This Used To Be About Dungeons полностью

This possibly explained why the Pucklechurch dungeon had been a bit harder than it should have been, but he decided not to mention it, on the off chance that she would feel that she was to blame. “And could you do other things?” Alfric asked. “Other than flying?”

“Oh, absolutely,” Mizuki replied. “So long as it’s in the realm of personal and physical, anyway. Why, did you want to spar me when I have super-strength?” She dropped into a fighting stance with truly atrocious form, holding up her hands but shaping them like blades, not fists.

“I think not,” said Alfric, looking up into the sky, to the height she’d reached. “If you can fling yourself that high, you could probably punch through steel.”

“Are you calling me fat?” asked Mizuki, her hands on her hips.

“No,” said Alfric, blinking. “Of course not, you’re—”

“Lighten up, city boy,” said Mizuki, rolling her eyes. “When I make a joke, you make a joke back, did no one teach you that?”

“Um,” said Alfric. “I was taught not to make jokes at the expense of others.” He frowned. “You’re saying that I should have called you fat?”

“In a joking way, sure,” said Mizuki. “I know that I’m skinny. I know that I’m skinny. You’d say ‘Well, I’m not calling you fat, but that outfit isn’t doing you any favors’, and that’s not even that funny, but I’d understand that you were just being, I don’t know, not a stick in the mud. I’d laugh. There’s nothing wrong with a pity laugh, I always say, you have to take what you can get.”

“Sorry if I’ve been a stick in the mud,” said Alfric. “But I want to get this party going. It might not feel like it, but we’re at a critical point.”

“I get the distinct feeling that everything feels like a critical point to you,” said Mizuki. “Ready to go back?”

Alfric looked around the clearing at the collections of yellow and purple flowers that were blooming. “Was this it?” he asked. “Was this what we came here to do?”

“Well, yeah,” said Mizuki. “It was neat, wasn’t it? I don’t normally show people.”

Alfric looked at her. She was smiling. “It was neat,” he said. That seemed like the diplomatic thing to say. The undiplomatic thing was that it seemed dangerous on several levels, which was what his mind immediately went to. But it was neat.

“It’s just about the coolest thing I can do,” said Mizuki. “And I guess I handle blood and guts worst out of the whole team, but I do have skills of my own.”

“I don’t think anyone thinks less of you for not liking blood,” said Alfric. “I don’t like blood. I just conditioned myself to have less of a problem with it.”

Mizuki waded through the weeds and started down the path. “Oh yeah?” she asked. “How’d you do that?”

“I took up work in a slaughterhouse when I was fifteen,” said Alfric. “I knew that if I wanted to be a dungeoneer, I would need to be able to handle that kind of thing. I also tried to get an apprenticeship with one of the churches so that I could see injuries up close, but I think they knew what I was up to and didn’t want a tourist.”

“Wow,” said Mizuki. “That’s nuts.”

“It worked,” said Alfric. “So it’s not that nuts.”

“You’ve really been training for this your entire life?” asked Mizuki.

“Not my entire life,” said Alfric. “But most of it, yes. And since my parents were both dungeoneers, I kind of grew into the family business. It’s expected that everyone in the family will go take a tour of some dungeons. I’d have gone even if that wasn’t the case though.” People tended to assume there’d been some pressure from his parents, but if anything, they’d both been fairly circumspect about it.

“And you think this is the team for you?” asked Mizuki. “Because I have to say, I’m not looking forward to doing it again, even if I will do it again, and I’m pretty sure that your original plan was to go through them fast. I mean, I was the first one to say yes, right? So in a sense, you and I are the core of the team. And we should be on the same page.”

“I was hoping for more,” said Alfric. “But there aren’t many people like me who want to make a career out of going in the dungeons. It’s too dangerous, too laborious, and too much travel.”

“Hannah would do it,” said Mizuki. “So there’s one.”

“Getting a team together is hard,” said Alfric. “It’s so much harder than it sounds at first. The second time I tried to put together a team, I put out an open call, and I got lots of responses, but half of them weren’t remotely qualified, and nothing seemed to gel together. We got all ready to go, then two of them flaked out on me, and because of that, the others left.” He had elected to lower his standards a bit after that.

“So which is this?” asked Mizuki. “Your third time trying to make a team? Fourth?”