Ame merely nods.

They keep walking until they find a spot with some cover. Ame pulls out her draft of the spell and reviews it one more time while Elizabeth puts up the Shadowcloak.

That involves pacing around a fairly wide area in intense focus, and sometimes moving a rock or stick on the ground. Ideally she'd have more time but it'll do for casual inspection.

Ame wraps herself in Pelt of Caeris, then glances at Elizabeth, "Alright, this first part should go fine, but just in case, maybe, back up a bit more..."

Ame holds out her right arm and starts incanting. "Let the spirits know by the name 'missile' the intent formed by the spirits of destruction that might issue a striking force..." it goes on for almost an entire minute and a half, Ame speaking slowly so she doesn't stumble over any of the words.

Six magic missiles form in stasis around her right wrist.

Ame continues, using something she reverse engineered from the slime-dismissing incantation. Each missile is held stable by a link to her mana and will discharge when that link is severed. "Let the spirits know by the name 'trigger' the destruction of the oldest connection in the set known as 'links'-"

One of the missiles fires off and blows a crater in the ground in front of Ame, interrupting her right as she was about to finish the incantation and sending her stumbling back. She manages to keep her arm aimed away from anything important until the dust settles.

"...fuck. I was right about that part being wrong. At least it didn't explode explode."

The other five missiles are still in place. Ame aims at a boulder. "Trigger."

Nothing happens.

"Damn it."

She has aetheric armor up.

"I think there's a cancelling clause that will end active magic, to disarm that...? I'm not a wizard."

"No, I know what went wrong, and it means that I can just," Ame points at a tree, "Let the spirits destroy the oldest connection in the set known as 'links'."

The second missile fires off and blasts a wedge of wood out of the trunk. Ame nods. Then repeats herself and fires a third missile, leaving three remaining in formation around her wrist.

"It's still faster. Maybe even six times faster, but probably not." Ame grunts in displeasure.

"I recognize 'oldest'. That seems odd. Why not number them or something?"

"It's like... pulling cards off a stack. Saying 'top card' instead of 'card three' or whatever. More efficient."

Ame looks at her arm and sighs. "This is probably the best I can do without raiding a wizard library or something."

Aiming at the boulder again, Ame fires off the remaining three missiles.

"Tell me honestly, was this a waste of time?"

"Mmm... Sort of close, but no. It's obvious but a holdout ability of sorts, you can set it up before a fight if we have the chance to ambuah something, and it sounds like you learned something from it, which is nice. And six magic missiles with enough mana behind them is not a small amount of firepower. I'm just worried about accidents."

"If I run out of mana completely, all the remaining missiles will fire off at once. Other than that, I'm pretty sure it's safe. The pre-cast missiles can't do damage until they're in flight. The flight and the damage are kind of the same... instruction. Suspending one suspends the other."

Ame folds the paper back up.

"Let's go find you some ghyran and then head back, I guess."

"Oh, I don't need anything, that was just an excuse. I'll take down the Shadowcloak formation, though."

...the only reason Ame even suggested it was for the sake of said excuse.

Whatever.

Back to town, back to the inn. Back to a hopefully peaceful night before they take on the dungeon in the morning?

The night is peaceful! And the dungeon awaits them. Elizabeth makes some halfhearted attempts to find a tank, but nobody seems interested. They practice fighting Ame's slimes a bit more.

Abyssia anxiously checks and rechecks her guns and the minimal armor she habitually wears even though they'll probably be fine.

The dungeon entrance awaits them, a short stone edifice, with the guards only letting a limited flow of people in at a time and taxing everyone who leaves. Nobody comments or stops them as the three show their badges, say they're partying together and aren't sure how deep they'll go, and are waved onward with the warning not to spend more than three hours in there or they'll be charged more upon leaving. This isn't unexpected according to her two party members, dungeon time is always rationed. If anything it's surprising they didn't have to sign up for slots on a schedule.

Once they're inside, Ame casts her... what to name it... Magic Missilepod? Magic Missilepod. But she mostly sticks to her gladius and buckler, filling the tanking role for her party since she's pretty good at that when she isn't needed on healing. One thing slimes aren't is fast.

After a while, enough of her mana has regenerated that she can start casting the occasional regular Magic Missle as an opening move, conserving her Missilepod for later. They make quick progress, not needing rest like other parties do. How deep can they get before the fights get challenging enough to slow their advance?

Most of the monsters are slimes, but not quite all. There are also worms. Bys ignores most of the first floor loot.

The Metal Slimes as the first floor boss are tough and fire-resistant but eventually fall apart under concentrated attacks, one by one. They drop a small dual-pyramid 'core' that is useful in enchanting armor.

The second floor monsters include nearly-invisible floating jellyfish things with paralytic tentacles, but they're extremely frail once spotted. The real danger is being paralyzed and then advanced on by the slow slimes. Much of the monsters' loot is variosu liquids with a thin gel-like seal that keeps them in packets- Bys puts these into glass jars that were previously clinking around in her mostly-empty pack. The Grapple Squid on the second floor seems to rely on grabs and crushing force; There's a scary moment right at the start when it proves just how strong it is, but with Ame wrapped in crushing tentacles the damage caused by unhealing quickly fells it.

The third floor introduces monstrous plants of various kinds, which thankfully mostly prove vulnerable to fireballs. And, of course, the constant press of slimes, this time with a few more exotic examples like an Acid Slime and Spiky Slime. The third floor boss is a giant crocodile that spits jets of water; The thing is damn tough and keeps going after Elizabeth when she charges up for a big spell no matter how hard Bys and Ame try to distract it. Ame has to use two uses of magic missilepod right up its open mouth to gain an edge, and even then it's a long, painful grind requiring frequent refreshes on all parties until it finally bleeds out from accumulated hits into weak points.

The loot this time is an eternal waterspout. "Jackpot," Bys declares after identifying it. "These things have a maximum volume and a refill rate but they're amazingly useful."

"I can have a bath even while camping out, maybe!"

"Depends on how good it is. Alternately, we could sell it, it'd go for a fair chunk. And we'll have to pay taxes on the official value if we decide to keep it..."

"How about no."

Ame's shield is chipped, and she ran out of ghur about ten seconds before they finished the boss fight. The broken arm is already healed, but the shield is probably going to fall apart if it takes another hit like that. She managed not to take any clothing damage during that last ten seconds, thankfully.

"An eternal waterspout has got to be the most valuable adventuring item ever. Worth its weight in all the water we'll never have to carry again. Let's take it and get out of here."

"Yeah, I don't really feel like trying the fourth floor after that. Plus, it's been about two and a half hours, so." (Time Sense is a Skill which all three party members have by now)

They head up. They summarily hand over all their loot to be sold off at standard rates, except for the waterspout. 33 silver almost exactly to split between them. Except for how the waterspout is valued at about three gold, meaning 3 and a bit silvers get deducted.

"Ten silver each for a few hours' work. God, dungeons... Dangerous as all get out, but that kind of money is why people go in anyway."

"Money, and also the leveling boost."

Ame isn't kidding. The boost she got from fighting a properly challenging dungeon boss for the first time is stark. She can feel the difference between herself now and herself this morning. The energy in her body has swelled in power significantly, and it feels like there's more room in her brain. And that's not even mentioning her Skills themselves.

"That too. I've never channeled that much aqshy at once before... It's kind of addictive."

She has a fierce smile on her face.

"Er, so what now? Well, right now we have a nice lunch and rest. Then shopping, maybe. But after that. Are we staying, going in tomorrow?"

"Let's not make that decision on an empty stomach. C'mon."

To lunch they go. Ame is not picky but will head to the Adventurer's Guild by default unless one of her party steers them elsewhere.

Bys pulls them away, to a restauraunt on a side-street in a building whose second floor is still under construction.

"C'mon, support local business or something. Plus, this is Ertynan style food. Trenchers, potatos and yams and bread cut open and filled with stuff, it's good."

It is, it turns out, good. Ame splurges a little on trying more than one dish.

"Have I told you before, what I used to have to settle for foodwise?" Ame asks, savoring her meal. She thinks she might have mentioned this to Elizabeth before, but not to Abyssia.

"When I was living in Brockton Bay, the best food was... well, places would throw out food better than this and then poison it so no one would steal it. From their garbage. But I never dared set foot in a restaurant, there, so the bounty of a wealthy city was only ever something I saw from a distance. But there was such plentiful bounty that there were these, little shops, that sold shelf-stable stuff with minimal human interaction for practically nothing. Some with no human interaction at all. I got most of my food from those, but... I don't have the words to describe it. Cheap treats, mostly, tasty once in a while but they get gross fast if you try to live on them and... I'm only realizing now that I was probably suffering from acute malnutrition. It keeps hitting me that, after being thrown without warning and with nothing to my name into places with so much less," Ame waves a vague hand, "infrastructure? That every meal is fresh, actual food that I can actually tell was alive at some point. It's probably the least significant way my life has changed but," Ame takes another bite and sighs in satisfaction.

"Food is great. I'd say it's just as important as sex," Elizabeth says lightly. "Basic biological drives and all."