B4 - Chapter 12 - Pushing Forward

The next day of classes came with quite an uproar as several groups had managed to make it to the second floor. Lily had expected the group Thomas and Arthur had formed to make it, but she hadn't expected this many of the others to also succeed. Alice's warning not to underestimate the others was proving true once again.

When Lily glanced in Hana's direction, their eyes met, and the girl nodded as if signaling to Lily that the challenge was on. Her fighting spirit was infectious, although Lily couldn't help but feel a tiny bit apprehensive as she'd been hoping for some quality time to put towards glyphs and constellations.

Well, I suppose it won't be too bad. I need it to be nighttime anyway for the stars, so I'm technically free during the day.

After so many students had reached the second floor, Alice was understandably impressed and gave them considerable praise while egging them on to try to reach the third floor now. With how she kept poking and prodding them, you'd swear she had made a bet on how fast they would progress or something, or maybe this was just how she chose to motivate them.

It was also revealed that many had passed the first floor, and it seemed that the solution to progressing quickly was to form slightly larger groups. The dungeon would always attempt to offer an appropriate challenge, so you couldn't just blindly throw more people at it, as soon as you'd find your group facing a horde of monsters.

Despite that, it seemed some of the students had figured out that although it scaled with the number of people, there was a certain "sweet spot" where the number of participants and the challenge were somewhat misaligned. Of course, the same happened in reverse, as the first floor could be called downright unfair for anyone trying to conquer it solo. There were always exceptions, as Rose probably beat it regardless, but it was more than likely intentional for the first floor to promote cooperation.

Since more students had reached the second floor, and it was their theory lesson today, Alice chose to focus more on the types of monsters encountered there. Owing to it being a forest and the monsters being beasts, pretty much anyone with any experience hunting would find great success. It was interesting that, despite being monsters, the animal types would still retain the same animalistic instincts, which could be easily exploited.

When class finally ended, Lily chose to stick around to ask Alice if she'd had a chance yet to ask for permission. Her friends were clearly curious, but she reassured them everything was fine and that she'd catch up to them at lunch.

A few other kids had also stayed behind, asking their own questions they were too shy to ask out loud during class, and from what Lily accidentally overheard, it mostly revolved around some struggles on the first floor. Despite her usual tough and relatively grating personality, Alice was actually quite soft with these kids, perhaps understanding that they needed a gentler approach.

When the last student finally left, it was just the two bunnies staring somewhat awkwardly at each other. Lily still had mixed thoughts about Alice: she respected her as a teacher, but still couldn't shake the feeling that she had been picking on her. It had calmed down recently, which was one of the reasons why she had decided to come to Alice for help rather than one of the other professors, hoping to bury the hatchet.

"You're really causing me quite a headache, you know," Alice outright admitted. "I have people constantly asking me about the things you're doing, as if I'm supposed to be some expert on lagia mages."

Lily blinked several times in confusion. "I'm sorry?"

Alice sighed. "I mean it's not really your fault. I guess they think you probably confide in me and I have the answers, but that's not the case at all. You pretty much do your own thing all the time."

Lily opened her mouth to apologize again, but Alice silenced her by raising a finger. "Don't apologize. It's clearly working for you, which is all that the headmaster and I can ask for. You shouldn't care about some nosy adults trying to figure out your secrets, so I guess just keep doing what you're doing?"

Unsure of how exactly to respond to that, Lily simply nodded.

"I'm assuming you're here to ask about your permission. Fabrelis says you can go ahead, but if it starts interfering with your lessons, then it will be taken away. Same goes if you start causing any mischief or using the privilege for anything else. No trying to sneak into the dungeon, or to Kaeling, or whatever else delinquents do."

"Thank you!" Lily responded happily.

Alice merely shrugged, as if it was really no big deal. "So how's your progress going? Are you trying to reach the third floor yet or just gathering resources?"

"I was happy to keep just casually exploring it," Lily admitted. "But with so many others now on the floor, Hana is going to fight to reach the next one."

"It's a good idea; you don't want to stagnate. With more students on the second floor, it also means you have less of a monopoly on the resources and even the monsters."

Lily nodded in understanding. She knew Alice was perfectly right, as the second floor had its own rules. Unlike the first floor, which always threw some kind of challenge at you in each room, the second floor was more like a living, breathing ecosystem. Yes, the monsters still spawned as usual, but only a set number per day per region. If you were too thorough, you could even make a region "extinct" until the next day.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

The same went for the resources; there were only so many plants with actual value, and they would take time to regrow, even at their vastly accelerated rate in the dungeon. Rose had even advised Lily that if she found a super-rare herb, she should remember the location and harvest it herself whenever it was available. Apparently, some students would even try to hide such locations by manipulating the terrain, although that came at the risk of stopping it from regrowing if you were overzealous.

To prevent abuse from the older students, there was actually a limit on them entering the earlier floors so that the younger generations had a chance. They weren't outright barred, as they might need the resources too, so it was set on a monthly quota. Of course, that only applied if the younger students had reached that floor, so the third floor was currently fair game for any of the second-years. Therefore, if Lily and her group reached the next floor, they would effectively have the entire region to themselves.

Of course, that's assuming it's another open area, and not another challenge like the first floor.

Alice abruptly snapped her fingers. "Oh, before I forget, the headmaster wanted me to ask if you are going to participate in the interschool tournament?"

"I was planning to. Does he want me to skip it?"

Alice shook her head. "No, he was curious since you skipped the duels in the festival."

"Maybe I should have participated…" Lily admitted. "I was thinking I was already full with the dungeon duos and the alchemy competition. Also, I wanted to keep Lotte company."

"Hey, if you don't want to, don't do it. The headmaster just thought you might not want to be too public. I also thought that might have been the case, especially with how you reacted when I first told you about people noticing you."

Lily could only awkwardly chuckle in response. Truthfully, she still felt that way, but she was stomaching it in the hopes of it furthering her glyphs. She just prayed that her actions wouldn't be kicking a hornet's nest of trouble for her, her friends, or her loved ones.

"I guess I'll have to get ready for a new wave of questions. At least I can throw them out, but Fabrelis is going to be forced to listen," Alice chuckled.

Before her mouth could even open this time, she was interrupted by Alice once again. "Nope! Don't worry about us. Just do whatever you want to do; let the adults handle the mess. Besides, not having you participate would be like tying our hands behind our backs. The other schools aren't going to be holding back, and who knows, you might not even be the most eye-catching student this year."

"Thanks…" Lily eventually replied.

Alice waved her off, and without much more to discuss from either of them, Lily left and went to meet up with her friends. When she arrived at the table, the conversation was, as expected, all about trying to conquer the second floor.

Even without spending their token to get the answer, everyone had settled on the prediction that the exit was hidden somewhere in the deep forest. There was still the possibility it was to hunt a rare creature, but the argument against that was that it would be too unfair a challenge this early on.

It wasn't because the monster might be too threatening, as it could even be a weak monster that would hide or flee, but more so around how that would limit everyone's progress. If it was a rare monster that only spawned once a day, or, worse, only once a week, then how was their class supposed to progress? No, logically, such a challenge would likely occur only on much lower floors, where the number of participants was small.

Of course, Lily was questioned about her interaction with Alice, and she explained almost everything, only skipping over the headache she was causing Alice and Fabrelis. The not-so-subtle suggestion to head to the third floor was well received, with both groups vowing to beat the other there first.

As for Lily's need to study the stars, while that was interesting, nobody could really comment much on it. It was chalked up to a bloodline intuition, and all they could offer was moral support, a wish for her good luck, and warnings not to stay up too late. It did, however, start a side conversation about rumors and stories of strange bloodline intuitions.

Everyone seemed to have heard at least one, even Thomas, as the only human in their relatively small group of friends. It ranged from someone needing to climb a mountain's peak to spending weeks living at sea to experience the tides, to someone even jumping off a cliff.

"No way, isn't that just suicidal?" Lotte exclaimed in shock.

"That's my grandpa you're talking about, and he's still alive and kicking," Arthur replied with a cheeky grin.

It appeared that Arthur's recount was genuine, and, considering it was one of the most absurd examples, it made all the other stories seem legit by comparison. It really seemed that there was no rhyme or reason when it came to bloodlines, the biggest mystery of the current world.

"I guess Lily should be thankful she doesn't need to go to the moon, or something like that," Arthur joked.

Almost collectively, the group looked up, even though all they saw was the cafeteria ceiling. Lily wasn't sure who was the first to laugh, but soon the whole group was giggling and chuckling at the absurdity.

After that, it was clear that bloodlines would remain the topic, as they threw out other things they'd heard about. Arthur even threw out a rather profound reason for why some of the intuitions were so crazy.

"I think you need to get your blood pumping, which is why my grandpa needed to jump off a cliff. What could be more exhilarating than that?"

"Rather than that, it could just be a defense mechanism," Thomas speculated in response. "A sudden crisis triggering a deep instinctual reaction."

"Or maybe it's like baby birds getting kicked out of the nest?" Lotte suggested.

All of it sounded reasonable, although that was only in the case of these extreme intuitions. Considering that both Hana and Lotte had experienced intuitions themselves, and none of them were even remotely extreme, it proved that it wasn't a one-size-fits-all situation.

Arthur, however, took it further, saying that some people try to force an intuition by putting themselves in such situations, citing his own father copying his grandpa. Unfortunately for Arthur and the group now hearing this story, his father didn't reveal whether he'd been successful, leaving everyone unsatisfied and speculating about the answer.

Eventually their conversation drew to a close as they needed to head to their next class. It was Spellcasting Fundamentals, and Lily opted to swap it for Personal Development since learning about common spells or magical items wasn't exactly useful for her.

She said farewell to her friends as the group split up, with some not heading to class but instead studying on their own or attending one of their electives. Lily went to her room, where she began preparing for tonight and reviewing Arakil's notes again to make sure she was as ready as possible.