During a battle on layer seventy-four, Tsutomu called out to Amira,
“Amira, disengage <<Dragon Form>>.”
“AAAHHHHHH!?” But she only angrily shouted back.
In the end, Tsutomu barely prevented himself from clicking his tongue as he cast <<Medic>>, forcibly dispelling the transformation.
Amira’s control over her <<Dragon Form>> was getting better with each passing day, but sometimes, especially during prolonged battles, her fighting instincts would take over. This time, a pack of Snow Wolves had come at the team like an avalanche, resulting in the fight being dragged on, and in turn, Amira was unable to cancel her transformation by herself.
After the fight was over and Tsutomu was done collecting the fifty or so Magic Stones, he stared subtly coldly at Amira. The girl put up with the uncomfortable silence for a moment, putting away her greatsword and turning the other way, but then quickly gave up and turned back around.
“Dude, stop givin’ me that look.”
“You ignored my instruction, didn’t you?”
“My bad.”
“If you do that again, I won’t help you practice your transformation anymore.”
“What!? This has got nothing to do with that!”
“It totally does, actually.”
With Amira starting to push back at him, Tsutomu decided to end today’s exploration early, calling out to Hannah and Leleia to retreat.
Leleia gave the Salamander on her shoulder a Magic Stone fragment, then proceeded to speak to Hannah beside her,
“Excuse me. I have something I would like to ask.”
“Hmm? What is it?”
Hannah turned to Leleia, seeming to have not listened to anything due to being distracted by the sight of the Salamander stuffing its cheeks. Leleia was observing the two others, arguing in front of her.
“Has Amira… always been like that?”
As far as Leleia knew, Amira’s most prominent trait was her strength-obsessed, unapproachable character. She had never even relaxed her grip on her own Clan’s members, having a rough attitude toward them the whole time.
In the beginning, Leleia had been drawn to join Amira’s Clan by the sight of her rough yet somehow eye-catching sword-fighting skill, but then it turned out that she was not at all a suitable leader. In particular, by the time they challenged the Shell Crab, Amira had refused to introduce the then-new elements to the team and insisted on using the old-fashioned composition of four Attackers and one Healer, which was a major point that led to the dissolution of her Clan.
And even before then, Amira had been blaming her team’s repeated failures on her allies’ weakness, gradually building up her Clan members’ dissatisfaction toward her. It was true that Amira had been the strongest fighter among them at the time, but that was only because she possessed a unique skill — which technically was canceled out by her negative attitude and her berserk transformation’s tendency to harm allies, among many other issues.
As a result of such dissatisfaction, in the end, all of the Clan members decided to leave. Leleia was the very last one to walk out, and probably was the one with the best understanding of Amira’s character.
However, it was as if Amira had turned into a whole different person after joining Absolute Helix. From Leleia’s point of view, Amira apologizing to Tsutomu just now was a sight she considered to be unbelievable.
And now, in response to Leleia’s question, Hannah shook her head.
“Nope, not at all! She was nowhere close to being this nice at first!”
“I-is that so…?”
“Yeah! And she even called me a Feather Tank! I swear, she was feeling high and mighty just because she’s a bit taller or something!”
Leleia nodded, seemingly somewhat relieved to hear Hannah’s heated complaints. According to all those, it seemed that Amira had not changed all that much back when she first joined Absolute Helix.
“Well, she lost a pretty big bet against everyone, which humbled her quite a bit — and Teach said some stuff to keep her in line, too.”
“…Hmm. I see.”
“Why do you ask, anyway?”
“Oh, no reason in particular.”
“Okay… Can I feed it another Magic Stone?”
“Go ahead.”
Seeing that Hannah had taken a liking to feeding the Salamander, Leleia chuckled as she handed the former her pouch-like Magic Bag.
Then, she asked the Salamander to get closer to Hannah. The creature let out a high-pitched cry before jumping off and landing on Hannah’s hand. Hannah’s eyes sparkled as she proceeded to feed the Salamander a Magic Stone. Leleia looked away, going back to quietly observing the two others in front of her.
[…How would the others react if they were here?]
Leleia thought of the other members of Amira’s old Clan, who now were employed by Ealdred Crow. She considered what they would think upon seeing how Amira currently acted. They must have hated all the things they had been subjected to, and probably would not want to bring them up as a topic of discussion.
[Well, they would be angry, most likely.]
Considering that, she felt justified in feeling the same way. Leleia settled on that conclusion and let go of her swirling negative emotions.
Amira had written off her old Clan’s members as weaklings, and after that Clan’s disbandment, she had been given a disgraceful nickname and reputation, making it practically hopeless for her to continue working as an Explorer. Those Clan members, knowing that, had openly mocked her. And while Leleia did nothing on the surface, she held the same sentiments deep inside.
But then, Amira proceeded to join Absolute Helix, the Clan founded by Tsutomu. The Clan went on to make progress through the Dungeon, and now they were the third in the whole town’s ranking. It was thanks to all the members well-known for their competency, though — there was Tsutomu, who had helped save Dungeon City from the Devourer Dragon’s invasion, Diniel and Daryl, and even Hannah, who made a name for herself as an evasion-based Tank during this time. Leleia thought, deep inside, that if she had been in Amira’s position, she would have better helped the team achieve the same results.
When Leleia joined Ealdred Crow, the motivation she stated was the pursuit of strength, but in truth, she did it out of spite toward Amira, who had failed to join the prestigious Clan.
And when she joined Absolute Helix, the motivation she stated was the Clan’s potential for expansion, but in truth, it was because she could not stand the fact that Amira was getting ahead.
Leleia’s many decisions had been influenced by that one time of Amira called her a weakling, though Leleia herself would deny it if someone were to point that out. Her strong admiration for Amira had turned to an even stronger hatred, so much so that she was using her old clanmates to justify her obsession with Amira.
[I am not so invested in this myself… but the others surely are not about to let it go.]
Putting up that sort of excuse, Leleia joined Absolute Helix with the intention to push Amira down to the secondary team. And today, she spared no effort in working together with the rest of the Clan.
――▽▽――
The team of four spent another month training their cooperation in the Snow Field layers, and occasionally went back up to the Volcano layers to gather materials for their equipment upgrades. During that time, Amira got better at her <<Dragon Form>>, and now she was able to control it about as well as Camille before the latter had challenged the Fire Dragon.
After that point, seeing that Amira was able to retain much more of her consciousness while transformed, Tsutomu tried getting her to work more in sync with his support skills. Amira still had difficulties learning that, however, and still could not do it properly.
In contrast, the synergy between Leleia and Hannah saw rapid improvement thanks to Diniel’s training method. Friendly fire did happen occasionally, and while Leleia was quite apologetic, Hannah seemed to be enjoying it all the way through — perhaps because, as a senior to the former, she felt that she was being relied on, unlike when she was working with Diniel.
During the month, Absolute Helix’s exploration team reached layer seventy-nine, albeit not without suffering from progressively worse environmental conditions and occasional snow storms. This necessitated better anti-cold equipment, so they had to collect more materials from the Volcano layers.
Silver Beast and Ealdred Crow had also upgraded their anti-cold equipment and made attempts at defeating layer eighty’s boss monsters, the Winter General, but neither Clan had been successful so far. The spectators were surprised by this, as they had not expected to see this much difficulty against a single humanoid enemy.
During this time, Golden Tune managed to get through layer seventy and enter the Snow Fields, while Scarlet Devil Squad continued to work on their own strategies to claim themselves a win. The Guild also made it to the Snow Field layers after preparing the countermeasures they needed, and were now focusing on gathering the Snow Field’s materials.
As for Daryl, Diniel, and the others of Absolute Helix’s mission team…
