March 28, 2026 — 1:35 am

“Thirty minutes,” Lavarro said, then walked to the side of the chamber and sat against a wall to wait for the others to recover. Mahria looked pale, slumped against her slowly melting wall of ice.

“You ok?” Rain asked, slightly concerned. She really didn’t look good.

“Fine. Used too much mana. Stop yelling.”

Rather than replying that he wasn’t, in fact, yelling, Rain left her alone, respecting that she probably had a headache from the mana use. Huh, it doesn’t seem to hurt me that badly when I am empty. Maybe it hurts more if you have more mana? Well, my winter aura should help her, at least.

Seeing Carten limping over to join them, Rain hurriedly activated purify. The man was absolutely coated in the black, sticky blood of the beasts. The dark blood seemed to resist his purification aura, but slowly the mess evaporated, steam rising from the piles of corpses on the ground as they too started to dry out. His aura reached far enough now to catch the entire chamber, but progress was slow in dissolving the corpses of the dark hounds.

By the time he had run out of mana, the blood was gone and the corpses looked like they were partially mummified. They were starting to turn gray and losing their dark, matted hair. Carten had removed one of his greaves and was bandaging his leg. Jamus had taken a seat next to Mahria, also looking a bit worse for wear. He was leaning his head against the ice wall, having removed his hat. Wow, yeah, that looks like it is way worse than it gets for me. Wait, I don’t have a headache right now, but my mana is empty. Huh.

Rain sat, watching the others as his mana rapidly regenerated under the combined effect of Lavarro’s potion and his own natural regeneration. He had switched back to winter, but the effect for the others was probably too small for them to notice. I need to level this up pronto. I don’t think I could have helped in that fight, even if I had one of those tier 1 offense auras. I feel so useless, I can’t even help them recover. I wonder how much mana they used?

“Jamus,” Rain whispered, causing the man to groan and lift his head off the ice to look at him.

“How much mana you use?” he asked.

“Too much,” he replied, and let his head fall back with a wet thump.

Mahria kicked Rain lightly in the knee, causing him to look at her. She was looking a bit better than Jamus, despite seeming worse at first. “Don’t ask questions like that,” she said.

“Why?”

“It is <something>.”

“<Something>?” Rain asked. She kicked him again by way of reply.

Carten walked over, looking none the worse for wear after Rain’s cleaning and having replaced his greave. “Level, class, health, mana, skills. People do not like questions,” he supplied.

“Oh. Sorry,” Rain apologized. I guess it is taboo or something. I guess I can see that, like asking someone their weight. Kinda rude. Explains why nobody in the guild answered me when I asked before. I thought they just didn’t understand me.

Idly, Rain wondered what level his companions were as he scrolled through his notifications. He had barely gotten any experience for the kills, his contribution consistently listed as <1%. The dark hounds had been between level 3 and 6, and there were more of them listed in his log than he cared to count. Carten and Jamus had handled them without too much trouble. Even Mahria’s ice bolts had done significant damage to them despite her being much younger than the others. Rain was feeling a bit inferior at the moment.

Oh, and Lavarro is on a totally different level. I really don’t want to piss her off. That was insane. She didn’t even move. What the hell was that spell? It just snapped their necks like it was nothing.

Rain shivered and settled back to wait for the others to recover.

Stolen novel; please report.

“Up,” Lavarro commanded, rising from her spot against the wall and collecting her downed torch, using it to light a fresh one. Carten gave the groaning Jamus a hand up, then turned towards one of the smaller tunnels leading from the hall, walking over to it and waiting for the others.

The team proceeded to reclaim a few more miner’s picks from the side tunnels, bringing them back up to the main chamber and dumping them near the ice wall rather than bringing them all the way up to the surface. Soon, only the main tunnel that most of the hounds had come from was left, so Lavarro sent Carten and Mahria up to the surface to drop the collected picks off before they moved further into the mine. By Rain’s count, they were up to nine out of the fifteen picks that they were supposed to find.