Chapter 54: First Doubts

POV Cornelius

How could that be? How could this orc causde me so much trouble? I was vastly superior to him, both in skill and equipment. And as a human, I was way above a dirty, inferior orc anyway. So how could he bring me to the brink of defeat? Without Eli's protective spells I would probably have lost, but that couldn't and shouldn't be. It didn't matter that I won in the end. The fight was far too close. What had I done wrong? Why wasn't I superior? Before that everything was so easy that I should have won in my sleep. What is the difference here?

“….ius? …. nelius? Cornelius!” <Eleonore>

"What?" <Cornelius>

“What a luck, you’re back to your senses. I was so scared for you. You were unresponsive for minutes. Are you okay?” <Eleonore>

I opened my eyes and looked around. Eleonore knelt next to me and held my arm. Ansgar sat on the floor, breathing heavily, his leather armor torn and his clothes soaked in blood. Javier looked into the open chest, seemingly unharmed. Liss stood a few meters next to him and remained quiet. She also had some tears in her leggings. Apparently everyone was alive. Then I stood up, groaning.

"We go. Pack everything up. I want to go back to Tyros.” <Cornelius>

No one objected and took his own luggage. Javier also packed up what was in the chest. Liss then led us safely back to the surface by stepping through the portal. There we took our horses from the soldiers who had been waiting for us and rode back to the city.

“Liss, we don’t need you anymore today or tomorrow. We have to work through what happened this evening. Be ready so we can call you at any time.” <Cornelius>

“Very well.” <Eliza>

So we separated at the hotel and each went to our rooms. The others left me alone because they sensed that I was in a bad mood. In my room, I took off my armor and loudly threw the pieces onto the floor. I cursed several times. I was angry, really angry for the first time since we came into this world. This didn't go as planned at all. Were we too hasty? Were we too ill-prepared? Too poorly trained? It took me about an hour to calm down again. I got ready and left my room. I went to Ansgar's room and knocked. He opened the door and looked at me.

“Calmed down again?” <Ansgar>

“Stop that crap, we don’t have time for that now. Get the others, we have to analyze the situation.” <Cornelius>

Then I went into the room that served as our meeting room. After a few minutes the others also came and sat down at the large table in the middle.

“I’ll get straight to the point. Something went terribly wrong today and I want to know what. I need an assessment from everyone. Ansgar?” <Cornelius>

“I didn't notice much. I was too busy fighting the bears. They were two strong opponents, but we already knew that. My problem was that I was alone against them and I didn't damaged them enough. My ax was too bad.” <Ansgar>

“Eli?” <Cornelius>

“I can't contribute much. All I know is that Liss was a great help to me, as much as I hate to admit it. First she got rid of those disgusting caterpillars and then defeated the wolf that attacked me.” <Eleonore>

"Are you feeling okay again?” <Cornelius>

“Yes, thank you Corni. Not much else happened to me.” <Eleonore>

"Javier?" <Cornelius>

“Hmm, in my opinion we acted too hastily. Ansgar charged straight away, but Liss also went straight into the melee. Which somehow made sense since both are melee fighters. Liss has targeted the caterpillars and the butterflies, which presumably corresponds to her fighting prowess. Eleonore didn’t contribute anything in the fight herself, so we were one person less.” <Javier>

“I just can’t and don’t like to fight, you know that too. I'll buff you beforehand and heal you afterwards. That has always been my job.” <Eleonore>

“But he’s right too, Eli. You will no longer be of any help in the fight itself. Don't you have a spell to do damage? You have so many MPs.” <Cornelius>

“Don’t you start that too. And no, I didn't. When? I advanced far in the dungeon here, but couldn't learn any new spells. I can only do what I was able to do before.” <Eleonore>

“Hmm, that’s a problem. I took a spell book with me, knowing that I want to advance in water and fire and then learn the attack spells straight away. Isn’t there something like that for light magic too?” <Javier>

“I haven't seen one yet and no one has given me one. So no, I don’t have one.” <Eleonore>

“Then we haven’t fully exploited our potential. Javier, what did you say back then, when will we be able to use the next level of equipment?" <Cornelius>

“Hmm, we can use better weapons if we improve the skill to advanced and meet the minimum requirements for the characteristics. The same applies to armor. For the other items you need the corresponding value in artifact control.” <Javier>

“Then I suggest we take advantage of the last few weeks and power level up to level 20, if possible even higher. After that, we return to the capital, spend our EXP there and improve our equipment. In the spring we will continue into the dungeon. I come to the conclusion that we need to improve in three areas. On the one hand, we have not yet exhausted our potential. Then we have to work on our cooperation. And thirdly, each of us must be able to defend ourselves.” <Cornelius>

“Say, can we go to another dungeon then. There was another one somewhere north and when we get tired of it, we'll go back to this one." <Ansgar>

“Not a bad idea. Then we have more variety. Let us do this. Objection? No? Okay, let’s stay like this.” <Cornelius>

Ultimately it turned out that we could have done some things better, but we hadn't made any mistakes either. So our path continued as before, only better.

Over the next few weeks we leveled up in the next floors that were easiest and most effective for us to master. One problem was that after defeating the second boss we could no longer get to floors1 to 10. So we had to go further down. We tried to ignore the slimes on floor11 and took care of all the beetles. We had positioned soldiers at the entrance to prevent the following adventurers from taking the beetles away from us. After defeating the beetles, we bypass the spiders. This showed that Liss was a good scout. Through her we were able to avoid most of them and Eli healed us for the rest. Liss completed her task extremely satisfactorily and we reached the goblins mostly unscathed. We spent most of our time here. More encouragingly, Liss was also able to gain a few levels, even if she didn't have the EXP bonus from the hero title. So she didn't fall too far behind us.

Then we left the dungeon for the last time this year. Since we had achieved our goal of reaching level 22, we were happy to head home to the capital. We haven't tackled the third boss yet. We reserved that for later. We left a letter for Liss to report to the palace in the spring. In the meantime, we took advantage of the opportunities that Lightburgh's instructors and craftsmen offered us and improved our equipment and skills as much as we could do alongside the academy.