Fran decided to handle this battle on her own, without any assistance from her teacher.
It began with the unsheathing of the magical whip of the celestial dragon beard. With one strike the spear end at its tip opened Fran's cheek, and blood ran down her face.
Fran bounced above each attack, dodging every blow. The spear end went flying past inches from her face. Amanda, still smiling pleasantly, activated mana flow through the weapon, and the whip came alive with power surging along it, obeying every movement she made.
In answer, Fran called up a wind spell that increased her speed. She ran with the wind, weaving out of the way of every strike.
Then Amanda revealed a new technique: the Mizuchi strike. The blade cut through Fran's waist and the blood came.
Refusing to give in, Fran sprinted forward and cast a parallel spell. Teacher encouraged her through every movement she made, though privately he was afraid of being caught in the whip if she raised him into its path. Fran gathered up all her wits and summoned the wind spell again, pushing her speed higher still.
Amanda cast a wind protection.
Fran cut her way through it anyway, with some struggle, and came in inches from Amanda's face. She launched flare blast and drove it at her, and Amanda flew back with flames boiling around her.
Then Amanda stepped out of the flames entirely unharmed.
Fran got to her feet, unsteady, and said she would not give up — and then coughed blood and collapsed.
Amanda ran to her with her eyes full of worry, gathered the child up, and apologised. She had never intended to go that far. Her spirit's affection skill activated, and little Fran was healed.
Cruz called for the fire to be put out.
Deep in her unconscious state, Fran dreamed that she was sitting on her mother's lap, and her mother was asking her to be strong for all the black cats out there.
Fran lifted her arm to hold her mother — and jerked awake.
Amanda stroked her head slowly and calmed her down. She was, after all, only a child. Someone who deserved to be spoiled. Someone who deserved to be loved and cared for. She should not be the protector; she should be the protected.
To keep her end of the bargain, Fran struggled through it and called Amanda her mother.
Amanda laughed and wrapped her up in a warm embrace. She promised to be someone Fran could always rely on, and apologised again, admitting that she had gone a little overboard with the teasing.
The sword used his falsehood skill to check, and confirmed that nothing the ace had said was insincere. She really was the guardian of children.
Fran apologised to Cruz for setting the camp on fire. Cruz, impressed by her courage, reassured her that after this nobody would be doubting her abilities.
The dungeon was reserved for the executives of the Alessa guild. The adventurers filed in and made ready for the investigation.
Fran smiled. This might be her gateway to the dungeon of Olmut.
Somewhere far away, an ominous man stood holding a glowing red potion, its light reflected in his eyes.
In front of the dungeon the adventurers assembled to begin. The first level was the first floor underground. The Dragon's Roar party was ordered to take point and clear the path.
Amanda remembered this dungeon from her early days, and told Fran about the lives that had been lost trying to clear it. Nobody had ever succeeded. Those lives, she said, had belonged to the parents of the children in her orphanage. That was the event that made her open it.
Just then spider monsters were found in two places at once.
The Dragon's Roar party threw themselves into it. The spiders released a white gluey spit from their abdomens; Crad and his people dismembered them and cleared the way.
Cruz warned everyone to beware of the spit, since it could immobilise a person completely, and the only way to free them was to burn it off. Unfortunately the spit was also a valuable material, and it would be a shame to burn any of it.
Next they came to level two, the second floor underground. Cruz put the Forest Eye party on watch, since the layout down here was more complicated and there were creepy insect monsters somewhere in it.
To Teacher's considerable surprise, Fran took the initiative and asked Amanda about skills and techniques and magic. Amanda was delighted — Fran was actually relying on her — and began to explain each of them in turn.
The first was combat technique, which had been bestowed by the combat god and the god of martial arts. It worked by manipulating one's own strength through the mana inside one's body.
Before she could finish, a boulder came flying at Crad. He used his power swing spear technique and cut it in half.
Completing her explanation, Amanda said that Crad's spear, her own whip, and Fran's sword were all examples of combat technique.
Fran said she wanted to learn.
Skills, Amanda explained, are gained when the mana flowing through your body converges — during training, or in the middle of combat, at the moment you use them. It feels, she said, like being struck by a divine oracle.
Fran held on to that.
Moving on, they reached the third floor underground. There were fewer enclosed spaces on this floor, which naturally suggested that there would be fewer monsters on it.
Instead, the moment Crad and his team stepped on a brick, it triggered a mechanism that slammed the whole party to the floor. They kept stepping on bricks and touching bricks after that, releasing insect monsters and painful rains of brick and stone on themselves.
Teacher rolled his eyes at the tomfoolery. He had expected nothing else from that lot.
Cruz ordered Ael to detect the traps, and he obliged, disarming all of them so everyone could pass in peace.
Amanda went on talking in the background. When a person practises a skill often, she said, they eventually become proficient in it. Beyond that, some skills are granted by the gods on nothing but a whim, and that sort cannot be standardised in any way.