Chapter 111: Dragon Form Practice

Over the next five days, members of Absolute Helix spent their time exploring the Dungeon and fighting monsters, practicing their party coordination, and accumulating combat experience. Diniel, being a veteran Explorer, and Daryl, having been trained by Garm, held up just fine after consecutive battles.

Hannah and Amira, on the other hand, were so exhausted by the end of the days that they struggled to even stand. This was not the result of physical tiredness, but rather mental fatigue. Tsutomu had gotten used to managing a five-member party by now, so he often used <<Medic>> to alleviate the fatigue of his allies — for Daryl much less than the others. Although the <<Medic>> spell did not eliminate all fatigue, there was no denying that it helped. As such, they could always continue to move.

"Whew..."

"Come on, let's go!" Tsutomu said immediately once the battle was over, and he had cast <<Medic>> for the two.

In response, Hannah and Amira stood up, the former while whining in pain, and the latter while psyching herself up.

As they went through more battles, Hannah got more used to the methods of an evasion-based Tank, and Amira started fixing more and more of her self-centred fighting style.

Tsutomu, while observing their gradual improvements as the team explored the Dungeon, also accustomed himself to his role of support, healing, and command. During these five days of exploration, the party entered the Dungeon in the morning, exited for a lunch break at around noon, then went right back in and kept going until night.

Then once they got back to the Clan House, they had an evaluation meeting while enjoying Ollie's home-cooked dinner. Hannah and Amira were often mentioned during the meeting. Hannah was still inexperienced as a Tank, and as such had many points that needed improvement. As for Amira, she still needed to fix her fighting style and refine her rotation of skills.

"Another day, another wave 'a exhausting fights..." Hannah, bending at her waist like an old woman, whined to Daryl as they walked upstairs to their respective rooms after the meeting.

"But we're getting two days off!"

"Right..."

Tsutomu, left alone in the living room, stretched to relax his body, and leaned his back against the fluffy sofa.

Absolute Helix had two days off per week; for this week, the breaks were tomorrow and the day after. Getting two days off was quite an oddity in this world as far as the exploration scene was concerned, since while policies for days off varied from Clan to Clan, the standard was only one day per week.

Golden Tune and Scarlet Devil Squad had one day off for most of the time. Ealdred Crow also had the same policy, but most of their Explorers would opt to train on their own, so it seemed as if the 'day off' did not take effect at all. Such behaviour was especially rampant among their Tanks and Healers, with many of them so hooked on exploring the Dungeon that they collapsed from overwork.

The introduction of the three-role composition had greatly changed the scene. Turnover for Tanks and Healers was anticipated to reach an all-time high in the near future, since unlike Attackers, strategies and technical knowledge for their roles were still being researched at large — and not to mention all the ambitious Explorers themselves trying to move up in the world.

[Well, should be fine as long as it's actually voluntary... right?]

Tsutomu pondered various things over while sitting around, occasionally looking at Ollie as she washed a high stack of plates. She used to be an employee of the House Babenberg, working in their estate, but had been dismissed as a cost-cutting measure after all the damage that the city had sustained from the Stampede.

Fortunately, having a history as a House Babenberg's employee was more than enough for one to easily find employment elsewhere. Former employees young and old have been leaving for the Royal Capital with their severance pay, using their job history to find stable employment there.

Things would not be so easy for Ollie, however, considering how mediocre she was at first glance — perfectly average appearance, only five years of work experience, and at an age of over thirty. Moreover, rather than relocating to the Royal Capital, she had always wanted to stay employed within Dungeon City, either as a merchant or a worker for a major Clan. That was when a certain job posting caught her eye: manager for Absolute Helix, the Clan founded by Tsutomu, who had made major contributions during the Stampede. Seeing that the pay was fairly good, Ollie had immediately expressed her desire to apply for the position.

Still, she had another reason for choosing Absolute Helix: Tsutomu's connection to House Babenberg. After all, Ollie still wanted to work for the noble household. This could be considered a slight ulterior motive of hers.

Regardless of the ambitions she had going in, Ollie turned out to possess excellent practical skills. She was able to do pretty much everything around the house, which perhaps was only natural for a former noble household employee.

[Guess we should consider ourselves lucky.]

Ollie had been a great help to Tsutomu ever since she became the Clan's manager. Her cooking was delicious, and her cleaning left no corner unaccounted for — and she even took care of the Clan's accounting, enabling everyone else to fully concentrate on Dungeon exploring.

Tsutomu looked away from Ollie and started going over three issues of newspapers about Clans and the Dungeon, copying some of the articles onto another piece of paper. At one point, someone sat down on the sofa opposite to his.

"......"

It was Amira, her long red hair somewhat damp, perhaps because she had just finished bathing. She was looking at the sheet of paper Tsutomu had given her after the evaluation meeting, on which, he had written down her points that needed improvement. Occasionally, she stole some glances at Tsutomu before returning her attention to the paper again.

Despite having just bathed, she still wore her usual set of dungeoneering equipment, and despite being indoors, she was still carrying around her steel greatsword. Seeing that, Tsutomu immediately knew what she wanted.

"We're doing that today, too?"

"...Yeah. I appreciate the help."

"Let's get going, then."

Tsutomu had gone through roughly the same exchange every day for the past five days, so he was used to it by now. He and Amira proceeded to head out to the Guild, where they formed a party and teleported to the first layer.

After confirming that no one else was around, Tsutomu cast a few layers of <<Barrier>> over himself. Once he saw that Amira was ready, he signalled her to start. The latter took a deep breath and uttered,

"<<Dragon Form>>."

The red scales on Amira's burly shoulders glowed, and wings started sprouting from her back. Then, when the wings were fully formed, she charged at Tsutomu without hesitation.

"<<Medic>>."

Tsutomu cast the spell in the shape of a wide-ranged wall, as if to shield himself from harm. Then, he cast more of it around Amira, completely surrounding her. Upon contact with one of them, all of Amira's abnormal effects were dispelled, forcing her out of her <<Dragon Form>> transformation and rendering her unconscious.

Tsutomu proceeded to tap on Amira's shoulder with his staff to wake her up. Upon opening her eyes, Amira gritted her teeth out of frustration at failing to control her transformation. She then took a deep breath and tried activating her <<Dragon Form>> once more.

Since Amira had yet to master her unique skill, she was not able to maintain control during the transformation as Camille could, and as such, could not get much actual use out of it.

To remedy that issue, Amira had been practicing it with Tsutomu's help. She had originally been doing it herself, putting on cheap equipment, going down to the Valley layers, and activating her <<Dragon Form>>... which would always end with her eventually getting killed by monsters and booted back to the Guild. Her current training routine had actually been suggested to her by Tsutomu, who had recently noticed how reckless Amira's method had been.

Doing it Tsutomu's way was much more time-efficient than letting monsters eventually kill her, and even if the equipment was cheap, money was still money. Moreover, it was not at all desirable to reappear in the Guild clothed in nothing but the default flaxen outfit, with them being a symbol of defeat. There was absolutely no need for her to deliberately suffer the embarrassment of popping out of the Black Gate all the time.

The sessions over the five past evenings had taken place after every evaluation meeting. Amira's mastery over her <<Dragon Form>> would surely be worth it, so Tsutomu had no particular complaints about accompanying her every single time.

However, after hundreds of attempts over the past ten days, Amira had never been able to remain in control. Tsutomu had tried asking Camille for tips, but the latter did not seem to understand the technicalities of it either, so the only option right now was to try more and more.

"......"

Feeling no result from her training, Amira silently grinded her teeth out of frustration.

"Well, there is no need to rush. You'll get it eventually," Tsutomu said while trying to sound cheerful, and proceeded to sip down some Blue Potion.

The current batch of Blue Potion had been made by the Forest Apothecary's newly appointed apprentice. Its taste was somewhat bitter, and it was not as effective as the ones made by the Elf lady, but it was still good enough for Tsutomu to settle for. Besides, the apprentice restocked a good amount of her Potions every single day, which was a big help to him, too.

[I wonder when their new Blue Potion prototype will be released?]

Currently, the Elf lady was experimenting to make Potions in solid form. One for Green Potions had been already developed, in a candy-like form, and was now on sale as a trial product. Tsutomu himself had also received a few before.

Being a prototype, its effectiveness was still on the level of medicinal herbs, and the lady was struggling to achieve progress due to the process being quite difficult with current technology. If they were to be successfully invented, however, the convenience of Potions would increase dramatically.

One big reason was that skills could not be invoked without verbally calling out their names. As such, it was almost impossible for one to use skills while the Potion fluid was still in their mouth. If they were to be as effective in candy form as the regular liquid, however, one would be able to take in the Potions' effects while using their skills at the same time.

Additionally, with a Blue Potion variant of those candies, it would be much easier for one to maintain the level of one's mental energy. Tsutomu intends to buy the whole stock as soon as they become available, but it seemed that the development process would take quite a while longer.

[Well, I'm rooting for you, ma'am!]

While hoping that those candy-form Potions would become a thing soon, Tsutomu kept on overseeing Amira's practice. Once it was late into the night, Tsutomu and Amira headed back to the Clan House, the latter in disbelief and grumpy due to her failing to control her <<Dragon Form>> after another day.

"Amira, you've gotten much better now. Why not try something new tomorrow?"

"...Something new?"

Amira looked back at Tsutomu with a slight surprise showing in her sharp eyes.

"I think it's about time you tried using <<Dragon Form>> in a real fight."

"What? No way."

"Yes, you won't pull it off with how you are now. But I've read that using it in battle makes you learn better, you see. The same thing happened for Camille, too."

In fact, it was during the Fire Dragon battle that Camille had been able to freely use her <<Dragon Form>>. Tsutomu theorized that unless the skill was used in battle, its user would not actually get better at it, similar to how skills gained experience points in video games.

"Whether or not you'll get to do it depends on Daryl's permission, though. I'll ask him tomorrow."

"...I don't really need my <<Dragon Form>> that much, you know..."

"Maybe that's the case for you, but I want it. It'll be useful for us in the future, I'm sure."

"..."

Amira, though taken aback by how blunt Tsutomu was, quickly regained her bearings and looked back at him.