The nightshade region of the central continent was home to many, many species. It spanned an area of about seven hundred square kilometers and covered the majority of the central continent's western coast.
Of its many varied species, some were plants and fungi. A rare few among those grew into proper fey. One of such fey, a stout violet-capped humanoid, had been left generally undisturbed until recently.
It hadn't revealed itself to the powerful ant beastkin that had emerged from below and dug into its wall, nor had it shown its presence to the draconic avatar. But it did send its fey body to the surface to report the sudden convergence of high-ranked figures of nightshade to its court leader.
The queen of the twilight court was interested in the events, but wouldn't sacrifice one of her rare fey to observe. She'd discover what was happening eventually.
Azotreh had stopped moving. Their muscles had simply stopped responding once their backbone resource had reached almost zero.
Despite mostly using mana to move their body rather than backbone, they still needed some backbone to work. Especially using their new punch skill.
Dur had simply watched as Azotreh slowly learned to modulate the energy of their punches so as to not blow up their hand every time they threw a punch. Only after they were worn out, only using enough backbone to keep their heart beating, did she start to talk.
"Are you done?"
Azotreh couldn't move their head yet. Instead, they just allowed their aura to fluctuate slightly in the affirmative.
"Good. From here, we need to develop a fighting style for you."
Azotreh raised one eyebrow before closing their eyes. They had an ability they still barely understood, but any ability was accompanied by some instinct on its use.
The cold awareness assisted as they used the ability, Aura Telepathy, to speak to Dur. Using their vocal cords still wasn't truly an option, as they were regenerating more backbone, so they used a different resource.
The aura of the dungeon around them resonated with their voice, at first amplifying it to more than shouting. The room shook slightly as they asked, "Develop?"
Their mouth creased as they lowered the power of the telepathy. The cold awareness left their body to properly manipulate the aura of the dungeon itself.
The entire structure emanated their aura. The walls and ceilings projected it like they would from their own body. Kurdan was still fascinated by the mechanics of it and had taken the time to begin setting up interlocking circles of arcane power. He'd been silent since Azotreh had begun their training with Dur.
"Everyone who takes up the paths of combat needs to figure out their own technique to do so. It's easier for us orcs than it is for, say, the rabbit-kin simply because there are more of us. I know my limits well from sparring with my fellows.
"You have that problem, but even more extreme. I watched you fight that elymental. It was sloppy and characterized the issue for you," Dur pointed a finger down at Azotreh, "as a shapeshifter, your form isn't consistent. That's good for surprises, but unless you spend time mastering every possible variation of your own body, it's not an option.
"Some orcs who follow paths of blood have similar issues, but never to your extreme. So we have to develop one for you."
Azotreh's aura once again flared and brushed against Dur's. This time, it was not amplified by its resonance with the dungeon, so it came out at a reasonable volume.
"How do you think I should do that?" They asked.
"How many skills do you have?"
"Forty-nine," Azotreh responded after a quick count.
Dur frowned, "That's awfully high. Even if your core is stronger than most, the limit for a tin ranker is apparently around fifty. That's definitely a problem then."
"Why?"
"I wanted to drill the fundamentals into you, get you some of the most easily acquired skills. Run, Kick, that stuff. But unless you're able to go massively over the limit, then I can't help much. Pain is necessary, but there's a difference between the necessary pain and soul pain."
Azotreh frowned in response. If their limit was around 50, then they needed to go back to the idea of pushing their existing skills to higher tiers. Specifically, journeyman-tier.
Dur noticed immediately and asked, "What's on your mind?"
"How do you advance skills?" Azotreh asked. Doctor had explained that it mostly came through repeated use, but that wouldn't explain why they'd advanced mana manipulation so quickly, or why they'd hit a wall.
"Which tier?"
"All of them?"
Dur sighed before sitting down. Then she stood up again and walked across the room, grabbed Kurdan by the scruff of his neck, and brought him over.
Azotreh slowly sat up, having regained enough Backbone to do so. When Kurdan looked into their eyes, they saw four pupils spinning within a golden iris. Red, blue, black, and green. It was unnerving, but also fascinating.
Kurdan had seen plenty of abilities, bloodlines, and even some orc who followed a dao that altered the eyes of the one who held them. But multiple pupils was a new one for him.
Dur pulled him from his thoughts as she cleared her throat and said, "Tell them about skill advancement."
"Which tier?"
Dur scowled and turned back to Azotreh, "Who taught you before Mukurric got us?"
"Atu, but only broadly in mana manipulation and some aura manipulation."
Dur shook her head, "The lord rabbit didn't teach that girl anything and expected her to be your tutor. Thank the twilight you caught the direct attention of the lich."
This time, it was Kurdan who cleared his throat, getting a stern look from Dur. He raised his hands placatingly. Only after Dur had walked off did Kurdan turn back to Azotreh.
"She's right, you know. Atu doesn't know too much about growth. She knows the basics, repetition, energy absorption, all that. But not the specifics. I had to explain this to her when Dur-"
Dur shot him a look across the room.
"When we decided to train you both." He swiftly corrected himself.
Dur snorted before getting to work, setting up another wool construct. This one far more complicated than the previous dummy.
"Skills advance broadly through repeated use. The same goes for abilities, so some people get them mixed up, but the difference between them comes down to the tiers of skill. There are five: Apprentice, Journeyman, Expert, Master, and Grandmaster. There are others, but you don't have to worry about them yet.
"Apprentice skills are about learning from another person's experience. Being a proper apprentice and all that. Journeymen need to actually use the skill they got through the apprentice tier, while experts need to teach others. Mastery is qualified by the end of the expert-tier and beyond. The only thing I know about grandmasters is that the Lich of Nightshade is one in mana manipulation.
"I have several skills in the expert-tier, and only Grusi in the master tier."
"Grusi?"
"The common language of orcs across the continent. It's used whenever the orcish clans interact or leave the nightshade region for any reason."
Azotreh nodded silently as Kurdan continued, "Apprentice skills advance faster through their use. Learning a skill from a book or observing an expert will get you through the apprentice-tier fine, but to get a head start on journeyman, it's all about use."
Azotreh nodded again before getting to their feet. Their aura flared, and Kurdan's eyes widened as he felt it. Five core aspects. He couldn't sense it before since Azotreh's aura normally remained so flat, but there were definitely five things at the very root of Azotreh's aura. Of their soul. He didn't know how that was possible.
He shook his head as he returned to his work. The environment of a dungeon without being attacked by hordes of life-annihilating monsters was a good enough opportunity that he wasn't willing to give it up for some possibility of what might be a unique event.
Azotreh knew they couldn't advance two of their language skills to journeyman. Latin and Italian. They were languages Nicholas knew, and finding a native speaker would be immensely difficult.
They had several skills to level, even if the highest number they could have right now truly was fifty, which they doubted; they had several they could advance now.
One of the easiest for now would be Astrum Shaping. Errazorrus had ensured that the growing roots of the Astral Infection had been purged and repurposed into astrum, so they had plenty of the raw material.
If the fastest way to advance an apprentice skill was to use it, then they'd use Astrum Shaping as much as they could to push it faster.
They also knew that Dur was setting up something, so their combat skills wouldn't be left behind.
Nicholas was advancing Mining through his personal project near the core room, and Fuzem had decided to take active command of their monstrous forces in her war against the ant colony of the biodome. Errazorrus was currently not doing much, as his puma still had five days left to return to existence, at which point he wanted to test some other things.
They had to push themselves harder. They had to make sure that they were strong enough to at least escape high rankers. Who knew when some unknown presence would just enter their dungeon willy-nilly?
Alabast was not having a good week.
Mason, Leo, and Maria had drifted away from him and the twins after a drawn-out argument about religion. He knew the topic would be sore, especially for Mason. But Leo had brought it up.
To make matters worse, he had no idea where Azotreh's dungeon was. He had a divine quest to provide assistance to it. He wasn't sure exactly how he'd do such a thing, but he wasn't willing to fail a quest from any higher power.
He felt like he'd walked all over the nightshade forest. He'd killed enough of those awful big slimes to the west to cover himself in acid burns. He'd harvested enough materials of all shapes and sizes that he could make miraculous advancements in the study of poisons through sheer trial and effort.
Worst of all, the church had assigned a low priestess to their party, bringing their team to seven. He hated having to spend time near the infuriating woman.
She wasn't borderline violent like Mason when she found out that he, Zinni, and Izia didn't believe that the sole god of the planet was their high father, but she kept trying to convert them.
He'd lived most of his life on the central continent and had even had an unfortunate encounter with a chosen blessed of Fauna. He knew that the so-called saints were divine in their own right. Especially the dungeon gods.
No matter how many times he'd said that she wouldn't convert him, she just kept trying. She even had a pamphlet. Why or how, he had no idea.
He wanted to just get out of this awful situation when his luck finally struck.
A blue slime, but not like the others. It had the suppressed, undying rage of a dungeon monster coursing through its aura.
They'd come across it a little distance from a large river. The priestess had noticed it first and struck at it with holy power.
Authority naturally dealt massive damage to the controlled monster. He wasn't sure about the reason or mechanics, but divine energy always had that effect on monsters. It was part of why priests were always so highly valued.
But he knew one thing about there being a dungeon monster here, especially one so close to where they'd previously been attacked by a different dungeon monster that had been named Azotreh.
So, as the rest of the party moved to fight it, he left his normal position in the back to silently drop his bag onto the slime. Or, more accurately, he got his familiar to. He didn't want to alert the others to something too strange, so he left the dimensional bag with the spider he'd gotten for a familiar.
He hoped this would work, and soon enough, his spider crawled away from the slime without the bag. It waved its front two feet in the air for a second before Alabast blew up the slime with his fire magic. He'd done it to the normal varieties often enough that he was rather experienced in not killing his party with slime-death explosions.
His familiar silently returned to the dissolving corpse and retrieved the bag. Azotreh's inventory ability couldn't store dimensional items, which he'd figured from the last time they'd encountered one of the dungeon's monsters.
But when he checked in the bag, it was empty. So they took everything out of it and left the bag. Exactly as Alabast had hoped.
He'd left one of his arcane contracts in the bag with his terms. He had to help Azotreh. While the quest said to make a formal alliance, he knew that the black dragon dungeon god truly wanted to assist the newfound dungeon. So he'd do his best, hopefully getting its favor. He wanted his familiar to attain a draconic maturation, and couldn't think of a better way than gaining the favor of a draconic patron.