A few hours after returning to the suite—most of it spent snacking and chatting with Sage—Det once again sat at the counter, a pile of food in front of him. This time, it was Elestar’s equivalent of pasta, complete with a tomato-like meat sauce. Eriba and Weiss had returned first, and gotten to work almost immediately, the pair moving around the kitchen in a kind of coordination that could only be attributed to ReSouled bodies.

  Who knew working in a kitchen could be a learned skill?

  Whatever it was, it had paid off, with the thick aroma from the warm pasta and its sauce filling Det’s nose, and practically making his mouth water. It was accompanied by a light garlic bread, sauteed zucchini—or something that looked like it—and a classic caprese salad.

  Eriba complained, very quietly, as usual, about not being able to find anything like asparagus to wrap in prosciutto, but nobody else was worried about the absence. There was too much delicious looking food in front of them.

  Almost like they’d planned it, Tena and Calisco had returned about twenty minutes before dinner was ready. Just enough time to drop off their shopping bags, get cleaned up, and return to the table. Not a moment after they sat down, Weiss methodically served their meals.

  It only took one hand-slap with a wooden spoon to the back of Calisco’s hand to send the message not to touch the food until everybody was served. Or until everything was perfectly laid out. Working in his usual, detail-focused way, every plate, side-dish, and glass ended up exactly placed in front of each of the six settings.

  Det was sure if he got out a ruler to measure, there wouldn’t be more than a quarter-of-an-inch of variation.

  “Thank you for all waiting until the meal was served,” Weiss said, sitting down.

  Det noticed he had brought the long, wooden spoon with him to his seat.

  “Not like we had much choice,” Calisco said, rubbing at her hand at the memory of the room-echoing whap.

  “Manners are always a choice,” Weiss said. “The only choice.”

  “Were you like this back on Earth when you cooked?” Tena said, then winced at Weiss’ raised eyebrow and mouthed ‘like this?’. “I mean, this careful about preparing food for others?”

  “I didn’t prepare food for others,” Weiss said. “I only learned to cook as part of a class I took.”

  Everybody looked at the meal in front of them, then turned to Eriba.

  “I only helped,” she said quietly.

  “You did all this after just taking some classes?” Sage said.

  “Being a ReSouled seems to have helped,” Weiss admitted. “It was all very easy.”

  “Hold on,” Det said. “If you only cooked in the classes, what did you eat the rest of the time?”

  “I had staff who cooked and served my food,” Weiss said matter-of-factly.

  “You had…?” Tena said, then shook her head. “Of course you did.”

  “Which just makes all this even more impressive,” Sage said. “I just have one question.”

  “What’s that?” Weiss said.

  “Can we eat it?” Sage asked with his usual, light laugh, and looked at the spoon that lay threateningly close to Weiss’ hand.

  Weiss looked around at everybody waiting patiently—each clearly not touching anything—then finally nodded when he was satisfied. “You may eat.”

  That was all it took for the gathered cadets to practically dive face-first into the pasta.

  “For the pacifist of the group,” Calisco said, noodles slurping into her mouth as she spoke. “You’re pretty violent about manners.”

  “Manners, such as talking with your mouth full?” Weiss asked her. His left hand purposefully slid across to where the wooden spoon lay.

  Calisco’s eyes widened, and she slurp-choked the rest of the noodle into her mouth so fast, it was a shock it didn’t come right back out her nose. Then again, from the pounding she needed on her back from Tena to get past the coughing, that might not have been so far from the truth.

  “All that aside, this is good,” Tena said, while she summoned her golem double to slam Calisco’s back with one crystal hand. “Where did you find all the ingredients?”

  “A few local shops carried the closest things to what I was looking for,” Weiss said. “With Eriba’s help, we made our best guesses.”

  “There are some cannoli for dessert,” Eriba said in her small voice. “We didn’t know Det bought donuts.”

  “Who’s going to stop us from eating both?” Det asked. Nobody had a good answer to that, so the group went silent to fill their mouths with food.

  That lasted all of five minutes before Calisco finally broached the topic everybody knew was coming.

  “Det,” she said, using a piece of half-eaten garlic bread to point at him. “I’m not mad at you.”

  That was clearly not what anybody at the table expected her to say by the five, matching sets of confused looks directed in the woman’s direction.

  “Thank you?” Det said, not really sure what his response to something like that was supposed to be.

  “I’m not just awesome, but also pretty generous too,” she said, totally ruining any semblance of generosity just by opening her mouth. Pretty much standard for Calisco, really. “I only told you to beat Aarag…”

  “Aarak,” Det corrected.

  “You sure?” Calisco said. “Pretty sure I heard everybody calling him Aarag, with a G.”

  “… it’s not like it really matters,” Det said. “Aarag is fine.”

  “Great, Aarag,” Calisco said, garlic bread going toward her mouth before she stopped. One look at Weiss and his hand on the spoon forestalled any plans she had of eating and continuing the conversation at the same time. A lick of her lips, and she gently put the bread back down on the side of her plate. “As I was saying, I only said you had to beat him. I didn’t expect that bitch to jump into the arena right after.”

  “I don’t know if I’d call her a bitch,” Det said, thinking back to Fourth offering a hand to help him up. “She actually wasn’t that bad.”

  “She beat the shit out of you,” Calisco said.

  “So did Tena,” Det said. “And you tried to explode me in the training room last night. Does that make you two both bitches as well?”

  “Yes,” they said in unison.

  Det paused. “I can’t actually argue with that,” he finally said.

  “Bad-ass bitches,” Tena said.

  “Don’t-mess-with-us-or-we’ll-mess-up-your-pretty-face bitches,” Calisco added.

  “Yeah, that sounds like the right category for Fourth,” Det said.

  “Exactly,” Calisco said. “As much as I don’t like her picking on somebody weaker from my party, I have to admit that’s pretty much all of us right now.”

  “You don’t think you could explode her?” Sage asked.

  “I don’t think I could catch her in one of my explosions,” Calisco said in a rare moment of humility. “If she stood still long enough, I could totally explode her ass. Beast was… right to stop me from jumping in. I would’ve just made it worse if I’d challenged her and lost.”

  “Who are you and what have you done with the real Calisco?” Det said.

  “Shut up, loser.”

  If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

  “There she is,” Sage laughed.

  “What I’m getting at,” Calisco said. “Is we all need to get stronger. I thought we could take anybody in the cadets after what we did back on Radiant. Realizing I’m not at the top of this pile… it kind of pisses me off. I don’t like this feeling.”

  “Back on Radiant,” Sage said. “We had each other to rely on. Some of those knives that got by Det, Tena could’ve stopped those. In the second Fourth paused after Det punched her in the gut, you could’ve exploded her. Me and Eriba, we could’ve kept her busy with pets and grenades. Put any two of us in there, and I think it wouldn’t be so cut and dry.”

  “She might still win,” Calisco said.

  “… she might,” Sage admitted. “She’s that strong.”

  “We need to be that strong,” Calisco said. “I want it so that the next time any of us get in the ring with her, she’s the one who ends up on her back. Or face-first in the sand. Either one works. Like Aarag.

  “Det,” Calisco said his name again, this time with more force in her voice. “Good job kicking his ass. And staying on your feet as long as you did against Fourth.”

  Det didn’t say anything immediately, waiting for the sucker-punch Calisco always threw with her ‘compliments’. Nothing else came. She… actually meant it?

  “Thank you,” Det said.

  She nodded like that was the end of the discussion.

  “How are we going to get stronger?” Calisco continued, asking the same question Det had asked Beauty earlier.

  And, since Det had a partial answer to that, he explained it to the rest of the group. About their different classes starting the next day. About Cups and Fluke, their new Saturday combat classes, and the alternating weeks they’d be spending out running dungeons. It would be a grueling schedule.

  None of them complained a word about it. In fact, they all looked excited at the prospect. Eager. It was a good reminder Det wasn’t the only one with a drive. They all had that something pushing them to continue growing. All ReSouled did.

  “Tomorrow morning will be our first combat class,” Det said.

  “Something we should’ve had before we ever went out to a dungeon,” Sage added. “That was risky, but I guess it all worked out in the end. We succeeded, got loot and experience, and even managed to save the whole pillar as a side bonus.”

  “Wasn’t saving the pillar the point of entering the dungeon?” Tena asked.

  “It was for the Mistguard,” Sage said. “And maybe Det and Calisco, since they’re from there. For the rest of us, are you going to tell me you weren’t excited to get in there because of the experience you could get?”

  Tena just responded by piling some of the caprese salad on her garlic bread, then shoving it into her mouth and pretending she couldn’t respond because Weiss was strict about manners. That got a chuckle from everybody other than the Medic, though even he was smiling.

  “Speaking of the experience from the dungeon,” Det said. “Still weird we’re using game terms for real life, but, whatever. How does that experience work on us? You should know, right?”

  “I’m sure it will get covered in classes,” Sage said, causing the five other ReSouled around the counter-table to groan. “But I can give you a sneak peek about what I know.”

  “Please,” Calisco said. “Or we’ll find out how much experience you’re worth.”

  “Not much, I promise you,” Sage said, laughing things off as he so often did. With his surfer-boy looks, it was a good enough tactic most of the time. “And not nearly as much as we got from the Radiant dungeon.”

  “You say that like there is a numerical value to it,” Weiss said. “Do we have a—what are they called in games?—a character sheet or something I don’t know about?”

  “We don’t,” Sage said. “There are rumors one of the first generation of ReSouled did. The Administrator.”

  “He’s the one who built all of Mount Avalon, isn’t he?” Calisco said.

  Sage shook his head. “Not exactly. The Architect built most of the buildings, and he worked with the Administrator, who handled all of the magic-tech we’ve got. He is the one who made things like the TVs here, or anything else that seems like an impossible combination of magic and technology. The rumor is a lot of our terminology for things—like experience, Ranks, our attributes—they all come from him, because he had something called a status window.

  “The story goes nobody else could see his status window, but to him, it was a floating blue screen that outlined his stats, gave him quest information, and even let him know when he got achievements.”

  “His magic really gamified things, didn’t it?” Det said. “Did he get little trophies and stickers too? Maybe season passes?”

  Sage shrugged at that, but didn’t say it was impossible. “The Administrator’s magic was definitely the most isekai-type magic out of all the ones I’ve heard of. Maybe because he was one of the first? Either way, it helped build the system we rely on today. In more ways than one.”

  “That kind of magic doesn’t seem nearly as powerful as something like the headmasters’,” Tena said. “Is he…uh… first generation too?”

  “Not nearly so old,” Sage said. “The first generation of ReSouled is just over two-thousand years ago now. None of them are still alive.”

  “S-Ranks can’t live to the spry young age of two-thousand?” Calisco said. “What’s even the point of Ranking up?”

  Again, Sage didn’t immediately answer. He was genuinely considering the question. “Honestly? They might be able to.”

  “Might?” Eriba asked quietly.

  “We don’t exactly lead safe lives,” Sage said. “Dungeons. The Corelands. Pirates. To name a few. Our drives aren’t going to let us sit at home and retire peacefully. Like ninety-nine percent of the ReSouled before us, we’re going to live and die on the battlefield.”

  The stark reminder brought a quiet to the table, the only sounds being the crunch of garlic bread of the ting of a fork on the plate. They all knew they hadn’t been reborn on Elestar for a quiet, cozy life, but it was a good reminder their days weren’t going to get any easier. Or less dangerous. The dungeon that had almost killed them all on Radiant was probably the least of the risks they’d have to take over the coming years.

  “Back to my earlier question about experience,” Det said after everybody had reflected on mortality long enough.

  “Sorry,” Sage said. “The Administrator was the only one who could actually see a numerical value for his experience. On his status window. The way I hear it, he explained that defeating enemies in combat funneled experience not just into our Ranks, but also directly into our attributes. Things like strength or wisdom. Different enemies gave more to different stats. Killing the enemy gives more than making it yield.

  “And… Wordless…” he said the word very quietly. “Give far more experience than anything else.”

  “Did we level up from Radiant then?” Calisco said. “Am I… what Rank am I now?”

  “We’re all E-Rank,” Sage said. “The lowest of the low.”

  “Even after the dungeon?” Det said.

  “Yes,” Sage said. “Well, probably for most of our attributes. What we fought in there, if I had to guess, they were dexterity focused.”

  “Meaning we would gain more experience to our own dexterities than other attributes?” Det guessed.

  “If what I was told is true, yes,” Sage said. “There was also the trick with the bait on the stage, so maybe intelligence or wisdom too, as a secondary attribute. The ants from Ironsalt, those are probably strength or endurance.”

  “Meaning if we want to balance our growth, we need to do a tour of the dungeons, and not just keep going back to one over and over again,” Weiss said.

  “Did Weiss get any of that experience?” Calisco said. “No offense, man, but you didn’t kill anything yourself.”

  “No offense taken,” Weiss said. He knew as well as anybody else around the table he’d frozen up in the ant dungeon. By the time they got to Radiant, he was better in that he was healing them, but he still wasn’t fighting. Or killing. They were all still working past his history and aversion of violence.

  “He still got around the same experience we did,” Sage said. “It’s mostly shared, since we were all in there together. The people who got the killing blows would’ve gotten a bit more from each of their victims, though. So, Det, Tena, and Calisco likely came away with a bit more direct experience.”

  “Why don’t Medics get left in the dust, Rank wise?” Det said. “Or, Bulwarks, later on? I can’t imagine all the tanky types are as good at hitting thing as Tena or General Vans.”

  “They also get experience for doing things true to their archetype,” Sage said. “Weiss will get experience for healing, and Tena will get experience from tanking hits for us.”

  “How?” Calisco said. “For killing things, I kind of understand where the experience comes from. Our bodies steal it from the dead bodies.”

  “We’re vampires?” Eriba asked quietly, her eyes wide between the part in her bangs necessary for eating. No doubt about it, she looked a bit excited at the prospect.

  “Vampires need live bodies to feed,” Weiss said, matter-of-factly. “Assuming there are vampires in Elestar?”

  “Stories of them at least,” Sage said. “Or something close enough we call them vampires. Calisco is right, though. We do steal the most experience from killing things. Taking what they had learned, or how they’d grown, and pulling it into our own bodies to fuel our growth. Kind of like the old Earth tribes that said eating the hearts of your enemies would give you their strength.

  “Here, that’s true. Without the actual heart-eating part. Thankfully. As for Medics and Bulwarks, this is kind of like the classes Beauty is giving us. Our magic is like a muscle that grows through use. Think about it this way, for us gamers. Crafting, right? You build something in a game, and you get experience for it in your craft.

  “A jeweler makes a new ring, gets experience from it. Makes a few rings and gains a level so they can then make necklaces. Right? The experience comes from improving your proficiency at something. Healing and tanking are the same thing. The rest of us will get it too, to an extent, but the biggest gains are always while we’re in danger. Real danger. And, for the fighters, killing things like Wordless is kind of a shortcut.

  “Thankfully, the Medics and Bulwarks in our group get a good portion of the experience, so they don’t get left behind.”

  “You’re saying we’ll get experience from the combat classes starting tomorrow?” Det said.

  “Some, yes,” Sage said. “Not as much as we’d get if our lives were on the line in a dungeon, but we’ll get some. I suspect, however, that the biggest gains will be through technique improvement. We all could use some of that, which will, in turn, allow us to get more—or faster—experience the next time we get to a dungeon.”

  “Will help with the not-dying part of things too,” Det said.

  “Truth,” Sage said. “We can’t get any experience if we’re dead.”

  “Then here’s to combat classes and not being dead so we can keep getting experience!” Det said, holding up his glass. It didn’t take more than a second for five other glasses to join his in the air, and he tipped it back to take a long sip.

  After his arena match against Fourth, it was obvious Det wasn’t nearly as strong as he needed to be. Starting tomorrow, with the combat classes, he’d start addressing that in earnest. Then, next week, it was back to the dungeons. If what Sage said was true, the shortcut of killing Wordless to get stronger sounded like a bit of a cheat, but Det wasn’t beyond that at all. He wasn’t on Elestar to honorably advance or any nonsense like that.

  No, he’d take any advantage he could get. Grinding dungeon experience for a full year while the other cadets sat in classes? Yes please. The instructors would know the same stuff Sage did—likely more—which meant they wouldn’t keep them going back to one dungeon over and over. Having a sky-high dexterity couldn’t be bad, but there had to be a cap what they could learn from an E-Rank dungeon. Which meant…

  “Do you think we can get into D-Rank dungeons before the end of the year?” Det suddenly asked. “If we get strong enough from the E-Rank ones, I mean.”

  From the look on everybody else’s’ faces, none of them had even considered the question until he’d asked. One by one, though, the idea seemed to sink in, with grins spreading on their faces.

  “Only one way to find out,” Sage said. “Only one way to find out.”