Floor 3 was not fun. Lacie got a party quickly by showing off how powerful her Soothing Flood spell was, but they got eaten by some Venus Guy Trap almost immediately. No amount of healing will help when they stick their heads in the beast's mouth.

  Honestly, it almost got Lacie, too. Fortunately for her, she had a Symbiotic Barkskin going on someone, and that spell meant she also felt some pain when it failed. Her Invasive Growth had killed the few beasts nearby, and she'd fled the trees alone, out into the daylight.

  Almost another three days were spent alone, almost no XP gained, until she found Brynhild's Daughters. Or was found by them, really.

  Hekla seemed to know everything happening on the floor, and she'd gotten some second-hand message about Lacie's amped-up buffs. Suddenly, it seemed like smooth sailing. She got a spell called "Soothing Stream" which was a long-term, constant healing effect. Although it wasn't like the big, one-hit heals of some of the others in the group, she could keep it going on several the combatants at once, so she was technically doing more healing than anyone else. On the whole, she was a favorite assistant of one of the dungeon's most powerful crawlers.

  It was a nice place to be.

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  Floor 4 seemed like it would be more of the same.

  Then some lady from before Lacie joined the Daughters murdered Hekla and it all fell apart. The swarm of healers and buffers were scrambling for any source of safety, all while the floor was turning into a real-life grindhouse movie.

  Lacie was a mid-level weirdo with terrible stats, and while she had powerful buffs, none of them were normal, and they were all she had. Even worse, word spread quickly that the daughters didn't really know how to work the dungeon without Hekla, so only a needy party would take them in. There were enough loose daughters around that the parties with a serious gap quickly snatched someone up.

  Although Lacie was thoroughly aware that she didn't want to be in Eva's party next floor, she also didn't want to be alone.

  When a level 28 Crocodilian Bloodkin Champion leaned over her and said, "Hey there, beautiful. I can keep you safe down here, you know," she only paused a moment before she said yes.

  She was a lowly level 19, and suddenly she was back supporting a powerful frontliner. He was abrasive and crude, and more than a little mean, but he had a huge sword that absolutely massacred the incoming stage-2 swarms. Once, a huge knot came in and he unleashed a once-per-day dragonbreath the sword enabled, and killed so many at once that she shot up two levels just because she had buffs on him when it happened.

  In some ways, it was awful. She had a support build, and she'd lost the team she was supporting. Now, back with a team, she was bitching about them being annoying. It just felt ungrateful. Without them, her odds of being dead next floor were astronomical.