They cleared six more goblin chambers over the next hour. The routine settled into something almost comfortable. Sera would open with a Lightning Lance to thin the numbers, her bolts arcing through the dim caverns with a sound like tearing silk.

Damon would close the gap before the survivors could regroup, his blade and the occasional Sovereign’s Strike making short work of anything still standing.

[GOBLIN WARRIOR DEFEATED]

[EXPERIENCE SHARED: 15]

[SOVEREIGN’S TRIBUTE: +3]

[GOBLIN SCOUT DEFEATED]

[EXPERIENCE SHARED: 10]

[SOVEREIGN’S TRIBUTE: +2]

The notifications became a rhythm. Kill, loot, move on.

The goblins never stood a chance.

By the fourth chamber, Sera had stopped announcing her casts. She’d fire, he’d move, and the goblins would fall before they’d finished drawing their weapons.

There was no need for tactics against enemies this outmatched.

"Three left," Sera said as they approached the fifth chamber. "This is almost boring."

"Boring is good. Boring means we’re not getting hurt."

"You sound like my first-year instructor."

"Probably because I used to be an assistant instructor once, just for the credits."

The fifth chamber had the largest group of goblins yet, with two of them being archers positioned on a ledge of rock near the ceiling, crude bows already drawn.

Damon pointed, and Sera nodded.

Her bolt took the first archer before it could loose. The second got a shot off, a jagged arrow whistling toward Damon’s chest.

He batted it aside with the flat of his blade, the motion almost lazy, and then he was among them.

The goblin warriors rushed him in a loose semicircle. He cut through the first, ducked under the second’s axe, and drove his shoulder into the third hard enough to send it sprawling.

Behind him, Sera’s lightning arced past his shoulder and caught two more in its crackling embrace.

He finished the last three with three swings, each one precise and economical. The archer on the ledge tried to flee. Sera dropped it with a casual flick of her staff.

[GOBLIN WARRIORS DEFEATED]

[GOBLIN ARCHERS DEFEATED]

[EXPERIENCE SHARED: 105]

[SOVEREIGN’S TRIBUTE: +17]

[TRIBUTE: 63]

"We’re getting better at this," Sera observed.

"We were always good at this. They’re goblins."

"True." She leaned on her staff, watching the corpses dissolve. "But I’ve run D-7 with other parties. It usually takes twice as long to clear a chamber this size. Most leaders want to stop and discuss positioning and fallback routes and contingency plans before every single fight."

"Most leaders have something to prove."

Damon checked his status. "How’s your mana holding up?"

"Better than usual, actually. My pool feels larger. That’s still the bond, right? The plus-four you gave me?"

"Plus-five now. I allocated some points."

Sera was quiet for a moment. "That’s a lot of trust, building your stats around me."

"You’re my party member. Making you stronger makes the party stronger." He started toward the next chamber. "Let’s keep moving."

Of course, that wasn’t the whole story, but Damon let Sera believe it. It was true, at least partly.

She fell into step beside him, and if her posture was a little more confident than before, neither of them mentioned it.

They moved to the sixth chamber, then the seventh. The goblin numbers thinned as they pushed deeper into the nest, the respawns not quite keeping pace with their clearing speed. By the eighth chamber, they were finding groups of three or four instead of six or eight.

[GOBLIN WARRIORS DEFEATED]

[EXPERIENCE SHARED: 45] 𝓯𝓻𝒆𝙚𝒘𝓮𝙗𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝒍.𝙘𝓸𝙢

[SOVEREIGN’S TRIBUTE: +9]

[TRIBUTE: 77]

"Almost at a hundred," Damon muttered.

"Almost at a hundred what?"

"My version of skill resonance, basically."

"So, we’re heading to the dire wolves next?"

"No, let’s find a corner and get some rest; we’ve been clearing for a while. The last thing I needed was both of us running out of fuel while surrounded by a pack."

Sera didn’t argue. They found a small alcove off the main tunnel, a dead-end pocket of stone where the bioluminescent moss grew thick enough to cast everything in a soft blue-green glow.

The sounds of distant combat echoed faintly through the rock; other parties were still working their way through their own runs, but nothing came close.

Damon sat with his back against the wall, stretching his legs out in front of him. His ribs gave a faint twinge, nothing serious, just a reminder that he’d taken a dire wolf alpha to the chest a few hours ago.

He pulled out one of Lena’s D-Rank recovery draughts and drank it down.

[RECOVERY DRAUGHT CONSUMED - D-RANK]

[SYSTEM OVERRIDE ACTIVE]

[MODIFIED EFFECT: ACCELERATED HYPERTROPHY - 6 HOURS]

[POTION EFFICIENCY: +30% EFFECTIVENESS]

The warmth spread through him faster than the F-Rank draughts ever had, sinking deep into his muscles and bones.

"Lena’s work," Sera observed, settling down across from him. She’d produced her own recovery draught, something pale orange that smelled faintly of citrus. "She’s good."

"Better than good. The academy store charges two hundred credits for D-Rank. Hers are better quality and cheaper."

"And she just... gives them to you?"

"Not gives, sells, at a discount as well. Although I’m not sure if I have higher discounts than normal customers." Damon capped the empty vial and tucked it back into his pack. "She’s reinvesting the profits into better ingredients. Said she’d have more by the end of the week."

Sera nodded slowly, sipping her own potion. "You’ve got a good setup. Reliable supplier, combat partner, solo authorization. Most Resonators take months to build what you’ve put together in a few days."

"I had two years of nothing. I’m making up for lost time." He paused, checking his tribute. "Seventy-seven. Close to a hundred."

"You mentioned that before. What happens at a hundred?"

"There’s an upgrade for one of my passives. Lets me borrow two skills from each subordinate instead of one." He glanced at her. "Right now, I’ve got your Lightning Lance and a passive from Lena. At a hundred tribute, I could take a second skill from each of you."

"Static Field and... what does Lena have?"

"Potion Efficiency and some other passives. Nothing combat-oriented. My second pick would probably be Steady Hand, which is the best I could do." He shrugged. "But Static Field would give me some crowd control. And if I get more subordinates down the line, the options multiply."

Sera was quiet for a moment, processing. Then she said teasingly, "Are you building an army?"

"You have a knack for dramaticization."

"Do I?" She met his eyes. "I mean, you’ve got a skill that literally designates people as your subordinates. You buff us when you get stronger. You borrow our abilities. If I were in your place, I’d be recruiting every one of my friends."

"Well, unluckily for me, I don’t have a ton of people I could trust to do something like that."

"So you’re the loner type, huh?"

"Not willingly, as you can guess by how I’m talking to you casually."

"Hmm, maybe it’s only because I’m pretty that you find me easy to talk to."

"Wow, how humble..."