Ant’s playstyle was the typical dodge tank approach. If you aren’t there to be hit, you can’t be hit. Which is effective, right up until the moment it is not. When the third spider fell, he dodged it cleanly, but straight into the blob of sticky goo the first had fired at the start. That’s why we have friends. To catch you when you fall. To cover your arse when it needs covering. Chango was a greatsword wielder; his heavy blade came down to squish the first spider in a decisive blow. Beatnik slid his longsword into the back of the second spider, then turned in time to see the third spider pounce on Ant. If his foot hadn't been slowed, he definitely would have dodged it. There was just enough sticky to slow him down, and the spider got a hold of his arm and bit deep.

  It then slammed into the ground hard when Ant ripped it off his arm and threw it down. He then yeeted it into the wall when he kicked it like he was taking a conversion goal.

  “Dammit,” Ant muttered, looking down at the pus seeping puncture wounds in the flesh of his arm, visible in the gap in the now torn material of his shirt. “First to take damage.” His hand reached out to grab one of his health potions from his [Inventory] when Jacobs waved his hand and cast a heal over time on the player. Ant stared down at the wound incredulously as the punctures pushed out the venom and closed up before his very eyes, accompanied by the sharp intake of breath from Clark.

  “First opportunity to use the new cleanse spell,” Jacobs said, then turned to look at me. “I realised the healing spells can also be modded if I just picture what I want them to do more specifically.”

  “All those years of medical school actually coming in useful?” I said with a grin.

  “You’ve seen us all fight…” I said to Clark as we watched the three empty out the room. “Would it be alright for us all to join in the fights from now on, or is there some other aspect of the assessment you need for us to pass?”

  “Well… I haven’t seen him fighting yet…” Clark said, nodding at Jacobs. “But…”

  “Ohh, you’re right! Jacobs’ turn next!” I interrupted.

  Jacobs' turn was delayed when the next chamber turned out to be a logic puzzle. Load balancing a power line so it would power up a series of machines. A combination of running the devices and power inputs in either series or parallel. Jacobs, Ant and Darksider quickly took control while the rest of us stood watch. There was a little back and forth between them, some arguing about max draw, and then swapping a couple of the lines so one of the earlier machines came further down in the order they got power.

  When they hit the on button, there was a whine building up from all the machines and then the first one shook, made some thuds, which was repeated on the next and then the next along down the line. There was a final thud, and a hatch opened up on the last machine, and the whole line went dead.

  “Congratulations,” Clark announced, looking into the now open chamber. “Fully charged power cores. They sell well, but most parties will keep them for powering up machines and opening doors.” Darksider pulled out four cylinders about the size of a pint glass, which gave off a faint orange glow.

  Jacobs' time to shine came in the corridor just a minute later. A slug the size of a medium-sized dog dropped out of a ceiling vent. Peachy was in the lead at the time, but the creak of the vent gave her enough warning to dodge it. Jacobs started with a , and I managed to resist the urge to say ‘batter up!’ as he brought his leg up to throw it.

  The spell hit the slimy mob, sending a ripple of frost out from the point of impact, and it visibly slowed. He followed the spell with an , which triggered the creature to freeze. For the first time since we started playing this game, he equipped a one-handed mace. He stepped up to the frozen animal and started to swing his weapon into the thing. After two hits with the mace, he dropped another Arctic spell on it before returning to wailing on it.

  “Not very impactful strikes…” Clark commented.

  “It’s his armour,” Peachy defended. “It reduces his damage in exchange for more powerful healing.”

  “My” whack, “debuffs,” whack, “also,” , “last,” whack, “longer,” Jacobs declared between his attacks.

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  “Well… I guess you have a choice…” Clark said. “I’ve seen enough that I have no problem passing you all. None of you are so weak that you will fall on these levels. So we can head on back up, and I can start the paperwork… or we could push on down to floor five and see if we can make your first delve a profitable one. It will need to be unanimous, though.”

  I could see it in their faces; all four of my friends wanted more of a challenge. We’d go for deeper. I looked at the other three. They were more unknown.

  “One of the standard systems in delves is the decision to go deeper or go back.” He held up two pebbles, one black and one white. “To stop peer pressure and people being forced to go deeper than they feel comfortable with, we use the blind vote. You will each get a pair of identical stones, one white and one black. White to go on, black to go back up.” He walked around and gave us each two small stones. “Put your choice in this one,” he shook a bag in his left hand. “And the other one goes back in with the spares,” he shook the bag in his right hand, and it rattled with the sound of the pebbles.

  Clark circled the room again, and we each dropped our pebbles into the bags. Once he completed the circuit, he poured out our votes, revealing nine white stones.

  “We push on,” he declared.

  Now we weren’t looking to demonstrate each other's competence. Our passage through the floor sped up. Since most of my spells fried the hearts, I took to hitting solo monsters with an Ice Bolt and then letting someone else finish it off. We also started approaching stripping like a production line, each focusing on a specific part to strip, or we stored the lot and then waited until we had enough for all of us to work on a different corpse at the same time.

  Clark stopped us at the top of the stairs down to the fifth floor.

  “Right. So, the next floor will be a lot harder than what we have seen so far. This floor has the least amount of exploration done today, and while I do know where the teleportation chamber and stairs down to six can be found, the route wasn’t designated as safe. Monsters roaming paths cross each other's territory. We’ll need to be watching our rears, even mid-combat. You should prepare yourselves to fight supporting each other. The rooms are more likely to be trapped, and it’s probably safe to bet the markings might not be accurate. If any of you don’t want to risk it, say now.”

  There was a greasiness to the air; it felt slightly oily and damp. It wasn’t helped that the lighting was not as stable; flickering fluorescent light boxes were dotted around the walls and ceilings. Our unease was sharpened by our assessor’s attitude change. No longer did it feel like the man was taking a casual stroll; he was alert and had his weapon already in hand.

  No one argued when the heavily armoured Peachy took the lead, or with me following her, staff at the ready. G took up the rear, and it only really occurred to me later that we had, entirely unintentionally, gone in height order. Clark had suggested we should aim for the Teleport room, but take a route which took us away from what had been explored.

  Our first fight on this floor was shortly after we moved away from the explored path. The eight-foot-long robotic python came for Peachy, head-on. I Stepped past her and brought my Ice scythe down on one of its joints, releasing an to help slow it down. A second snake dropped onto Beatnik and started trying to coil around him. Darksider, deciding that Peachy had ours under control, turned to assist Chango, Ant and Clark as they tried to stop the one wrapping itself around Beatnik.

  Peachy slammed her shield down into the creature and then used the impact to shove herself free of its coils. I switched from scythe to spear and started targeting joints. With the party split into two fights, I stopped caring about loot and went for faster kills. I tried to drop a into the thing, only for Peachy to grunt in pain.

  “Immune to lightning!” shouted Darksider as he came to the same conclusion ahead of me.

  I tried Inferno, but I could tell my fire was having no noticeable impact. Ice it was. So ice it would be. I stacked Ice enhancements on my weapon between strikes and then started laying into it with an every other strike. The cold slowed it enough to help keep Peachy out of its coils.

  G was impressive, his heavy swinging two-handed weapon, coming down on the thing coiling around our friend without so much as bruising her. My own strikes sped up as I shortened the blade so it wouldn’t punch through into my friend.

  Peachy’s shield came down on one of the joints in the coil she was hitting. There was a loud crack, and half the snake went limp. The snake’s jaw opened wide, aiming at Peachy. I could hear a hiss… then a sharp click-click.

  G reacted instantly. His hammer swung around and knocked the head away from Peachy, just as a huge torrent of flame exploded out of the mouth. The cone of flame just missed the pair of us, though the unmistakable smell of burning propane assaulted my nose.

  “Cheers!” she said with a grin, keeping the head aimed away from anyone.

  I took advantage of its extended jaws exposing a joint. I drove the point of my spear up into its brain stem from the unarmoured side.