The weeks and months passed, and Astrid quickly found herself settling into a rhythm. Instead of pushing themselves as hard as they could, the Wanderers began taking a more measured approach to getting levels, focusing more on fortifying their foundations and improving their control over their Skills. With each day that passed, Astrid was more confident that this was the right decision to take, and still, it frustrated her. Having tasted the insane progress that the Wandering Trials offered, she had to fight against herself not to seek out another opportunity to get levels as fast again.
In fact, now level 48 and half a year after exiting the Trials, Astrid could say with all confidence that she was taking it slower than she ever had since her Bestowal. The cold air nipping at her nose whenever they left the Dungeon branch seemed to be a reminder of how those people responsible for the Wanderers' exit from the Bulwark were sitting in their homes and waiting for an opportunity to enforce their will on her. Thoughts about those Arcanite tier delvers who were strengthening the nobles' bid for power was a constant fear, but Astrid couldn't do anything about it.
Instead, the party spent two, maybe three day stretches in the Dungeon, never killing every monster they came across to ensure that they didn't upset the careful ecological balance the Verdant Walkers had created. Then, after just a few short days of practicing, clearing out monsters, and training with each other to ensure the lessons they learned stuck, they would return to the surface and train more while also relaxing. With only five of them, training very frequently became times of individual meditation interspersed with attempts at using Skills, sometimes with another member of the party's help.
Half a year of practice, and Astrid was seeing real fruits to her training. Gravity Surge hadn't had its Skill description change at all, but she was much more confident in using the variations, even able to make most of the adjustments on the Skill that she practiced with in the heat of battle. The only one she still struggled with was making the increased gravity affect her as well, and getting it to work at all took her at least five to seven seconds of concentration, and that was far too long to be used in battle, especially at the speeds that Iron and Steel tier combat would take place at.
Muti's own practice was entertaining to watch. The Barbarian learned more about the boon's flexibility every day, and she refused to leave any part of the Boon of the Mana-Touched unexplored. As a result, she was constantly figuratively smashing her head against the wall, trying to learn different aspects to what she was capable of doing. Much of her experimentation went nowhere, like when she'd tried to create a flying tattoo or to create a thunderstorm like Skandr.
On the other hand, her auxiliary efforts continued taking great strides every day. She had three primary augments to her attacks that she used most of all: shadow, frost, and, almost paradoxically to the first, light. Each of these three elements of mana had initially only been used to strengthen her physical attacks, the shadow allowing her to penetrate defenses, the frost to freeze and slow enemies, and the light to blind and sear the wounds left behind.
As she grew in confidence, though, the light aspect was used not on her swords, but on her rope darts. She could swing them near a monster's face and then have it explode in light to blind the beasts, and frequently used it in tandem with her frost. Similarly, she could use her shadow to cover a small area in nearly impenetrable darkness for up to about two seconds. That darkness was useful for her to use Shadow Leap, or even to coalesce it onto her weapon, whatever she was using at the time. The ice and frost she used, beyond to directly freeze and harm, frequently created puffs of mist to further disorient. Using the mist to become physical, like a shadow that somebody could feel, or an overwhelming light that surrounded an entire person made for her ambushes to be even better.
Felix, when he wasn't mooning over Muti, had made more progress towards finding a shift in how he fought as the frontliner. As a Bodyguard, he focused on being quick on his feet, using his bracers to adjust the angles of attacks while he continued to move. That fighting style had changed as he took up the axe and became somebody who moved from one position to the next to plant himself and make a single attack before parrying the next blows that came his way. Then, when he evolved to become a Hewing Guardian, his fighting style had gone into a flux once again. In retrospect, his confusion largely came from a need to push into the Trials and keep fighting without any delay to better understand his updated role.
He'd confided in the rest of the party over the past month that he regretted taking Jaguar's, now Tiger's Pride.
"I don't remember all of the Skills that were offered at the time," he explained, "but when I took Jaguar's Pride, I was still thinking like a Bodyguard. I know there was a different Skill, something like Tauren's Blessing, and that would've been a better choice. I was so obsessed with being something 'different' from the usual frontliner that I made a worse choice instead of following the path that's been cut and proves to lead to success. Then, I doubled down and took Tiger's Pride before Immovable Stance because I wanted to prove to myself and all of you that it was the right choice."
"It's not a bad Skill, though," Astrid attempted.
"No," he agreed before continuing, "but it is bad for me."
As it was, Felix was experimenting and largely succeeding with using Tiger's Pride and Guardian's Wrath in tandem to reposition himself and maintain monster attention. Though Tiger's Pride was a Skill that lent itself more to further movement, Felix, instead kept himself grounded to maintain the boost from Immovable Stance while shifting his upper body around to keep himself safe. He developed that system enough that, without using his axe or moving his feet, he could stand between three nagas and only have to move when they started to wrap their tails around him. Otherwise, their tridents could never do more than scrape ineffectually off of his armor as he dodged.
Benedict, who seemed to have forgotten that he understood how to adjust Song of Vindication and Hasty Rebuke, had spent months complaining about how he hadn't learned anything from the Golden Fist. Then, basically overnight, he started to make immense progress. At least, that's what he said, though it mostly looked a whole lot like struggling to activate his Skills while occasionally shouting in joy. Considering he reassured them all that he would be more than capable of doing what he had before as the party's supporter, only better, his experiments seemed to be limited to completely breaking the apparent limits of his Skills.
Astrid hadn't seen or heard of any real progress on that front, but she wasn't going to say anything to that effect to him. He was excited and continued working hard so she wouldn't say anything other than lip service in support of him. In truth, of the five, he seemed to be in the most difficult position at the moment, since his progress was so slow, if it existed at all.
Skandr, on the other hand, was the easiest to witness his progress. He was constantly testing new spells, and though he rarely thought that they were worth calling spells, everything he did made him more impressive. Already, he could sweep a cloud over someone and leave them an ice statue, use that same cloud to push away enemies' magic, or call down a curtain of lightning that could shroud somebody in a cage.
With each of these spells, Skandr had a complaint, like the ice statue being too slow, the magic barrier being hugely mana-ineffective, and the cage only being a visual effect that could last only three seconds at most. Despite his words, Astrid was coming to realize that Skandr might just be a prodigy when it comes to spellcasting. Either that, or she'd always severely underestimated what a Wizard could do, since she'd only thought of what Borus told her about being a Sorcerer. Whether Skandr was talented or Astrid was ignorant, the Wizard was improving by leaps and bounds every day, and Astrid felt not a small amount of envy as she saw what he was capable of.
"I think I've had enough training," Astrid said the day she reached level 48, looking down at the crumpled corpse of the medusa Boss. "I think we should skip over part of our plan and just get straight to some weak Steel tier Dungeon branches. What do you all say?"
"There's always more training to be done," Muti replied, "but I agree. We must remind ourselves and the Great One that we are no weak pups, unable to confront true enemies."
Felix merely nodded in agreement with that sentiment while Benedict looked between the rest with slightly crazy eyes. While the rest of the party looked at him, he started talking. "The real question is if the mana that creates the bodies of monsters can be repurposed to fuel the Skills of those who would consume them. After all, we recover mana if we eat mana dense meat. Isn't there a possibility to siphon away that mana to strengthen ourselves even before we reduce them to corpses?"
"You're insane," Astrid replied. "I suppose that's possible, but I can't see it ever being a viable course of action. After all, you'd have to spend more mana and effort than you receive by doing so. Plus, there would definitely be stories about people doing this if it was economical with the resources that you use."
"No, rituals exist," Benedict refuted. "They draw on external mana somehow, like Skandr's Boon of Fortification. Anyways, how do you know how much mana can be found in a single monster's body? I don't. If you do, explain to me how you know how much mana it takes to construct a body. After all, if I have that information, it'll be better for me to follow this—"
Skandr poked the Bard in the forehead, making him blink heavily several times. As Benedict started to gather himself into a more reasonable state, Skandr said, "You're a Bard. If you want to start changing the laws given to us by the Great One, start with what you can already do. You don't see me trying to shoot fireballs, do you? If I want fire, I have to go from lightning to burning something to having something on fire. I don't know what path you're planning on taking to get to 'disassembling monsters into pure mana to fuel my Skill activation,' but you're nowhere near that with your existing 'make sounds and help or hurt people' Skills."
Benedict shook his head, scratching at his face and feeling the over a week of growth there. Slowly, his eyes focused on the world around him and he asked, "I'm a scraggly mess, aren't I?"
"That's a pretty charitable way to put it," Astrid chuckled. "You've been more than a little unkempt as you lose your mind in this. Experimentation is fine, that's what we've been doing, but I think you've started to lose your way looking for different possibilities instead of actually stepping along a path."
Benedict blinked several more times before he nodded. "Yeah, I'm feeling a little crazy. Everybody, tell me if I'm starting to go a little bit Isana. For now, I'll stick to more reasonable experiments instead of thinking about… that."
"Yeah. So…" Astrid drifted off, not sure how to quickly move past what the Bard'd been talking about. "So, we're going to talk to one of the Wardens and get access to a Steel tier Dungeon Branch entrance."
"Yes. That. Sounds great," he answered.
Astrid gave Benedict a bit of a side eye, but focused on what they were going to do. After all, she had long since wanted to move on, and now, it was finally justifiable to do so. After all, they all had seen significant benefits from killing the Iron tier drake before they crossed the second watershed of Bronze. Now, they wouldn't have any such immense opportunities considering how close they were to Steel, but overcoming the distance between tiers was sure to be a good thing for their Class evolution options.
The decision now made, the party stepped out of the swampland for what Astrid hoped was the absolute final time. Though it hadn't been nearly as dangerous as many of the environments that the Trials had put them through, it was nasty, if nothing else. The decaying leaf litter and rank water was everywhere, with pond scum and general filth being everywhere they went. At least, unlike the Trials, they'd been able to retreat every couple of days and relax in the clean forest aboveground.
After months of delving here, the party traveled easily through each of the floors, from the very bottom one to the top. There weren't any materials that they cared to collect on the path, so they paid no attention to the monsters as they left. Instead, even as they were pursued, the party made their way to each stairway at a breakneck pace. Muti ranged in front of the rest, leaping from one treetop to the next. She enjoyed antagonizing the monsters, leaving them behind as she evaded the blades of wind that tried to hobble her while she tossed stones at the harpies she blew past. Under the influence of Hasty Rebuke, the rest of the party leapt from one solid patch of earth to the next, and it wasn't long before they were all out of the Dungeon.
"Does anybody have any idea where Cresche is?" Astrid asked as they stepped out. "I know their Grove moved recently, but I don't remember where to."
"Two things: one, how do you have no idea how to get through a forest? You do alright in Dungeon branches, but you never remember where anything is or how to get there outside of the Dungeon."
"Not true!" Astrid giggled at Benedict's jab. "I can find my way around the city really well."
"Great," Benedict drew out the word, "you can memorize streets. Point the second, can I not get myself clean before we go getting our next assignment? I don't think there's any need to keep running around with mud in my boots when we're a quick walk away from a beautifully clean stream."
"Okay, sure, we can bathe," Astrid answered, hiding a smirk behind her faceless helmet. Benedict seemed to be a little suspicious of her willingness to do as he asked, but he was more than happy enough to disregard his caution and lead the way towards the clear river where they all usually bathed. What he wasn't ready for was, as soon as they were within a dozen meters of the riverbank, Astrid coming from behind, picking him up, and jumping into the center of the river with him still in her arms.
"Ack! No! Stop," he sputtered.
Astrid paid him no mind as she laughingly jumped into the frigid water and dunked him under completely. When she came out, her entire body was covered in goose flesh, though the chill wasn't nearly as pervasive as it would have been to her in Bronze tier.
"I hate you," Benedict frowned at Astrid as he said it. He shivered, but was more than tough enough to be safe from hypothermia. Only magical cold would be able to affect him now.
"I suppose if you must," Astrid replied, putting on a show of being penitent, "then I shall be the enemy in the story of Benedict the frostbitten."
"You mispronounced Benedict the Frostfallen," he replied, putting emphasis on the second half of his made up word. Despite his complaints, he didn't hurry to get out of the water now that he was soaked. Instead, he, Astrid, and the rest of the party all took some time to clean up. After all, his point was good, that now that they weren't going to be in the swamp, there was no need not to get themselves completely clean now.
Eventually, finally, they were all clean enough and Muti led the way towards where the Grove Warden could be found. Along the way, now that Benedict had opened the door for the teasing, he and Skandr both bullied her relentlessly about being unable to tell the difference between where she needed to go. If it had been others who were treating her like this, Astrid knew she would have been angry, but with her friends, she was quickly reduced to giggles as they continued to press in on her while they ran through the forest.
"But this? Is that a tree? Would you be able to recognize if there was a sign post on it? How about if it was purple?"
"Of course I could recognize a signed post," Astrid scoffed. "I can read! Can't you, Benedict?"
"Yes, I can, and I can also tell the difference between a tree and a blade of grass without someone writing it on a wall."
"Hah!" Astrid replied, pointing at him while she plucked a blade of grass from nearby. "This one's all green, the tree isn't."
"So if I took a tumble in the grass," Skandr laughed, "and was covered in grass stains, could you tell me apart from some grass?"
"Only maybe," she replied with a shrug. "After all, you're about the same size, aren't you?"
Skandr mimed taking an arrow to the heart, and Astrid was left wondering why she was laughing as much as she was at this. Objectively, they were making stupid jokes, but she just enjoyed the time she had with friends, the water dripping off of her and leaving trails as they hurried through the forest to their next destination. The Verdant Walkers would give their next assignment before they could enter a Steel tier Dungeon branch, and everything would continue progressing. The only question was if she could keep up.