Ash couldn't exactly argue, her head was still splitting even if the dizziness from her mana being low was gone. She remained limp in Yarrow's grip as they entered into the safe zone and he put her down on the floor. Gardenia settled beside her as soon as he stepped away, her fingers moving once more to check Ash's pulse and mana flow with a small frown on her face as she did so.
Fel spoke up, voice curious, "Why was that thing able to possess her? Aren't unicorns mostly immune to status effects?"
Mostly was the key word to the sentence and the boss monster had employed the type of magic Ash was weakest to. Ash attempted to situate herself so she could explain, her eyes fluttering open. She groaned in protest at how bright the little safe zone was and let them close again.
Gardenia answered the question, "Unicorns are weak to attacks made by corrupted magic. Considering where we are I'm sure that possession skill was one of them."
That Ash cleansed corrupted magic meant nothing when she came under attack by it. She couldn't cleanse it as fast as it could damage her without spells and she was forbidden from casting them. Gardenia's cool fingers slid against her forehead as she murmured a healing spell that managed to take the edge off of the headache enough for Ash to drift to sleep.
She woke to find everyone else asleep as well and tried to guess the time, eventually figuring it was near sunrise. Her internal clock was impeccable despite how much she slept because she had to make the journey for the cleansing at a set time.
Ash moved to sit against the wall, pulling one knee up towards her torso and resting an arm on it while the other remained curled under her as if she was sitting cross legged. She sighed to herself, feeling the barest edge of the headache still remaining. She'd have to take care in future fights even if she wouldn't have changed the way things went.
Gardenia stirred and woke even as Ash removed the goblet of water from her starseeing pond from her inventory and began to sip from it. She'd watched two days prior without comment and continued to do so for a while. The others were also beginning to stir, slowly coming awake as Ash unhurriedly drained the cup.
"I've always wondered what the water from the pond tastes like," she eventually said with a small smile that seemed to convey that she'd never dream of trying it even if she was curious.
Ash frowned down at the ornate goblet in her hand, tilting it to regard the water within as one might idly do with a glass of wine. She was looking at the stars using the water, admiring the beauty of them as she put her thoughts together.
"It doesn't really taste like anything," she raised the glass to her lips and drank some more of it, "It's more magic than water and the water component to it is incredibly pure to the point of even being stripped of the mineral taste plain water tends to have," she frowned down at the cup again, "It tastes…a lot like his magic feels. It's icy cold like the space between the stars with brief bits of warmth from the stars themselves. It's not unpleasant…at least to me, but I am built to be able to do this…required to as part of what I am."
Fel's curious voice piped up from over by the chest that she'd immediately started inspecting upon waking, "Why do you fight in dungeons if you're weak to corruption magic? That normal unicorn behavior where you're from?"
Ash sighed slightly and finished the water, her mind in the past when her herd yet lived. They, too, had questioned her willingness to fight in the dungeons herself because it had gone against what they always did. They were connected to their caretaker, giving them some of the magic necessary to cleanse dungeons without giving them the weakness to corrupt magic. It was far safer to allow them to take care of it.
That had always rubbed Ash the wrong way, though. Sidus very much believed in fixing ones own problems, in doing things by your own power and she'd believed in that strongly. Where the other Starborn had declared themselves unable to take on dungeons, where they hadn't even tried, Ash had learned how to do so safely. They didn't have monsters that could possess people in her world, at least not that she'd encountered.
Then again, she'd grown strong enough to be able to rip entire twenty and thirty floor dungeons apart from the entrance without having to delve into them at some point. She knew nothing about the monsters the dungeons in her world had begun to form and even less after centuries spent sleeping.
She explained haltingly that it wasn't normal behavior. Starlight Unicorns, holding far more resistance to corrupt magic than Starborn, sometimes took up the task but it was generally left for those that would be left less wounded if things went wrong. Ash had been the outlier, the strange one that refused to rely on others as something she saw as part of her own duty. Dungeons were corrupt magic, she existed to cleanse corrupt magic, to her it had seemed so very simple.
Gardenia moved to look her over once more, checking to make sure Ash was in fighting condition. Yarrow spoke, his growl of a voice gentle, "Just remember that you have people to rely on now. You don't have to do everything yourself," he sighed, "That said, your judgement was perfect even if for the wrong reason. You were willing to sacrifice yourself to give us a chance to recover and defeat the boss because you know you get a second chance…I don't feel as if you should base your decisions in such a way even if I understand why you do."
He checked his gear as he spoke, eventually turning his gaze towards Fel as she grumbled over the contents of the chest. Just as with every floor before, they would be barely cutting even if they were a normal party. The only thing of interest in the chest was a grimoire that she handed to Yarrow. He took a moment to look it over before passing it to Ash. It contained magic Gardenia already knew.
Ash accepted gratefully as she couldn't learn the upper levels of magic from other people and especially not from monsters. She could glean it from magical traps, perhaps, or learn it from her surroundings or even things like the grimoires. She'd been able to learn the area heal spell from Luri because it wasn't considered advanced magic.
She'd tried keeping an eye on the other spells Gardenia had used on their way through the floors. The magic was ever so slightly strange at a few key points. Upper level casting was more individualized than its lower level counterparts, meaning that the spells were formed in a way that made sense to Gardenia on an instinctual level. They did not make the same sense to Ash, she'd have to find her own way.
She flipped through the grimoire as everyone prepared to continue on, pausing in her reading to eat something with the rest of them before going straight back to it. She'd need the new spells for the next set of floors. The dungeon's difficulty seemed to only be rising.