Lastly she explained magic. Magic is the kind of trick that requires you to manipulate the mana inside you and then output it. The four elements — earth, water, fire and wind — each have their advanced versions: ground, ocean, inferno and storm.
Teacher pointed out that between them they had acquired every one of the basic elements, and had mastered fire.
One has to discover the element one is compatible with, Amanda continued, by submerging oneself in it. Fran immediately wanted to take control of wind, and the sword stopped her at once. He was very protective of her.
As they descended toward the fourth floor the spiders grew more numerous, and the Forest Eye party took the lead, charging in to kill more of them.
Amanda described complex magic, which is the mastering of two elements at the same time. Furion, for instance, used wood magic, which is water and earth magic combined. It was also what the guildmaster used, since he was a wood elf, and it was their speciality. Water and wind give frost. Water and fire give life. Wind and fire make thunder. Wind and earth make dust. And earth and fire together create molten magic.
Amanda encouraged Fran that she might well be able to master thunder magic, since she already had good control over three of the elements.
On the fourth floor the team could finally rest; the architecture of that stretch kept monsters from getting near them.
There, in a rare turn of events, Fran shared her curry with Amanda.
Teacher understood the size of that gesture. Perhaps she trusted the woman now. A pang of jealousy went through the sword, and he ignored it.
Amanda began telling her about dark and light magic. The sword warned Fran not to let slip that she could use dark magic along with all four elements.
As Amanda went through the types, Fran asked whether the people who used poison and necro magic were necessarily bad people. A skill is a skill, Amanda said. She remembered someone she used to know who could use necro magic. A very weird guy.
Meanwhile Cruz alerted the party that the fifth stage would be the hardest one, with harder challenges in it — including a dangerous teleporter.
Fran, by now itching to learn thunder magic, badgered the sword into teaching her. He refused, repeatedly, and she wore him down and won in the end; he transferred the skill to her, but only after taking her pledge not to use it until they were back out.
At last they reached the fifth floor.
Tarantulas came crawling out along the walls until Furion summoned the wood spirit, which entangled the spiders and spared the adventurers. Everyone used everything they had on every monster they met. Amanda praised them all for the struggle.
Then the moment all that struggle had been for arrived: they came down to the sixth floor, deep inside the core of the dungeon.
The adventurers cleared the path bravely. The spiders here had multiplied, and they had grown stronger.
Then an adventurer dropped to the floor. The antidote had not worked. On the sword's advice, Fran hurried over and used recovery magic on him.
Teacher summoned an appraisal, and found that these were not just any spiders. They were level ten trick spiders.
Cruz recognised at once that this dungeon was too advanced for the party he had, and ordered a retreat.
The adventurers rushed for the way out — and the tiles beneath them lit bright orange with mana flow.
In an instant, Fran disappeared, leaving her sword behind on the floor.
Nobody could understand how magic of that grade — teleportation, in a dungeon that had supposedly been cleared out — could possibly exist here. There was no time to waste on the question. Following the guild map, they went looking for Fran in a room nearby, and found that the destination of the teleport had been altered.
Amanda said there was only one way that could be true with no dungeon master present: if a trick spider had evolved into its final form, the trickster spider.
Somewhere else in the dungeon, Fran was helpless without her teacher. A huge spider-like thing with a long grey mane woke up in front of her, its abdomen lined with glowing red orbs.
The sword, back where she had dropped him, could not find her. He tried every skill he had and none of them reached her, and he begged her to answer him.
Fran and her two companions shook with fear. Without her sword, she was useless.
With a snap of its fingers the trickster spider threw flares at the helpless adventurers.
Outside, the party split into groups. Isol joined the Dragon's Roar and Rig went with the Forest Eye, and they all set out to find their lost people. Amanda went alone.
No matter what Teacher tried, there was no way to locate Fran. Nobody else had any luck either. With every second the worry for their missing companions grew, and the whole party grew restless. Amanda used wind magic to catch any sound Fran might make, and heard nothing.
There had to be something Teacher could do.
Elsewhere, Fran dodged the monster's attacks, frightened and alone.
Then an idea struck the sword. If he used parallel thought, he could summon more tricks at once. And something caught his eye in his own skill list: kin summon.
Without paying the slightest attention to the fact that Amanda might notice, Teacher channelled his mana and cast kin summon, and called an onyx wolf — a life detector. That would find Fran.
A ferocious wolf sprang into being, wild and beastly. It flung the sword away in the opposite direction and began to circle Amanda, who decided to destroy it. Dark magic, she reasoned.
The sword activated telepathy and talked her out of it. He could not reveal his identity, he told her, but he could assure her that he was a companion of Fran's.
The trouble was the mana. So much of it was rushing through the wolf that it had gone into a berserk state; the flow exceeded what the crystal in its heart could bear, and so it believed its own master was the cause of its suffering.
Amanda deduced the answer: to calm the wolf, it had to be given a name, since a name strengthens the bond between a master and its creation.
In that case, Teacher said, he would name it Arushi, the darkness wolf.
Blue mana glowed through the wolf and it settled, and its stats came up in front of him. He was kin to the sword and a wolf guard. His level was one, and his unique skill was prey absorption.
Teacher commanded Arushi to go after his wielder and find her.
Deep in the heart of the dungeon, the trickster spider was firing arrows at Fran; they went through her cheek and she cried out in pain. Arushi activated his own skill, shadow walk, and slid away through the floor, camouflaged, hunting. Amanda hurried along behind them.
Consumed by pain, Fran lay on the floor while thousands of spiders crawled toward her.
She thought about the time before she had her teacher. How weak she had been then. How worthless. This was exactly what she was now: frail and feeble, with none of her skills.
Fran shut her eyes and gave up.