by smooth stone.

  “I’m fine, just a flesh wound,” Emily reassures Juliana, pulling her intht side and leaning against her to take the weight off her leg as she turns to ahe questioning gazes of her friends, lingering on the now missing door behind her. “The dungeon was an arena fight against a load of ehere were a few thousand goblins and six hundred hobgoblins, followed by a giant golem that I’d pce at around third circle in strength sihere was a mana inhibition zone around it.”

  Their faces pale at her words, and Ivor quickly signs a question dripping with incredulity.

  “You fought thousands of goblins and a golem in a mana inhibition zone alone, and only got a flesh wound?”

  “Not quite,” Emily corrects. “The goblins and hobgoblins attacked first without the mana inhibition zohen the golem spawned aloerwards with the zone. Luckily, the zone only really blocked external casting, so I was able to keep ahead of its attacks most of the time. Also, I have some pretty heavy-hitting ons, so I was able to destroy its core without spells.”

  His surprise lowers a little, but shod respect remain in his gaze.

  “We should have e with you,” Dante pins. “I bet even you could have doh some help against such a big horde.”

  Emily shrugs, uo tell him the full truth.

  “I’m almost certain it would have made us fight the hordes separately, and I didn’t have that much trouble against them. I’m very good at one against many in a melee sihere’s a limit to how many attack me at once. What’s done is done now, so let’s move on to the rewards.”

  Her distra works, as all of her friends’ eyes light up at the mention of rewards.

  “Wait, do we get a share of them even though we did nothing?” Tom asks, surprisingly killing his own anticipation.

  “I’m the one who stopped you all ing in, and I already said whearted this that I’d give you all your fair share from the expedition, so yes,” Emily answers with a firm nod. “Besides, by that logic, you wouldn’t get anything from the expedition as a whole.”

  Everyone chuckles at her teasing remark, including Tom despite the small embarrassed blush on his cheeks.

  Also, I’m more ed about pleting my quest than gaining resources. I’m already going to have enough mana crystals and magical metals to st me a while after this.

  “First, there were these magic crystals,” Emily says, summoning two dozeer crystals on the floor in front of her, a mix of water, ice, light, darkness, and wind.

  Her friends’ eyes widen in surprise at the number of crystals, but Emily notices Enzo’s rea is far more muted, and Dante barely reacts after seeing no fire crystals.

  Enzo definitely uands the value of a dungeon far better than everyone else.

  “Then the main reward was this,” Emily says, removing her right hand from Juliana’s waist to show off the Air Walker. “It’s a ring with a flight spell engraved on it.”

  This time, Enzo’s rea is the stro, his eyes shooting open wide, and his mouth falling open.

  “You got a flight artefact?” he asks, a glint of greed in his eyes.

  “Yep.” Emily nods, notig his greed and making a o remove any risk he may pose befiving Juliana the ring. “I pn on analysing the engravings and making my own spell, so I’ll keep it with me for now. We decide on who gets the ring itself ter, and give everyone else a rger cut of the other loot.”

  No one has any pints about her handling of the situation, so Emily walks over to a rock, supported by Juliana, and sits down.

  “We’ll stay here for a little bit longer so I deal with my leg, then we keep following my Diver.”

  Tom gathers the mana crystals Emily left behind in his bag, and everyone else settles down to wait for Emily.

  “Do you need any help?” Juliana asks, croug beside Emily.

  “I’m not sure if my ankle is set correctly, so could you help me get my boot off please.”

  Juliana nods, sitting down on the floor in front of her and looking closely at her right boot.

  “Oh, Goddess,” she mutters as she sees the cracks c the metal ptes lining the boot.

  They’re missing some segments, having fallen off during the battle, and some ses are folded in, poking into Emily’s flesh below the leather inner shoe. Juliana carefully uhe internal g exposed at the top of the boot befently prying out the folded ses. Emily turns off her paiain as Juliao work, but she doesn’t say anything, letting Juliana tih the same delicate care.

  Once she’s certain she’s removed all of the ses pressing into Emily’s leg, Juliana pulls the mouth of the boot wide and slowly slides it off, gng up repeatedly to make sure she isn’t hurting Emily too much. Emily frowns slightly at the state of her boot but otherwise keeps a reassuring smile on her face as she watches. The moment her boot slides free of her foot, Emily wi the colour of the flesh underh, and Juliana gasps in shock.

  Emily’s foot is an unnatural mix of pale white and purple, and, as Juliana takes out a pair of fabric shears and cuts up the inside seam of Emily’s leather trousers, they both see the rest of her leg matg it.

  “What the hell do you mean a flesh wound?” Juliana hisses, her voice tinged with and a hint of helplessness. “How did you even do this?”

  “The golem mao catch me because I let my guard down a little. It was a thirty-metre-tall stone golem: I didn’t expect its arm to turn into a torrent of water.”

  “Water did this?” Juliana asks with a shiver.

  “Well, I don’t think it was really water. More like liquid stone. By the looks of it, it was really dense and crushed my leg with high pressure,” Emily says, iing the damage t closely.

  Juliana grimaces at the calm expnatioly running her fingers over several divots in the leg where the boot was folded in on it.

  “How aren’t you bleeding?”

  “I used all my iors,” Emily says, reag up and tapping the back of her o vey her meaning.

  “And it still looks like this?”

  “Yeah. The healing potions I make are only meant fht wounds like cuts and gashes, not shattered bohey did their best a me in the fight, but this will probably take a bit of time to fix.”

  I could reset and try again... Ah well. It’s a ce to test the healing spell I copied from Fionn er injuries.

  Emily pces her hands oher side of her leg, starting at the highest point of damage as she starts casting a spell. A glistening white magic circle s her legs, p healing light onto the wounds. She carefully directs the spell, fog on knitting back together the blood vessels and muscles, using her robust muscuture to hold the still-damaged bones in pce.

  Unfortunately, this spell’s too weak to help with damaged bones properly. I need some actual time to heal that fully. It’s more effective on myself though, I guess my uanding of my own body does help.

  She carefully takes her time, moving the focus of the spell down her leg as the purple bruises slowly fade away to reveal healthy skin. Juliana silently settles down beside her, watg the process with but not interfering, fearful of breaking Emily’s focus and prolonging her pain.

  After twenty minutes of repairing the damage, Emily cels the spell, healing light, with a small sigh.

  “It used a lot of mana, and it’s not perfect, but my bones should heal within a day or two,” she says, turning her focus to her ruined boot lying on the floor before her. “Tsk, I’ll have to use a substitute until I fix that.”

  She sends the boot into her ste and produces a simple leather shoe as a temporary rept before moving to stand. Juliana holds out her hands to help Emily steady herself, but she stands without issue and lightly hops on the spot a few times: the feeling is pletely returo her limb and only a dull ache remains.

  “Are you sure you should be doing that?” Hester questions, surprising Emily.

  She looks around and finds all of her friends staring at her with various expressions, from slight horror and to respect.

  I guess it did look pretty bad.

  “Yeah, I’ve repaired everything except a few cracks in my bones. I ’t target the remaining damage with my spells, since I’m not very good with healing spells and only have one I mao copy from Fionn, but I should be fio keep moving and fighting like this. Quite frankly, moving with a few cracks in my bones is easy. Agnes gave me worse in our spars,” she says with an amused smile that only seems to ule her friends more. “Right, let’s get going!”

  With her healing finished, Emily takes down the barrier disd tio guide her friends dowunnels, ign her low mana reserves aing them slowly recharge with her passive regeion. They wind through the passageway, away from the five-lit ih they entered before reag the dungeon.

  They travel for several hours, stopping halfway through for lunch, before the water starts to pick up speed again and Emily’s forced to remove her boat from the water. They tinue forward and disappointingly find themselves at the five-lit once more.

  “Damn it!” Dante groans, kig a roto the water. “Do we really have to backtrack?”

  “Probably. This tunnel appears to be a dead end,” Hester says.

  Emily tunes out their versation, her eyes following the rock Dante kicked and remaining locked oer. She steps closer to the water’s edge, looking out into the tre of the jun at the roiling current.

  “Actually,” she says, cutting off the ongoing versation as her friends all turn their attention to her. “I think we might be in the right pce.”

  Her friends follow her gaze, looking out into the river with fusion.

  “Really?” Tom asks. “Where are we meant to go though?”

  Emily turns back to her friends, answering his question with another question.

  “How is there a current here?”

  They all pause to sider her words, but Hester makes the e first.

  “The water o go somewhere,” Hester mutters, gng past Emily towards the jun.

  “Exactly!” Emily says with aed grin, notig the still fused looks etched ohers’ faces. “Look at the pathways in and out of this jun. There are three ing in, and two leading out. The two leading out are both in a closed loop with two of those leading in, so there’s only water ing in through oh. Now, this may be an oddity of magic, but logically, if it’s moving, it must be going somewhere.”

  A light of realisation slowly dawns on her friends' faces she expins.

  “An uer tunnel,” Juliana squeaks, voig Emily’s theory.

  “Possibly,” Emily agrees. “I’ve been removing my boat from the water near here to stop it getting swept away, but that means I’ve never checked the riverbed around here. Our path forwards may be hidden in pin sight.”

  She steps forward, bending doulling the boat from her ste once again.

  “Only one way to find out!” she says, fshing a fident smile over her shoulder before dropping the watercraft onto the surfad watg it get dragged to the tre of the river.

  Everyoches with bated breath as it bobs in pce for a moment, before suddenly vanishing into the swirling fog below the surface. Emily’s grin grows as she remains ected to the boat’s sensory array, watg it sink deep below, far further than the usual depth of the riverbed. The boat is thrown about, sending back a jumbled mess of information that barely helps Emily for a few seds before suddenly blinking out and severing her e.

  “Tsk,” she clicks her tohere’s definitely a tunnel down there, but my boat was destroyed.”

  “Is there something down there?” Enzo questions.

  “I don’t think so,” Emily says, shaking her head. “It was being thrown all over the pce, so I think it’s just a violent current.”

  “What now then?” Juliana asks, gng at the water with a nervous gaze. “Do you have something else you send down to check?”

  Emily nods, tossing off her robes and sitting down to remove her shoes.

  “Myself.”

  Juliana jumps at her words, rushing forward to pce a hand on Emily’s shoulder, gripping her hard.

  “What do you mean yourself? Don’t you have some mae you send down there? You’re still injured!” she fires off rapidly, gng at the water repeatedly as her fear and mix.

  Emily reaches up aly rests her hand on her girlfriend’s, reassuring her as she looks over her shoulder with a smile.

  “I only had one Diver prepared, and none of my other scouts are designed for uer operation. I’ll be fihough. I’m pretty robust.”

  And I always reset if I get stuck.

  Juliana doesn’t look vinced, but Emily doesn’t give her a ce tue again, standing up and giving her a quick kiss before stepping backwards into the water. She turns around, ign the panicked cry behind her, and pushes forward to the tre of the current, where she feels a strong pull attempting t her down. She kicks against the current, holding herself above the water as she turns to face her friends.

  “See, I fight the current just fine,” she calls out, raising a single hand above the surface holding her Gills, pressing them to her face befiving a small wave as Juliana seems to rex slightly. “See you oher side.”

  Emily punctuates her goodbye by halting her movements, letting the current rip her down into the depths below.

  KeroKeron