Chapter 175

Chapter 175

PUNISHMENT:

Infraction stemmed from Bullying I (Mitigating circumstances : Inside Dungeon, 50% lowered punishment) : 1000 experience lost.

Punishments until Bullying I upgraded to Bullying II : 1/3.

Ajax brought up the notification he had gotten in the middle of taking out the wolves and swearing under his breath.

“Seriously?” he muttered, “Guess I’ll need to be more careful about this in the future.”Thê source of this content n/o/v/(el)bi((n))

He brought up his Retribution to double check some things.

RETRIBUTION :

Repeated and extended fighting and killing against much lower levels has been noticed. THis is strongly discouraged, Punishment : Bullying I applied.

Bullying I : all experience and skill gains from fighting substantially weaker enemies reduced by 20%. (A substantially weaker enemy is considered from your level with a baseline. A creature with less than 90% of your level yet no less than five levels below you is substantially weaker.)

There it was, the discrepancy that had made him all but ignore the retribution since the day he had gotten it. Nowhere on it did it say that he will be punished by losing experience for going against it. Not only that but two thousand experience was a decent chunk, it took him a full delve to get that much towards the end of his time in Lessis.

More than that however he didn’t if the cost of the punishment was contant, was only the first of the three for two thousand experience, was the next one more, or would they only cost more once the Retribution upgraded Bullying? And most important of all, what would happen if he was brought below zero on the experience he had in the current level?

“Useless commoner.” Ruppert hissed as Ben was wrapping his bitten hand after having bandaged the leg. “Couldn’t you have done that before they jumped me?”

Under normal circumstances Ajax would have simply ignored the noble but his attitude had been getting on his nerves the entire time he had been tracking the deer, the punishment and loss of experience is what pushed him over the edge.

“My job here is to make sure you don’t wind up dead, getting injured is part of delving.” He shot back. “Best you learn the dangers of not always being aware of your surroundings with a simple bite, most die learning that lesson.”

“Why you - AGHHH” he started to answer back before Ben tightened the bandages around his arm.

“Leave it be.” Ben said. “You know he is right. Seems we still need to get used to the changes in the dungeon, here monsters are more likely to work together to make sure we die and even act slightly outside of the patterns their species would follow on the outside”

“If you find yourself in a cave or tunnel system without a way to keep track of your direction then change your approach, don’t randomly choose a path.” Ajax tried to teach them something he remembered from his classes back on earth.

“How would we change the approach?” Lexi asked, eager to make conversation now that Ajax started to open up a bit.

“You pick a side,” Ajax began to explain. “Left or right it doesn’t matter, and then you follow that wall, if there is a crossroads you always take the first on the side you chose.”

“That fails the moment you hit the first dead end.” Rupert shot back, but Ajax also saw the others also nodding along to what he said.

“It doesn’t actually.” he let out a small sigh. “You’re still looking at the passage as a whole.” he paused for a moment as he tried to remember how his computer science teacher explained it to him.

“Imagine that you have to traverse the entire maze by keeping one hand extended and in permanent contact with the wall.” He began. “If you ever hit a dead end you’ll find yourself naturally turning around but now but now the side of the tunnel you are touching has changed, when you come back to the crossroads you’ll take the second road in the direction you chose.”

“And what if there is no exit?” Ben asked clearly interested in the idea.

“If there is no exit you’ll eventually end up back where you started.” Ajax answered.

“This isn’t all that much better than going in a random direction, all you have to do is find one tunnel guarded by something you can’t fight and it falls apart.” Rick said.

“It does fall apart if you are looking for another exit and you run into something like that.” Ajax admitted. “But in a dungeon you should almost always be able to turn back, all you have to do is switch the hand that is keeping contact with the wall and walk forward, you’ll be retracting your steps all the way back to where you started.”

The next few minutes were quiet as all of them tried to visualize the example to try and find a flaw with the logic only for none of them to be able to come up with anything. “It does work.” Lexi exclaimed in her usual happy mood. Their discussion ended there however as they all arrived at the camp healer Ungus had set up to find they weren’t the first team back, they were in fact second to last.

“Looks like even the experienced team slipped up.” Ajax picked up the whisper as they entered the campsite.

“Which of you need medical attention?” healer Ungus quickly approached them.

“Rupert stuffed two wolf bites and the wounds may have been exposed to redpatch leaves.” Ben reported quickly, his military bearing showing again.

As Ajax looked around he saw that Dave’s group was the only one still out there. Both the group led by professor Silvertongue and instructor Gatecrasher had returned and each had a single member patched up and resting on one of the cots healer Ungus had set up.

It took another two hours before Dave’s group returned unharmed, but judging from the blood splattered on Dave and how it had dry and wet patches it was clear he had had to step in more than once, most likely not being so liberal with letting the nobles get hurt as Ajax or the professors were.