Kang only grimaced at his weak joke.

  Tom regarded him with concern. The other man’s eyes had a permanent strained look to them, and, given what he was going though, Tom didn’t blame him.

  “Just have to keep going.” With a helpless shrug, Kang pulled off his tattered and broken armour and pointed at the middle section. “Adam, is it possible to get more reinforcement in the chest area?”

  There was no direct answer, but, as they watched, it repaired itself, and the central area became twice as thick as it had been.

  Tom frowned. He understood the desire for extra protection, but there was a reason they had been wearing light armour to begin with. “Are you sure, Kang? Will you be able to move with that?”

  Kang snorted bitterly. “I don’t believe I have a choice.” He tapped the thickened metal. It thunked. “Good. That sounds solid.” He sighed. “I’m not doing it because I enjoy it. There’s no way of not completing this floor. We have to keep going, and the only way I’m killing them is by trading hits.”

  “But what you’re intending is a bit extreme, isn’t it? Giving access to your chest is dangerous. Better to have a removable shield. And it’s not like we aren’t making progress as it is. We have enough time, through admittedly only barely so. But the important thing is we’re still on track to win.”

  The bigger boy shook his head vigorously. “Yes, we’ve made progress, but we’re not leaving any room for error. When we’re in control of the battlefield, we’re going to be fine, but what happens when something goes wrong? There’ll be ambushes. You know that. What happens then?”

  Tom considered the argument, and couldn’t fault the logic. Once they got deeper, it was going to become harder. “And there’ll be additional monster types to contend with as well.”

  “Exactly. We need to be able to get through normal engagements without straining ourselves.” He tapped the new armour. “Hopefully, this will let me bait attacks safely.”

  “Kang, do we really need to push harder?” Tom pressed. “I mean, natural improvement will get us over the line.”

  “No, it won’t. And, yes, we do need to push!”

  “Easy there. I was just asking. You seem a little on edge.”

  Again, he sighed. “I’ll be fine. This isn’t easy. It’s rough, but don’t worry about me. I’m not going to break.” He stood silently an awkward look on his face for a moment. “Well, my armour’s fixed. Let’s test it out.”

  They went in once more.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  The difference in the change of approach was noticeable. The drain on his healing reduced significantly, but the key measure of how much they cleared didn’t change. Despite over an hour of combat each session, which was the same as they had done before, they failed to clear the five percent threshold, more often than not.

  They were making no progress.

  Another full day had slipped between their fingers.

  “I don’t want to.” Eloise complained. “Let’s do something else. Fighting is pointless. It keeps resetting back to zero, and we’re not getting anywhere.”

  “We’ve only been doing it for four days,” Kang told her. “You might not be able to see it, but we’re improving.”

  “She kind of has a point,” Tom interjected. “We have to start making progress soon. Even if we double our time spent and hit ten percent every time, it’s still going to take us twenty runs to finish it. If we use all of our time and fit in three runs per day, that’s too long.”

  “We’re improving.” Kang repeated defensively.

  “Are we?” Tom asked, raising an eyebrow. Kang was getting hurt less, but every fight was taking longer because of how cautious he was being. While Tom had more mana, it was Kang’s reserves that were becoming the bottleneck. “We’re spending more time for less progress, and, in that run, you’ve almost died.”

  “I didn’t,” Kang scoffed.

  “Cracked ribs taken early in the fight.”

  “It didn’t slow me down.”

  “And a broken leg at the end.”

  “That was to get the kill. That wasn’t a mistake. It was a valid strategy, and I’d already taken out two of them.”

  “It was reckless, and you did it because you were running out of mana, not because you thought it was the right choice.”

  “I… I don’t have the trait you do.”

  “I know. But I also know you let the fight go for too long. You need to man up and take bigger risks earlier. Your balance is off.”

  Kang’s face went red. Then he glanced at the two girls who were staring at them with all their attention. An ugly expression, one quickly mastered, crossed his face and then he leaned close. “Fuck you, Tom. How dare you say that!” he whispered furiously. “You’re not the one getting smashed in every fight.”

  Tom tried not to react. He understood that anger very well. He patted the tense, angry boy on the shoulder. “I know. I do understand I’ve been a team’s tank before, and you’re doing a great job. I couldn’t do better.”

  Against these specific enemies, he thought privately to himself to make the statement more true.

  “And we can all see what you’re doing, and how you’re taking the hits so we don’t get hurt. But I still need you to listen. This is not working. My healing is getting underutilised. You need to push, take more risks, and let us clear things faster.”

  Kang looked like he was going to argue, and then a thought occurred to him. He stopped and looked up. “Adam, what was our percentage finish on that?”

  Less than five percent.

  The fight vanished from the other man. “Fine, you’re right. I’ll be more aggressive and see if it helps.”

  They went in again.

  His spear shattered when fighting the first light elemental. It was his fifth since he had started the floor and, without hesitation, he pulled out the pretty decoy butterfly one.

  “That’s my one.”

  “It is too.” Tom said, pretending to be surprised. He turned to look her straight in her eye. “Do you mind if I use it? I’m kind of running low on good spears and this one’s reinforced.”

  “Um.” She looked very conflicted.

  “It’s a good spear.” Briana volunteered. “It might not break like the others.”

  Tom could have kissed her.

  “Um… then, I guess, it’s okay if you do.”

  With Tom smiling inside at the successful deception, they kept going.

  They retreated, having completed six percent of the floor. It was a noticeable improvement, as they hadn’t been pushing to exhaustion.