Chapter 9: Chapter 9
The ringing of swords resounded through the air of the small oasis that Jaune and his friend had set up camp in, as much for rest as it was to replenish their dwindling water supply.
Well, to be more precise, a clanking of sticks heralded the, by now routine, training session as two people jumped, weaved and clashed against each other in a display, such that if they had held actual swords, would have produced numerous sparks.
The smaller figure suddenly dashed forward at a speed it had not yet exhibited, trying to catch the other by surprise, sword raised in a thrust. The larger one however not at all concerned calmly raised his sword and set it against the thrusting one.
A small circle drawn in the air disarmed the speeding boy, and a boot to the stomach send him rolling on the ground retching loudly.
"I think that's it for today." Jain stretched his bare upper body as if the spar hadn't even loosened his muscles. To be fair, it really hadn't. Pulling his hair which had became slightly ruffled he once again put it into a ponytail while muttering to himself."I'm going to have to cut this soon."
By this point, Jaune had recovered and was sitting on the ground scratching the accumulated sand from his sweaty chest and back.
It had been quite, embarrassing, to fight bare-chested. Well, until he'd tried training with Jain for an hour with his shirt and vest on. The sweat had stayed with him for seven or more hours making the whole day unpleasant.
The harsh training regimen was working however, he had gained a point in both dexterity and strength already, and his swordsmanship had grown. The stat and exp growth was larger than the growth he had gained from training with his mother.
He was still unsure if it was because Jain was closer to his age and also male, (therefore being able to explain things better) if after his harrowing experience in the dungeon was a better student, or maybe that Jain was simply better with a sword than his mum.
Jaune thought it was all of these things and the fact Jains style of combat suited him more. His family being knights, they fought using a shield and a sword. He had been trained without one since a shield would just weigh a mage down, but the swordsmanship of his family was still more focused on defending rather than evading, on persevering rather than overwhelming.
Jain in contrast dodged, countered and generally just did not fight in a predictable way that would let the enemy make plans against it in the short time that the fight lasted.
Why bother defending against a likely stronger opponent when you can just dodge? Being the aggressor is almost always a better position.
Some things he had pounded into the mage's head along with the line, in a fight, everything is relative and subjective.
Which simultaneously was contradicting and annoying.
But it seemed to work for Jain, as you could never expect what he would do next.
-/-
As they set out, once more burdened down with heavy water they needed to survive Jain continued Jaune's education.
Jain talked to him about the missions he'd done, the people he'd fought and the places he'd been, it was all very interesting. Thinking back on some of the places his teacher mentioned, he wanted to visit them himself one day.
The Great Library of the City under the Sun, the Canyon of Swords and The Mountain. Its name was 'The Mountain' because it was The Mountain, the biggest one in Vacuo. On its top resided a powerful Buddhist sect, every member a monk trying to reach Enlightenment.
The mage suddenly narrowed his eyes. He felt a cave. This was by no means an unusual thing, as during their one month journey they had found numerous caves and ruins, some containing Grimm, others the rotted remains of people who had huddled within during a sandstorm.
But every time they explored one Jains hopes visibly grew brighter, on his own wanderings through the path that the long dead adventurer had taken, he had only found maybe 1/3 of the possible entrances to the pyramid.
But this cavern was different than the others. Even from here Jaune felt the spatial undulations heralding the suction of energy from the surroundings entering its mouth. A dungeon. He looked at Jain out of the corner of his eye.
The happily whistling swordsman hadn't noticed anything unusual. The question Jaune was asking himself was, should they, or should they not?
Jaune then remembered how his partner had almost single-handedly dispatched a Grimm horde led by an Alpha with almost contemptuous ease
"I sense a cave." Jain's eyes snapped to him so fast he would have started if he hadn't witnessed the same phenomenon numerous times before.
"Lead the way then."
Not bothering giving a verbal answer Jaune simply nodded and headed towards the location of their next small adventure, which was approximately 400 feet away. Good, his range was increasing due to him going several hours a day only concentrating on the skill.
The entrance was hidden under a thick layer of sand, so Jaune had to lead them both there. Squatting down, he swept away some sand on the ground, revealing a stone slab inscribed with some unrecognisable words.
While Jaune was puzzling over it, Jain suddenly spoke. „Wait-! I know about this, during the era of discovery, dungeons started being found since humans finally grew strong enough to move out of their hovels. But every time someone entered a dungeon they would never return. The people back then assumed dungeons were evil entities sent by Akhara to swallow all their best warriors, so they sealed the entrances and wrote warnings on the blockages." Here he stepped forward and his finger slowly followed the completely faded words.
"Leave, for a great evil rests here. If you cherish life then go forth and never come back." Jaune rolled his eyes.
"Spooky, come on let's go." He stepped forward and raised the stone slab a bit and started manoeuvring it away from the hole. Jain rapidly grabbed his hand, stopping him and making him almost drop the heavy weight on his foot. He looked at him, annoyed."Hey, what gives?"
Jain gave him an incredulous look. "You actually want to enter this dungeon are you mad?" Here the mage gave him a confused look. "It's just a permanent one, nothing special."
Jain furrowed his brows. "A permanent one-?, I've been to two dungeons before, both of them almost costing my life, I have never heard of the term."
He hadn't? Weird. Jaune guessed it must have been pretty obscure information, such that it required knowledge about energy undulations and their effect on dimensional doorways.
Which only mages studied. A swordsman would have no reason to know.
"I guess I have to explain it then, dungeons are divided into three categories. Low energy dungeons, permanent dungeons and high energy dungeons. All dungeons suck up the energy from their surroundings, the energy they require is equivalent to the difficulty of the dungeon itself. Low energy dungeons dissolve after a time because they don't suck up all the energy in their surroundings and the remaining energy disrupts the makeup."
he took a long breath, talking was hard. "High energy dungeons dissolve because their surroundings can't regenerate the required energy fast enough to sustain them."
here Jain's eyes lit up as he interrupted, he wasn't stupid after all. "And permanent dungeons would require exactly the same amount of energy as their surroundings can give them." Jaune nodded, the spark in Jain's eyes as he understood had been-, pleasant-? Maybe he should become a teacher. "Exactly."
"Now, a permanent dungeon, in the capital of Vacuo, I would not enter. For a dungeon to attain the status of permanent in such an energy intensive environment would mean the enemies in it would be simply monstrous." The swordsman's eyes lit up again.
"However, this dungeon is in the middle of a barren desert, it can only be weak. In addition, it can only be a permanent one since we can deduce it was probably sealed about 2000 years ago." Well, or it could simply be a high end or low-end dungeon that had already deteriorated. Jaune, of course, knew it wasn't since he felt the dungeon itself. The hole in reality that it, suffused by a stable amount of power drawing only what was produced.
A sudden crack resounded making him startle.
Jain had picked up the stone slab with one hand! And had thrown it away, breaking it on the ground.
Then he hopped into the dark hole and shouted back to Jaune."You coming?" Jaune stared at the man who had previously been scared.
"No matter how you look at it, aren't you suddenly to enthusiastic."
With a sigh, he then leapt down as well.
Jaune landed on hard ground, feet meeting stone with a thud thankfully. Summoning an arcane bolt he saw a tunnel leading towards a dark doorway, the back of Jain in front of it.
"You sure you want to do this?" Jaune stepped forward."I mean, just seconds ago you were vehemently protesting."
Jain waved his hand in the air as if to scatter any doubts. „You convinced me let's go." Then he stepped through the doorway.
The mage sighed as he followed, but before he could enter a violent sensation ripped through his body. His knees were shaking. Jaune looked down at them, they were shivering. He licked his suddenly dry lips and put a palm where his heart was. Feeling it beat in his chest.
"I'm alive." But if he followed he might not be in the near future. There very many things taught to the youths belonging to the house of Arc.
Hesitation was not one of them.
He stepped through
To find Jain standing there grinning at him.
"I thought that you would hesitate longer, it's good that you can continue on after a traumatic experience." Here his eyes grew sad and his face fell." If you couldn't, you would have no future as a hero or as an adventurer."
The swordsman sounded like he was talking from personal experience.
He was also right. What future would he have if he froze up and hesitated? A fire, akin to a flickering candle grew in his chest, radiating a sureness that no matter what, he would never stop pursuing the path of a hero.
"You're going to take point this time." Jaune whipped his head towards Jain at these words and in askance.
"Why?" Here, Jain grinned.
"Well, according to you, you've never really fought Grimm in close quarters, but the experience is necessary since Grimm make up basically 99% of monsters not inside of dungeons. This is a great opportunity to gather some experience." Seeing Jaune's worry-filled expression Jain reassured him. "Don't worry, I'll be here to catch you if you fall so to say."
"How do you know this dungeon contains Grimm?" Jain simply pointed at the wall they were standing next to, it had the picture of a beowolf on it, illuminated by some ghostly green torches that seemed to be present at specific intervals all over the corridor.
"Oh."
"Jain," Jain looked at him, eyes filled with seriousness for once."Yeah?" Jaune asked the question even if he already suspected the answer. "If Grimm are 99% of the world's monsters are Grimm, what are the 1%?"
By the way Jain grimaced at the question Jaune already knew what he would say, so he turned around and headed down the small corridor, its stone illuminated by ghostly green flames that were coming from sconces along the dark stone.
"Humans." The word echoed oddly in the dungeon as if it had some metaphysical weight.
The first room held two Beowolves, Jaune had to restrain an instinctive gulp. They were huge definitely stronger than the ones in Aschen.
Making the prospect of fighting them in close quarters equipped with only a sword and not using magic particularly...
Unappealing.
"I'll take the one on the right." Jaune nodded gratefully at his partner.
'You may not be rewarded by hard work, but without hard work, there will definitely be no reward.'
Jaune sighed and stepped into the room causing the Beowolves to immediately perk up and start growling.
A shadow shot forth from behind Jaunes right shoulder and entangled one of the monsters leaving Jaune to stare into the red hate filled eyes of the other Grimm that reached up to his shoulders.
Sword held before him Jaune waited for the overgrown mutt to do something, but it only circled him, as if waiting for him to make a mistake.
He glanced towards Jain to see if he was already done, judging by the dissolving corpse on the ground that was indeed the case.
"Jaune! Don't take your eyes of your enemy!"
The mage flinched and threw himself to the left, only barely avoiding the Grimm that had probably launched itself at him the moment it saw him getting distracted.
Coming to his feet he lunged forward to score a small slash on the Grimm's flank before he had to retreat again as it chomped viciously at the position his arm had been a millisecond before.
The slash had done quite a lot of damage if you took Jaune's swordsmanship and stats into account, mostly thanks to the item that Jain had gifted him, Scabbard of Youngster. The first attack after drawing the sword within was always amplified.
Jaune and the Beowulf circled each other once again.
But this time Jaune went on the offensive. Sliding forwards he tried to slash at the creatures eyes, which led to no success whatsoever. The Grimm ducked slightly causing his sword to rebound from the bone plating on the head and Jaune had to once again jump back to avoid a swipe of its claws.
This time he didn't retreat fully though, while the Grimm was still swiping at his previous position he stepped forward and kicked away its other foreleg causing the beast to collapse on the ground.
Jaune grinned, so they were smarter, but not by a grand margin when compared to their juvenile counterparts.
Taking the opportunity he stabbed into its flank, the sword entering its unprotected sides like a thousand degree knife through butter.
Unfortunately before he could pull out the sword and retreat once again the Beowulf's mouth gnashed towards his head and would have probably mauled him if Jain hadn't stepped in and cut its head off in one precise strike.
Standing in front of his friend , with Jaune's sword clanging on the ground as it fell out of the dissolving corpse Jain scratched his head and spoke.
"Well..." Jaune's shoulders slumped."I know..."
"Well, look at it positively, at least you can only improve at this point. "If it had been possible Jaune's shoulders would have slumped even more.
"I think I'll have you fight one on one with a Grimm in every room,"
They continued onwards, Jaune wondering how melee classes did it. The fishmen had been okay, but Grimm were so much stronger as a species, who actually dared to fight them?
Although, normally young heroes would only begin to fight juvenile Grimm when they were 14, so, he guessed he was ahead of the curve.
Go Jaune go?
There were many differences between Grimm and humans, but they could be simplified into two main issues.
Physical Strength and Intelligence.
A Grimm was most of the time twice as strong as the hero trying to vanquish it. Three times if the Vanquisher was a non-melee class. In Jaune's case two and a half since he put his points into physical stats.
So what was it that let humans survive the stronger and more battle designed phenomenon for millennia. Some might say magic, classes or friendship.
The answer was weapons. Grimm were born with them, claws, fangs and bone plating serving as armour. Humans, however, created their weapons, spears, swords, bows and so much more. The class making these weapons, the blacksmith naturally received more respect than other NPC's due to this.
While a sword used in comparison to a gigantic ursa may not look like much, you had to take into account, its, sharpness.
If a sword was brought down vertically upon the unprotected flesh of a Grimm it would sink in with only the slightest push, spilling its black ichor and destroying the muscles it needed to function.
A sharp sword was a deadly weapon, one that had helped humanity survive for a very long time.
The second thing one had to take into account was the difference in Intelligence, just how humans were inferior in terms of physical strength to the monsters, the Grimm were inferior to the humans in terms of intellect and adaptability.
A human who fought one Grimm, and then deduced strategies for the next one; gained experience. He could also learn from other humans without ever even stepping near a battle. In one year, one could turn a complete amateur into someone semi-capable.
For this simple process, Grimm needed decades, if not hundreds of years.
Jaune clearly felt the inferiority of his physical prowess as he did all he could to prevent getting skewered by the claws of the two Beowolves circling him.
But oddly enough, he didn't really feel his Intellectual superiority, if anything he felt his adaptability. In the beginning, he had nearly died against one Beowolf. Now he was holding his own.
But holding his own wasn't winning, and though he was occasionally scoring shallow cuts on the beast, in terms of stamina, it had him beat.
He was already running out of breath.
Rolling backwards he barely managed to escape an unhygienic mauling. Jain had already dealt with the other beast.
This was his so called 'experience gathering.'
While technically fighting one on one against this monstrosity, if he ever came close to death the swordsman stepped in and saved him.
But only then.
At this point, Jaune was almost tempted to simply throw himself into the creatures mouth, just so Jain would kill it and his burning lungs would gain some reprieve.
Trying to kill it wasn't even present in his thoughts, even if he did, he would only be training against two of them the next time.
He had been acquainted with Jain long enough to know how his twisted mind worked. He was only doing it to help him, this much Jaune knew. That still didn't mean that his training methods weren't inhumane though.
After a few minutes of barely dodging, he finally got caught in a corner and his training partner was disposed of.
"You're getting better, I think you will be able to kill one on your own, soon" The mage grumbled to conceal the fact he was happy with the praise.
"I better be improving, it would be pretty unfair if I wasn't." He looked at Jain hopefully, "Are you sure you don't know any super-mega-awesome technique that would instantly make me stronger?"
Jain's eyes twitched. "Brat, if I knew such a skill I sure as hell wouldn't be here in this desert, I would be in the capital being a respected mentor and living the rest of my days in debauchery." At Jaune's disappointed look he sighed.
"Look, the only thing anyone can do for you is give you the basics and let you gather experience, it's the tried and true method of creating a strong individual adventurer." His words seemed to fall on deaf ears as Jaune asked."What about a hero though?"
Here, the swordsman rolled his eyes. "Jaune, you're Valean, I get it, but the only difference between an adventurer and a hero is the fact that a hero gets paid in gratitude, and an adventurer in coin."
"That's a pessimistic way to look at things."
"It's the way it is, a hero roams the land getting paid by your Council of Vale to help whoever he can and is, therefore, more likely to encounter a situation he can't handle, an adventurer takes calculated risks, which raises his survivability by a lot." here he chuckled," Well, unless he's really bad at math."
"But a hero helps more people." Jaune was stubborn, he had been raised by a family of knights, he knew what the honourable decision was.
"In the end, a hero is only an adventurers whose quest is provided by the council, let's just let the topic be, I never knew there was such a perceived difference between a hero and an adventurer until I met you."
Jaune shrugged.
Then, he suddenly looked into the corner of the room they had just entered.
There was a corpse. More specifically, a skeleton.
Jaune jerked his head in its direction, "Look, a skeleton." Jain threw a glance at it and started walking over.
When he noticed Jaune wasn't he turned to him and waved the mage to him, "Even if it doesn't sound nice you always have to loot the corpses that you find in dungeons, sometimes they have important information or good items on them."
Jaune wrinkled his brow, "I know it's the smart thing to do, doesn't mean I have to like it."
Jain shrugged and started rummaging through the pile of bones that used to be a human being, it's clothing had already rotted away, the only thing left was a scabbard at its side, some miscellaneous pieces of rusted armour and a leather satchel that looked like it had seen better times.
Naturally, as a swordsman, Jain's focus first fell on the sword.
It took a bit of time to draw it out, Jaune thought it probably hadn't even been worth the effort considering the curved sword was rusted beyond use and had more holes than actual metal in it.
Jain seemed to agree with him as he simply threw it aside and headed for the leather satchel.
Opening it he couldn't quite see inside the ghastly green lights not really raising the visibility by much.
Reaching in he pulled out a crumbling book that promptly turned to dust when he lay it on the ground, the only thing left being the hardcover and a few unreadable pages.
Out of curiosity Jaune tried to read the cover, „ ..ia.y .. Th.r.. ..ke.s..el." Probably the diary of the deceased adventurer.
"Now what do we have here."
Jaune turned his eyes away from the unreadable diary, and looked towards the pile of objects that his partner had pulled out of the satchel. Mostly things that had aged so much they were useless, some even completely unrecognisable.
Then he looked at the object in the swordsman's hand, a pristine looking square piece of metal that opened with a snap.
He reached with open hands towards it, and Jain handed it over without saying anything.
The mage twirled the thing in his hands opening it and closing it,"Yep, this is a compass" Jain tilted his head in confusion.
"I was under the impression only ship captains needed such a device, what is it doing on land?"
Jaune shrugged, "Well it definitely doesn't look like a normal compass, for one, there are no poles actually engraved on it and it also doesn't have a needle but a miniature sword."
"It's definitely not normal though, either it's an artefact or a mage cast an enchantment on it, there is no way it would have survived the passage of time otherwise." Jain nodded.
"I'll just leave it to you then, I don't know how to even start researching these things and even if it would show the poles whatever that is I doubt I would ever need it." At this point, he stood up with an umphh having searched through all the dead man's belongings.
When he noticed the mage still sitting on the ground and fiddling with the device in his hand he called him over.
"Come on, the only time there's an empty room it means we are about to fight the boss of the dungeon, let's just finish it."
Jaune stopped fiddling with the compass and stashed it away into his bag.
"I hope you aren't planning on having me take point again." That would be horrible, he was confident about taking on a single 'normal' Grimm, but against a boss, he was less than confident.
"Don't worry about it, gaining experience is nice and all but I'll finish this one quickly, bosses tend to be pretty strong I'm not going to risk our lives here," here he put his hand under his chin in a thinking position."Though with how easy the dungeons been up until now I don't really have many expectations for this boss."
Jaune rolled his eyes as he followed him down the corridor, "Well, yeah, I told you it was a permanent dungeon literally in the middle of nowhere."
Even if they didn't think the boss would be that strong they couldn't help but feel a little nervous whilst nearing the last room, after all, a boss was an existence above other monsters.
When they finally reached it however they couldn't help but sigh in relief.
It was just an alpha beowolf.
Sure, for a party of young heroes, it was quite a problem, but Jaune didn't think for even a moment that Jain would have any issues with disposing of this thing.
As if hearing his thoughts the swordsman sprung forward in a thrust piercing the only now awakening alpha in the stomach.
Jaune sent a few symbolic arcane bolts at the boss to make it look like he was doing something, they actually seemed to do some damage, even if it was only the human equivalent of bruises.
Even if the alpha valiantly dodged, with speed belying its size, around the room in its attempts to escape the swordsman, it was seldom counterattacking, and soon enough Jain had cut the thing apart leaving it to dissolve into the air, he hadn't even had to use a single skill.
"That was pretty anticlimactic." Jaune couldn't help but say.
Jain shrugged, "It was a pretty young Alpha bewolf. If it was a human warrior its level would have been around 35"
"But yeah, that was pretty anticlimactic for a dungeon, and look, "he pointed at the loot the wolf had dropped, "it dropped a lance, not even artefact grade, just a lance."
Of course, that was the point where everything started shaking akin to an earthquake and the dungeon started to visibly break apart.
CREATORS' THOUGHTS 
Bor902
Bor902 If you like this you may enjoy my other stories as well:
-https://www.webnovel.com/book/the-education-of-harry-evans-a-death-well-lived_26306462405695305
-https://www.webnovel.com/book/malicious-magical-malfoy-(reincarnation)_26534657605412605
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