The party watched on as Zerah conjured threads of Mana to check Hal’s wounds and repair the damage that Sasha and Fi had been unable to deal with themselves.

  “Hmm, looks like you two did a pretty good job cleaning his wound and sealing up the worst areas,” Zerah told Sasha and Fi who breathed a sigh of relief at her words. This was the problem with their healing techniques, they only increased the healing factor of the person they used them on which meant that if the wound was something that wouldn’t heal right normally all they were doing was speeding up that process. Healing wounds that wouldn’t heal normally required either specific spells or other techniques which they simply didn’t have so it was a relief for them to hear the woman who taught those students who specialised in healing tell them they had done a good job.

  “I still have to do some work though, so we’ll be here for a bit,” Zerah continued. “So, you should take this chance to recover and check your notifications. Oh, and I’ll be around to check on your shoulder once I’ve finished with Hal Kyle.”

  “That would be great,” Kyle said sitting down next to his friend wincing as the movement jolted his shoulder. “Fi how are my Skills and Spells looking?”

  “About as well as you might expect,” she replied bringing up the notifications. “Maybe you should get badly injured more often.”

  “Too soon Fi,” Kyle chuckled before looking at the windows that she had opened up for him. Despite her harsh words he knew just how worried she had been when he had lost conscious when the poison had spread throughout his body.

  “Well it looks like I got a decent number of Skill increases and a couple of useful new Sub-skills,” Kyle said. With these Skill increases he now had 18 Skill Points saved up which he was planning on using to unlock the bonuses for some of the Skills that he already had instead of unlocking more Skills as he probably had a large number of Merit Points saved up. It was interesting to see that he had increased the level of his Mana Manipulation Skill twice but it did kind of make sense as he had been using a lot of magic because of the cramped space inside the Dungeon making it more difficult for him to use his chains without accidentally hitting one of his friends, even with the accuracy bonus but he had also finally managed to unlock the Overcharge Skill, speaking of magic there was something else he had to ask about. “What about my spells?”

  “Well it’ll take about one more cast of your Minor Fire Enchantment, but you didn’t use either Mana Skin or Minor Soul Syphon, so they haven’t been mastered yet,” Fi said causing him to groan in frustration. In all the chaos he had completely forgotten about using those spells.

  “I do have some good news for you though, why don’t we take a look at your Status?” she continued giving Kyle an excited grin as she brought up the screen.

  “I finally got to 10 base constitution!” Kyle exclaimed, the afflictions he had were bad, revealing just how close he had come to dying but finally reaching this point was something that he had wanted for a long time and it was all he could do not to burst into joyful laughter. “Maybe you were right after all Fi, this is great news!”

  “Well it’s certainly not bad news,” Fi sighed. “But I’d appreciate it if you tried not to get that badly injured again any time soon.”

  “Sure,” chuckled Kyle patting his loyal companion on the head as he passed his eyes over his other Stats. “Looks like I increased my Endurance as well, that’ll be useful.”

  “Yeah you fought past the point that was safe to do so with trace amounts of poison inside of you and that pushed your body past its limits,” Zerah said as she continued to work on Hal’s injuries. “Fi’s right by the way, I understand why you did it but fighting in the condition that you were in could’ve gone very badly.”

  “Yeah, but we didn’t really have a choice,” Kyle replied glancing at his left shoulder which had turned a purple colour. “Even now I can’t feel my arm properly and from the afflictions that I have it’s pretty obvious that I came pretty close to dying, but we didn’t know when you were going to get here and the only one who was really able to fight the Impaler was Sasha, so I had to hold off the rest of the Scorprats.”

  “I’m not saying that you made the wrong choice considering the situation,” Zerah said. “I’m just warning you that trying something like that again could get you killed.”

  “You know that I can’t promise that I won’t, right?” Kyle asked raising an eyebrow in Zerah’s direction. “I’m training to become an Adventurer which means that I could find myself in situations as bad or worse on a daily basis.”

  “I know,” Zerah sighed raising her hands from Hal’s injury. “Right I’m done with Hal, so I’ll start on your shoulder now, so you might want to prepare yourself because I’m pretty sure it’s going to hurt.”

  “Ok, thanks Zerah,” Kyle replied before turning his attention back to his companion in the hopes of distracting himself from the pain that she had mentioned. “Can you bring up the Merit Rewards screen now please Fi?”

  “Sure,” Fi said bringing the screen up somewhat distractedly as Zerah started to probe Kyle’s shoulder with her magical threads.

  Kyle frowned as he saw that he had more than twice the number of points that he could use without Levelling Up, he really didn’t want to Level Up again as he was certain that they would have to fight their way back to Greenhearth when they exited the Dungeon and every time he Levelled Up he got closer to reaching the point where he would have to leave the school. He was also slightly confused by the amount of points that he had earned. While the points for each individual kill seemed to be relatively fair the amount of bonus points, he had received for the sheer number that they had killed seemed to be pretty low.

  “Zerah, why are the bonus points for killing so many monsters so low?” he asked frowning at the number.

  “35% is the upper limit of bonus points that you can get from defeating large groups of enemies,” Zerah replied as she started to piece the bones of his shoulder back together with her mana threads, if the nerves in his shoulder weren’t damaged Kyle would have lost conscious once more due to the pain which was why she was doing this first.

  “I don’t know for sure why that’s the case,” she continued before any of the party members could interrupt. “But just remember that the Merit System was something that was created a few years after our ancestors had started to rebuild society and they had to request it specifically.”

  “What would that have to do with anything?” Sasha asked.

  “Well how much power do you think it takes to give everyone access to the benefits of the System?” Zerah replied. “I’m saying that to me the Merit System always seemed to be an add-on using whatever power was left.”

  “I mean, I guess that does make sense,” Amy admitted. “But it’s still a little disappointing especially considering what we went through.”

  “It’s not like you guys really need more Merit Points than what you’ve already got at this stage in your growth, you just don’t have access to most of things that they’re useful for,” Zerah pointed out. “Most people below Level 5 don’t even get to enter Dungeons, well not in this country anyway.”

  The party members couldn’t deny this, but it was a hard thing to accept when they had almost lost two members of their party despite the preparations that they had made. Zerah looked around at them and sighed, she knew how they felt and as far as she was concerned a party of people who had surpassed Level 5 would’ve been hard pressed to do much better against that many monsters, even ones as weak as Scorprats.

  Just then Hal started coughing and they all turned towards him in shock as his eyes fluttered open.

  “Hey guys,” he groaned giving them a pained smile.” I guess we made it.”

  “Hal!” Herman shouted happily. “How are you feeling?”

  “Not great but from what I remember I’m actually surprised I don’t feel worse,” he admitted as he tried to sit up only to be stopped by Zerah.

  “Don’t sit up just yet,” she told him. “I’ve stitched the wound shut and cast a slow healing spell on it so that I can keep checking on your wound as it heals so if you get up now you could hurt yourself again.”

  “Ok, I’ll wait,” Hal nodded. He had been healed by Zerah in the infirmary before and knew that if she was taking steps like this then he had been even worse off than he had first expected. “I guess that me and Herman will go over my Skill increases and stuff.”

  “Glad that your awake man,” Kyle told him.

  Thanks,” Hal said looking at what Zerah was doing to Kyles’ shoulder. “How’re you doing?”

  “I’ve got a few nasty afflictions including nerve damage which is probably why I’m not screaming uncontrollably right now,” Kyle sighed.

  “Damn, can you even fix that Zerah?” Hal asked looking worriedly at the gnomish woman.

  “Yes,” she replied. “It’s not actually that difficult since I got to him pretty quick but it’s going to hurt like hell.”

  “Well that’s a relief,” Hal replied cringing as he caught sight of the threads of mana shifting underneath his friend’s skin. “Well I hope you don’t mind Kyle but I’m not going to be looking at you again until Zerah’s done, I really didn’t need to see what she’s doing to you.”

  Kyle snorted as his friend turned back towards his companion. He couldn’t blame Hal for that reaction, but it was still amusing to him that the person who had splattered monster parts everywhere whenever he swung his hammer had such a weak stomach.

  “Fair enough,” he muttered before turning back towards his own companion. “Right, where were we?”

  “We were about to decide how you were going to spend your Merit Points.”

  “Well that’s actually pretty easy,” Kyle said. “Buy two Ability Points for you and a Skill Point for me.”

  “Really?” Fi asked giving Kyle a strange look. “Are you sure that you want to spend so many points on me? And what about the rest of the points that you have?”

  “I don’t have any problem at all spending those points on you Fi,” Kyle chuckled. “And I’m going to save the points.”

  “Alright if you’re sure,” Fi said as she bought what Kyle had asked. “So as agreed I’m going to buy the Cleanse spell but what should I do with the left-over point?”

  “Hmm, I think you should upgrade either your Flight Skill or your Soul Bond but it’s up to you,” Kyle replied. If Fi upgraded her Flight Skill she would be able to move at 20 km per hour as opposed to the 15 that was her current top speed which would massively increase her ability to avoid enemies and if she upgraded her Soul Bond Skill, she and Kyle would be able to communicate telepathically if they were within 10m of each other. Both of these upgrades would be incredibly useful going forward, if he was honest with himself Kyle would rather that she upgraded her Flight Skill, but he wasn’t surprised when she ended up picking the Soul Bond Skill.

  “How much longer until you’re done with my shoulder Zerah?” Kyle asked turning his head as far around as he could to try and get a good look at what she was doing.

  “Well I’m almost done reconnecting the muscle where it had been torn away from the broken bone,” Zerah replied. “But it’s going to take me a bit longer.”

  “Can repairing the nerve damage wait until after we get back to Greenhearth?” Kyle asked worriedly.

  “Don’t worry about the town,” Zerah replied. “We’re inside a Dungeon remember, time moves faster in here than on the outside.”

  “I know but I’m still worried,” Kyle admitted.

  “Don’t worry about them,” Zerah snorted. “Your fellow students have teachers with them so they’ll get back to town safely and then the teachers who had been escorting will help the guards push any remaining monsters back.”

  “By the way, what are we supposed to do when we get back to Greenhearth?” Amy asked.

  “Well anyone who is unable to fight will be taking shelter at several large buildings that have been designated shelters in case of emergencies, so you’ll be heading there and helping the people stationed there any way that you can.”

  “You mean protecting them?” Sasha asked.

  “If necessary, remember there will be a few guards and at least one of the teachers stationed there,” Zerah replied. “I wouldn’t expect anything too strong to get past the walls, maybe a few weaker flying monsters that get missed because the guards were focussing on more dangerous monsters but if you’re needed then definitely help out.”

  The party grew silent as they considered what the consequences of a monster attack on the scale that Zerah was suggesting could mean.

  “Right, I’m done fixing your bones Kyle,” Zerah said before turning to Fi. “You might want to give him one of the bandages in your Inventory to bite down on, like I’ve been saying; this is going to hurt. Sasha, Amy hold Kyle down”

  “Uh ok,” Fi replied passing the requested item over to a suddenly pale faced Kyle who quickly placed the length of cloth between his teeth as Sasha and Amy gently pushed him down onto his front.

  Not long after this muffled screams and moans echoed down the tunnels as Zerah went about the delicate job of reconnecting and repairing the damaged nerves before finally falling silent.