This Used To Be About Dungeons полностью

“Arrows did nothing,” said Isra. “I was just standing there waiting for someone else to kill it.”

“Some will be like that,” Alfric said, nodding. “Others will drop from a single well-placed arrow. Part of what we do, when dungeoneering, is to work a flowchart, and part of what we need to do, as a team, is to figure out what the flowchart looks like in practice. Mizuki putting down as much magical firepower as possible right from the start will probably be the default, and Hannah going in for a hex against something that’s already been injured is another good staple. So Isra, your role will be to loose arrows unless that doesn’t work, and if it doesn’t work, then… I don’t know. You did really well up close at the end of the first dungeon, but I don’t expect you to do that, not when you don’t have a good melee weapon or the proper training to use it. Not everyone is going to be good in every scenario, and that’s okay, so long as we have everything covered and plans for these different scenarios. Sometimes, you’re going to be able to kill whatever we find almost instantly.”

“I’ll need symmetricalization,” said Isra. “I don’t have the stamina for longer dungeons.”

Alfric nodded. “Symmetricalization, training, entad support, and learning when to hold off. Dungeons require a lot of physical exertion, especially for you and me. We should all be building up stamina as much as we can, and if we’re not doing that by running dungeons, it should be in other ways, like going for a morning run.”

Mizuki laughed. “No, absolutely not, thank you.”

“Well, something then,” said Alfric. “It’s not as important for you, but it would be good if you were able to sprint for two hundred yards without getting too winded. Being able to run away from danger is where physical fitness is going to count the most, for you.”

“Fine, point taken,” said Mizuki. “But if you think for even a moment that I’m getting up at first bell to go running, you’re absolutely insane.”

“We’ll figure out something,” said Alfric. “It’s your heart and lungs I care most about. Running, rowing, things like that?”

“What am I going to row?” asked Mizuki. “We’ve got a pond, I guess, but we’re light on lakes.”

“I lift stones,” said Hannah. “Usually just the one side though.”

“Stones?” asked Mizuki. “Like, rocks?”

“Ay,” said Hannah. “There are lots of forms. What you need most is a nice craggy rock that your hands’ll stick to. I have two, back in my room at the temple, and will need to transfer them over, or find some new ones.”

“You just pick up and then put down rocks?” asked Mizuki.

“Over and over,” said Hannah, nodding. “It’s about as boring as it sounds, but I like to have somethin’ to occupy my body when doin’ prayers. If I do it here, it’ll be outside, where I can drop the stones without too much worry about breaks or dents.”

“I’m not sure that I’m going to do that either,” said Mizuki. “Though I guess I could try.”

“Lifting weights won’t really get you the kind of benefit I would think you’d want,” said Alfric. “You want to work the heart and lungs, rather than gain strength, not that it would hurt to have both.” He waved a hand. “But that’s neither here nor there, because we’re still in the middle of our postmortem, and there’s quite a bit more ground to cover.”

They talked about each fight in some detail. Isra found it particularly interesting to get the perspective of Verity, whose effects could be felt but not seen and whose own view of each fight involved carefully watching all the others to see what was needed in any given moment. It also gave her an excuse to look at Verity, which she’d found herself doing quite a bit over the past few days.

“I feel bad that we were rushing on my account,” said Verity. “But if you want a song of that strength, it probably is necessary.”

“I trust you to know your own music,” said Alfric. “But I do think that I want to take the next dungeon a little more slowly. I think going from fight to fight is preferable for a number of reasons, but the fights are physically and mentally exhausting, and if they’re difficult or prolonged, there’s a limit to how many of them I can do in a row before getting gassed. The balance there is how warmed up and ready to go I am, and battle rush certainly helps to get through things.” The term ‘battle rush’ was unfamiliar to Isra, but from context, she thought he might mean how the whole body felt electric in a moment of intense combat.

“You’d like weaker but longer?” asked Verity.

“Well. When you change the fundamental nature of the song in mid-stream it creates problems too, right?” asked Alfric. “If we could have something more all-purpose that might be better, but I don’t want to make a request that betrays my ignorance as a layman.”

“I can try,” said Verity. “There are also some exercises that I can do over the next few weeks to work on my sustain. They’re incredibly boring, but if there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s putting in the time and effort into something I find boring.”