《The Reincarnated Vampire Just Wants To Enjoy Her New Life》 Chapter 10 – Progression I had arrived at the 33rd floor. This time, it was in the shape of an old stone temple. It reminded me of those pictures of the Aztec ruins, but since I started from the inside, I couldn''t tell for sure. The layout itself wasn''t too different from most other floors. But the monsters were a different story. As I entered the second passageway, my [Sense Presence] skill went off, alerting me to a monster, but I couldn''t tell where it was. I couldn''t see anything out of the ordinary either. Even [Spirit Perception] and [Mana Perception] wasn''t showing me anything despite sensing something in this section of the hall. I warily passed through the hall, careful about whatever make my skill go off. It was the first time since I got the skill that I couldn''t pinpoint where the enemy was using it. Halfway to the next turn, a sharp pain came from my left leg. From the corner of my eye, I could see a pitch black spike receding from my leg and merging with a black puddle-like substance. I fired off an ice lance at the puddle. It swiftly moved to the side, but wasn''t fast enough and the ice tore into the substance, causing it to shudder before growing still. The feeling of it''s presence had disappeared entirely. The sight of this black puddle unnerved me. I hadn''t noticed it at all despite carefully examining the entire hall. Picking it up, it felt more like a piece of soft rubber than a liquid. At most a thick gel. It tasted like black liquorice. Eating this black thing''s essence didn''t heal my wound, but since I had gotten the [Regeneration] skill from the trolls on the 29th floor, my wound soon closed up on it''s own. The trolls also gave me another rank in [Exceptional Vitality]. All the other monsters on this floor was similar. A white transparent ghost that defeated even my [Spirit Perception], a chameleon that blended with the walls perfectly, even a killer jack-in-the-box that couldn''t be detected at all by my [Sense Presence] skill. This floor was one of the most difficult I had encountered so far. The constant ambushes were tough on my nerves, and oftentimes I ended up just barraging the entire area with area-of-effect spells to deal with them whenever I detected something or noticed some telltale sign that a monster was waiting for me. It still didn''t stop the jack-in-the-box monsters if they didn''t show up with other monsters, since it was a waste of MP to fire off AOE spells into empty rooms. Fortunately, at least those monsters showed themselves right before attacking, so I had a split second to avoid getting hurt. Not like it was reliable, but it was enough to avoid getting completely paranoid about this floor. When all was said and done, I had ended up farming up the skills here. They weren''t too compatible with my current fighting style of magic plus quick melee, but the utility outside of combat made them a worthy investment. [Sneaking] made me blend in with the surroundings and silenced any noise I made. As the ranks went up, the effectiveness rose. At rank 6, I blended in with shadows to the point where I couldn''t see my own body parts, and I didn''t make any sounds while running on the stone floors. It was less effective in well lit areas though. I had the feeling that this worked even on [Spirit Perception]. [Suppress Presence] did as it was called. It suppressed my presence, making me more difficult to detect accurately with [Sense Presence]. It didn''t stop detection entirely, but it did make it difficult to determine my exact location, depending on the opponent''s [Sense Presence] rank. [Suppress Aura] contained my magical aura and reduced the natural bleed-out. It seemed like this was what [Mana Perception] detected when I used it to find monsters. I could even vary the degree I suppressed my aura. All three I farmed up to rank 6, and testing their effects on other floors was particularly fun, but made the encounters too easy, so I refrained from relying on them too much. Floor 47 had only one notable thing about it. Rather, there was two, but they were related. All the monsters were spiders. That fact meant that they all dropped bolts of spider silk. Finally, after all this time, I had the base material to make clothes that wouldn''t weigh me down if I were to cover myself properly. The second I felt I gathered enough, I had rushed back and started to weave some simple underwear to get rid of this itchy fur I''d been using this entire time. I made some rudimentary tools and got to work. Bottomless, since I couldn''t stand the idea of putting up with the itchiness when I was so close to having better clothes. But soon I found out that weaving was a hell of a lot more work than I expected. Keeping everything together while I threaded a single thread back and forth, I probably spent hours just making a single pair of panties, and simply gave up making any spares or a top, let alone an actual wardrobe. I understood then just how important proper tools were, though I was happy to have half-decent underwear. They were a bit unshapely, but the smoothness and softness of the silk made them incomparably better than my old pair. Someday I needed to make a loom to process this silk. In the meantime, I regularly returned to floor 47 to stockpile silk. As a side, I had finally managed to fully suppress my urge to feed any time I had killed a monster. Just barely in time as well, as farming spider silk would''ve broken me mentally if I couldn''t stop myself from feeding after every kill. The 54th floor was pretty unusual in some ways. The stone tiles and bricks alternated between black and white. There were braziers lining the walls alternating between red and blue flames. There were two nearly identical, yet opposing monsters charging at me from in front. Both monsters wore heavy plate armour that obscured their entire bodies, but one was pitch black and the other pearl white. The black knight wielded a large two-handed sword, and there were horns sticking out of it''s helmet along with large bat wings from it''s back. The white knight wielded a sword and shield and had white eagle wings growing out of it''s back. Both were huge, almost twice as tall as me and at least triple my width. It was like a pair of heavenly and hellish knights suddenly ceased their war and teamed up to take down an interloper. Technically I was an intruder and they were allies to each other, but the surreal scene made me wonder what was supposed to be the theme here. The white knight charged ahead and tried to bash me with it''s shield. I froze the ground with magic and jumped over the shield to avoid whatever followup the knight intended. The black knight, right behind, saw me sail over the white one and swung it''s sword at me. Unable to evade in midair, I activated my [Spirit Form], letting the black sword slide through my body mostly unimpeded. But my skill wasn''t high rank enough for my spirit form to be complete, causing a light gash across my body. I gritted my teeth from the pain, but landed on my feet. The white knight slipped on the ice and fell, but the black knight turned around to face me, but didn''t charge. Instead, it slowly circled where I landed with it''s weapon ready. I wasn''t entirely sure what had happened, but I tried moving from the spot I was at. The knight turned to face me, but didn''t do anything else. I closed the distance between myself and the black monster, but it didn''t react beyond keeping it''s gaze on me. As an experiment, I thrust out a hand and materialized it just before it connected with the knight''s armour. Only then did it react, trying to dodge my strike, but it was too slow and I managed to rake it''s armour. Sparks flew as my claws gouged holes in the hard metal. The scent of blood wafted from the point I struck, but it was weak. From the tear in the armour, I could see a few light scratches on black scales. I undid the materializing immediately and hopped back. The knights didn''t do anything beyond remaking their stance and watching me. I had confirmed that they most likely couldn''t see me, but they could sense my presence. If I combined [Spirit Form] with [Suppress Aura] or [Suppress Presence], I''d be able to fool the knights entirely and strike at them without them detecting me. But if I did that, I wouldn''t get much practical experience along with my XP and new skills. Even more importantly, it wouldn''t be as fun. I moved to a decent distance before cutting off [Spirit Form]. As if as one, the knights charged at me again. But this time the black knight was in front. I rose a knee high stone wall in front of the white knight and charged at the black one. The white one crashed into the wall, tripping once again as blackie swung it''s overcompensation known as a sword. Without slowing down, I ducked down and to the side, cleanly avoiding the strike before I raked my claws across the back of it''s knee, tearing deeply into the flesh under the armour. This time the scent of blood grew strong in the air. Not missing a beat, I continued towards whitie who was still in the middle of rising up from it''s repeated display of forced clumsiness. I hopped over it lightly and landed on it''s back. In the perfect position, I stabbed my claws in between the gap of heavy armour of it''s chest plate and helmet. I could feel the chain mail valiantly but futilely struggle against my sharp talons. On the other hand, the gorget it was wearing managed to resist me, only allowing three claws to reach in and tear out the monster''s throat. The monster collapsed while spasming as I hopped off and faced the only remaining foe. Seemingly angry that it''s friend had died, the black knight charged at me once again, albeit with a severe limp. With it''s slowed movement, I fired off a stream of fire at blackie, broiling it inside of it''s armour. It didn''t manage to close the remaining distance before the walking pot roast lifelessly fell to the ground. Now that both foes were down for the count, I ripped whitie''s helmet off so I could enjoy the meal. Under the armour, it seemed like the monster was actually some sort of humanoid reptile, with a mix of skin and golden scales and a face looked more like a scaled falcon, sharp beak and all. I didn''t notice it before, but it also had a tail, as did the black roast. When I bit into whitie though, something unexpected happened. As I sucked its blood, rather than the usual sweet and savoury flavour of blood I had gotten used to, I got a hot, burning sensation that filled my mouth, as if I was drinking pure hot sauce. Tears ran down my face as I let go and spat out the remaining blood from my mouth. The blood burned for some reason, and even after spitting it out, there was a tingling sensation left over, though the hotness quickly disappeared, unlike when drinking actual hot sauce. The pain was pretty oppressive, but I wasn''t sure why it had happened. A quick look at my status revealed that I was missing a chunk of HP, but I had received damage, and not all of it had recovered yet. So with one eye on my status, I braced myself and took another bite of the fallen monster. Immediately the moment the blood touched my fangs, the burning hotness returned, but I sucked it up anyways. Watching my status, I could see my HP slowly drain, point by point. I lost roughly five HP ever second of drinking, but I had thousands. From a survival standpoint, it wasn''t a problem, but mentally it was devastating. Something about this blood was poisonous to me, and the burning sensation was my body telling me just that. But I needed to know. I needed to know if there was something I could gain from doing this. If I could get skills from these guys while masochistically drinking their blood, then I was very interested in finding out what those were. It wasn''t hard to imagine that almost no vampire would be willing to go through such an ordeal just to get a couple new skills. Conversely, by being one of the only vampires with the skills gotten from these monsters, I would have a distinct advantage over others. I just hoped that this wasn''t a waste. I can handle some cuts here and there, but this deliberate self-immolation play wasn''t going down well with me. When the white knight was fully drained, I rushed to blackie for a palette cleanser and to heal myself. When I ripped it''s helmet off, I was greeted with a similar face to the white one, but with black scales. Taste-wise, it reminded me a bit of roast chicken, while the white knight was like the most insane buffalo wings ever. The theme of dark and light continued on this floor, with two more monsters showing up on top of these two. They were the same reptilian race as the knights, but was equipped far differently. The first was wearing thick all black robes reminiscent of a necromancer, and had a big gnarled stick in its hand. The other wore a white and gold outfit that reminded me of a bishop, without any crosses though. They both relied heavily on spells, the black one on black coloured spells that looked like shadows directly leaping and attacking me, while the other fought with beams of light. The dark projectiles weren''t difficult to deal with, being slow, but on the occasion that they hit, they cut through me like butter. The light beams on the other hand weren''t just fast, since it was just light, but also insanely powerful. A glancing blow roasted my flesh like someone put a plasma torch to my skin. I couldn''t help but be reminded of the fear I had on my first day when I found out that I was weak to sunlight. Rather, it really felt like the priest-like monster had weaponized sunlight against me. Fighting these religious zealots was painful and frustrating, so I just gave up and took them down immediately with magic. Big fireballs, storms of wind blades, hail of icicles, or a barrage of flying stone spikes. Whatever I needed to get those bastards down before they cast anything. Though all the pain and difficulty, I did get rewarded though. The black monsters gave me [Dark Magic], and the white monsters gave me [Light Magic], both to rank 3. [Dark Magic] was basically magic of the darkness element, whatever that was. On practical terms, it seemed like it specialized on the creation and manipulation of shadows. It even made those magical shadows take physical form and be used in combat, as I had experienced from the black robed monsters of this floor. [Light Magic] conversely was of the light element. Basically it was magical sunlight, but at an intensity that could do damage to normal people, not just vampires like myself. When I tried it out and fired off a light ray, it turned my hand to ash. Even using [Light Magic] was seriously dangerous for me, but the fact that it was made it extremely valuable. Nobody would expect a vampire to use [Light Magic] if just using it would hurt them. There was one more thing that made going through this floor worth it, outside of simply getting to floor 55. That was, out from the boss chest, I got a new backpack. Of course, the discovery first started with disappointment. When I opened the chest, what came out was a doll shaped like a common white plush rabbit. The only difference that was immediately obvious was that it had a pair of straps attached to it''s back and a mouth that could be opened. Thinking that there might''ve been more to it since I could feel mana emanating from it, I opened it''s mouth. What revealed itself was that there was a hole inside the mouth. So rather than just a plush toy with carrying straps, it was a backpack shaped like a plush toy. I already had my faithful leather backpack, so I had no reason to switch, especially to something so small, but just in case, I looked inside it''s gaping maw to see if there was anything there. All I could see was endless black. I couldn''t see the inner surface of the bag for some reason, so I tried reaching my arm inside to see if I could feel around. Thinking about it, it was a stupid move, as I didn''t know what would happen to my arm, but then again, I could just get it back using the regeneration skill or by drinking some blood. Most likely. Probably. There was precedent, but there was an exception to everything. But when I reached inside the plush, I couldn''t feel anything at all. Not any possibly hidden items, nor even the inner surface of the plush. There was no way that was possible if it was a normal bag, but I had heard of bags where the inside didn''t correspond with it''s outside in many fictional series. I returned to my home base to experiment. The first thing I did after having a quick bite to eat and heal up then cleaning myself up was to gather a bunch of random junk I had no plans for, and drop them inside the bunny''s throat. I kept putting things in one after the next, many of which were bigger than the soft and fluffy plush toy, yet it accepted it all. I had quickly reached double, then triple the capacity of my usual bag, yet there was no indication that this magical bag had reached it''s limits. Once I had gotten tired of feeding it random stuff, I reached inside and started to pull it all out. The process was surprisingly simple. All I had to do was think about what I wanted while I reached in, and it would suddenly touch my fingers, letting me grab it. If I wasn''t thinking of anything in particular, it would simply give me the last thing I put in. Once it was empty, I put in a bunch of spare weapons and my blood and dirt stained character sheet and shouldered the bag. It was a bit small on me, and looked so cute that it was a bit embarrassing to wear, but it was too useful to not use. I hoped that I could get another bag but with a more reasonable design in the future. After I finished testing it''s fitting and got used to it''s shape and weight, I returned to my home to rest and reflect. That last floor was particularly difficult due to my innate weakness of [Light Magic], forcing me to rely heavily on overwhelming firepower to eliminate the bishop monster before it could cast any spells. Otherwise, it would''ve been good for practice, but often, by killing one of the monsters right off the bat, it simply ruined their formation to the point that I couldn''t get too much practice from the fights. When I thought about it, I was seriously lucky the bishop monster wasn''t smart enough to just create an omnidirectional ball of light. I''d have probably died almost instantly if that happened, since most of my skin was still revealed, especially my head, not having finished making my first major piece of silk clothes. I swore to concentrate on that before going further into the dungeon. The dread that came up from that realization made me panic a little. I had gotten really lucky on that. If the monster had opened up with that the first time, I wouldn''t have had the time to run or protect myself and would''ve died instantly. In theory, all I had to do was to block direct light from touching my skin. My experience from the first day told me that indirect sunlight wasn''t deadly, though it was a bit painful to my eyes. I could''ve brought the risk down severely just by wearing clothes that properly covered my body. All the materials needed to get that done was already available to me, making not wearing proper clothes pretty inexcusable at this point. Rather, I had gotten way too used to going around half naked, since the dungeon constantly refused to give me clothes, and mostly only gave me heavy armour or weapons for equipment. I had already made tons of furniture for my home already. A chair, table, fur rugs, some shelves, boxes and baskets, even a simple couch made from large blocks of wood with fur cushions filled with monster feathers. I had made rudimentary tools for making various things as well. I''d been wanting to start carrying blood with me as a snack, but the best I could do was make clay pots, which wouldn''t survive wandering around the dungeon, it did serve well enough to leave me with a snack when I first come back from a new floor, even if the blood did taste stale. But I was missing the most critical tool to make clothes: a loom. No matter how much I wanted to make an outfit for myself, without a loom, it would take forever, and I''d lose my patience before I could make any decent progress. Even a simple, rudimentary, half-working loom would be enough to make a world of a difference. But to make that, I needed more materials. I went out and hunted treants on the 37th floor to gather wood. I didn''t know how looms worked for sure, but I did know that they were generally large machines, so the small samples I had weren''t nearly enough wood to make one yet. For nails, I opted to make them from the iron ingots I got from the 11th floor. [Earth Magic] allowed me to work with metals, not just dirt and rocks I had found. Once I was satisfied with the quantity, I returned and charred the end of a stick using fire magic and drew my plans on a spare piece of leather. Looms basically held two sets of parallel threads apart, then swapped their positions quickly while securing the interlaced thread. Working with that idea, I sketched out several drafts before I was satisfied with the results, then started my work. Over the next long while, I slowly built my loom, taking regular breaks to eat and relax, as well as entertain myself by grinding up some of my skills. Building the loom was a painstaking process, involving a significant amount of trial and error. Piece by piece, I put it together, tested the mechanisms, tore it down and rebuilt parts of it before putting it together again. Despite having seen a bunch of pictures of looms from historical shows and documentaries, actually getting a working prototype ended up taking me several days of work. At least, I thought that''s how long it took me. I still had no way to accurately measure time, so it might''ve been significantly less or more than that, especially after taking all the breaks I took into consideration. Once that was done, and I successfully produced a small, rough handkerchief, I got to work on a full-sized loom. With my prototype to work off of, this time it took significantly less time to make, despite being several times larger. After a few more rest cycles, it was complete, and I immediately started work on making my clothes...then took a break to eat and release my pent up stress. Building the loom wasn''t so bad once I had a decent design, but actually using it was a pain. Just getting a few centimetres of cloth took so long, I couldn''t imagine how many hours I would be working on just making a single set of clothes. Again, just like when making my loom prototype, I worked on my silk cloth while taking regular breaks for food or entertainment. I couldn''t help but think I spent more time fighting monsters than actually working on my clothes, but it couldn''t be helped. It was tedious, boring work and I could hardly get myself motivated to actually put in serious hours into it. If it wasn''t insurance in case I had to fight under sunlight or unavoidable [Light Magic], I wouldn''t have even started on this work. Sewing was one thing, but making the cloth itself was some of the worst work I''ve ever done... (Aside from debugging) I''ve yet to find anything to take that cake, now that I thought about it. It was hardly any wonder that such a moral sucking task was what brought about my end. When I was finished, I took my long piece of silk and stuffed it into a quickly shaped and fired a pot made from the clay gotten from one of the golems on the fourth floor and filled with black ink from a weaver kobald from the 11th floor. After letting it thoroughly soak, I hung the wet silk across a wooden beam suspended between a pair of stands made from three wooden poles tied together near the end. Underneath, I lay some wolf hides from the first floor to catch the drip. I didn''t know if stains and other damage would automatically disappear or what, but I didn''t want to take that risk. While I waited for the cloth to dry, I started work on a template for my new outfit. I didn''t want to start cutting it without knowing for sure that it would work. For my template, there were quite a few things I was interested in trying, but quickly weeded out any that were overly difficult, had little leeway, or just plain wasn''t practical. I needed something that could cover my entire body if needed, but was easy to move in. Frankly speaking, there were only two types of outfits that really covered both. The first was a close fitting full body jumpsuit. If I combined it with some sort of head wear along with the gloves and boots I already had, it would work, but it didn''t seem very easy to make, and if I made a mistake, it could ruin the entire thing. The alternative were big, flowing robes. If I made them overlap properly, then there was very little chance of them exposing any of my skin, yet the very nature of it wouldn''t inhibit my movements since the silk was so light. I sighed at the cliche conclusion I had reached, but since I didn''t have the knowledge to make good clothes, the skills I had could only do so much. It wasn''t worth the risk of having to start all over because I made my target higher than it had to be. Thus, I started work on my prototype. While it was thick, heavy, and stiff, I ended up using the wolf leather like for my first coat for it. Stitching the hides together, I started work on my new prototype. But like last time, it was too stiff to get an accurate measure, so I tried soaking it in the fountain while working it with my fingers. To my surprise, after only a few minutes of work, the leather had become incredibly soft and easy to work with. Wasting no time, I stripped down to avoid letting my clothes get wet and wrapped the wet leather around my body, occasionally soaking the leather again to make it soft and pliable again, testing out various ways to wear the leather and trimming the excess as I slowly brought it to it''s final form. Eventually, I came up with a template I was satisfied with. Using that template, I lay it on top of the now dry silk and used my claws to cut the cloth to shape, then using a piece of bone shaped into a needle, I stitched the black silk together to create it''s final form. What resulted was a black robe that wrapped around my body loosely down to my feet, slightly dragging on the ground. The sleeves were wide and loose, and extended well beyond my fingers in case I needed to cover them as well. On the top was an oversized hood that I could easily use to cover my entire face if I wanted to. But I wasn''t quite happy yet. Since I made it so loose and extra long, it dragged and got in the way all over the place. As a final touch, I added belt hoops around the waist and wrists, and made belts for each out of leftover strips of silk. With everything bound in place, the robes no longer dragged nor obscured my hands. The fact that it was tightly bound around my waist was a little unfamiliar to me, but I had to admit that wearing it like that kept things much more secure than wearing the belt around my hips like a man. The minor choice made based on fashion ended up being a good decision. I was happy with my robes, but it turned out that despite the fact that it was triple layered and incredibly baggy, there was actually some spare material left. I originally made a lot with the presumption that there''d be some waste and the thin silk would have to be layered to make sure that no sunlight could get through, but I didn''t expect to be able to make it three layers until I started to cut the cloth from the template. And even then, I had some extra. Not wanting to let the excess go to waste, I worked on some scrap leather and made some new templates and used them to cut out some extra clothes for myself. There obviously wasn''t anywhere near enough for another robe, but I did have enough for smaller articles. The first was a tank top. I didn''t have enough to make a proper tee shirt, or even enough to cover my abdomen, but it was enough to cover my chest if I gave up on covering my shoulders. It was better than only having a tube top, though my leather tube top would be needed while I fought or ran around, I no longer had to go topless while I relaxed or did minor things in my home. The second was a new pair of panties. With all the experience I gained from making all these new clothes, I was able to refine my panties from before. Putting them side by side was like night and day. The new one being night, since I was a vampire. Putting them on, it fit much better and didn''t look like an amateur had cobbled them together from an old, ragged shirt. With everything put together, I tried moving around. It felt good, much more secure than my old outfit. I had forgotten nice the feeling of cloth was on my skin, though the fact that it was silk rather than polyester probably played a significant role. I tried going out to an early floor to test things out, but I quickly discovered a problem: the hood easily blew back while I fought. Depending on how I moved, it could reveal my head. I should''ve known that something that flimsy wouldn''t be enough. My head was especially important, since I could regenerate any other part of my body, but my brain was probably a weak point. It would be worth the effort to double up on covering it up. With that thought, I made a hat. I might''ve had a hood already, but that hood could always be blown back at any time, especially during combat. The design I settled with was a simple newsboy cap with an oversized crown to make it possible to pull down to cover my head more thoroughly if needed. It was mostly made from defurred rabbit leather with a piece of bear leather used as the visor. I also added a cord to the sweatband that attached to on one side using a blunted wolf fang as a button to secure the hat in place even more while I wore it. The cord wrapped behind my ears and was held taut under the base of my skull where it wouldn''t get in the way of anything. Finally, I dyed the whole thing black to match the rest of my outfit. After a bit more testing and adjustments, I was satisfied with the results. Proud of my new attire, I put it all together along with my new backpack and went on to the next floor with a skip in my step. =========================================================== A man in a white toga paced back and forth in a small office surrounded by pearl white walls, containing furniture and accessories of the same shade. As he furiously scratched at his head and pulled at his hair with enough strength to go bald, he mumbled to himself. "How. How could this have happened? Why did it happen?" The man''s face was full of panic and worry as he bore track marks into the speckless white floor. "Not only did someone sneak in here, but they even triggered a reincarnation. How could security let this happen?" Stopping for a moment, the man looked at the torn paper in his hands. "Not only that, but there''s hardly any evidence left. The trail''s almost entirely cold, yet it couldn''t have been more than a few months" The man glanced at the crystal ball on the centre of his desk. "Was it intentional? Was it an attack? Damnit, there just isn''t enough information" He looked back into his hands. "All I know is that she''s a vampire. Why did she have to become a vampire? Damnit" Chapter 56 – Unexpected Confrontation As I held Claret to my chest while I stroked her silky hair, my eyes went up, imagining what sort of person the Scarlet I was named after was like. People always had good things to say about her, but it was like reading about some historical figure. Even the image Claret painted with her words didn''t do much to improve that image. After spending a little while thinking about it and giving in and doing some wishful thinking, I snapped out of my little distraction. (Right. One more, I''ll do one more pass.) Switching back, I read through the code for my new skill line by line, checking all of the references and subroutines. Even the code I simply copy pasted were checked so I could confirm that I hadn''t introduced some sort of weird and unexpected interaction. I''ve never made so many passes on a piece of code before in my lives without test running it first. If it wasn''t for Alicia, I wouldn''t have bothered putting so much effort into it. I reached the end of the skill and my confidence in it was at an all-time high. No matter how many times I went through it, there wasn''t even a hint of trouble, though admittedly that''s how all code looks like right before you find a massive bug that requires weeks of rewriting to fix. That was how things went on the game I made which lead to all of this after all. But after spending days doing nothing but debugging and not even finding any bugs to fix in the last dozen or so passes, activating it was the only way to make sure there wasn''t actually any bugs. Even still, I was hesitant. If there was anything I had missed, there was a chance that I would do something irreversible. But at the same time, if I hadn''t missed anything, my timidness would keep stalling Alicia''s return. I had already spent more than a day doing checks that found absolutely nothing, and while I didn''t think that in itself was bad, I could easily continue to check the skill''s code endlessly if I didn''t gather myself to take the plunge. I took in a deep breath, then exhaled. <...Is something the matter Master?> Claret looked up at me and tilted her head. Claret untangled herself from me and shifted to my side and sat there with glittering eyes as she stared at me. I glanced at the skill in the master list. It still needed a name and description. I had already removed all possible acquisition methods, so there wasn''t any worry of someone else taking it. Thinking about it for a moment, I decided on [Inner Monologue]. I did it enough as it was, and talking to Alicia through this skill would be a bit similar to doing more of it. The description ended up being ''The ability to talk to oneself regardless of place or time.'' Just something stupid and wouldn''t allude to it''s real purpose. Once that was done, I compared [Inner Monologue] to my own skill list. I had a few skills I could easily use as fodder to replace with the new one. The new skill was quite a large one, so I needed an appropriately large one, and of the ones I had, there was a few simple ones that I would never use. I picked [Mimicry] virtually at random. [Mimicry] was a skill that allowed me to copy the form of a living creature. It was a racial skill that belonged to several monsters in the dungeon back home, but [Alter Silhouette] I already had was much better for my purposes. That, and I needed to change it into something that wasn''t race locked if I wanted to use it. Now that I had properly acquired the skill, all that was left was to transfer Alicia, core and all, into the new skill from the storage container inside of [Soul Siphon]. After one last confirmation that the destination container was as big as the source, I began the transfer. Moving the contents of the container for me was as easy as dragging and dropping, but the actual process took time. I watched as the data in the source disappeared and then appeared inside of the destination. Bit by bit, I anxiously stared as the source empty and the destination fill up. (Almost there...) As I watched with bated breath, the transfer completed. Alicia''s data seemed to have transferred without issue. There wasn''t anything obviously wrong with the structure, though the actual contents was far beyond my ability to decipher if everything was transferred perfectly or not. The contents of her memory and core were shifting the same way it always did. Suddenly my head started pounding, like the blood flowing through my brain had suddenly increased to dangerous pressures. A familiar sounding voice echoed through my head, but the pain made it difficult to place. My entire head felt hot and hurt, like the inside of my head had suddenly turned into a pressure cooker but the relief valve wasn''t working right and was threatening to explode. "Aaaahhhh...!" A small, distorted voice escaped my lips as I held my hand in my hands, as if I could contain the pressure by simply pushing back in with my hands. The fever from my head transmitted to my hands, clear that the heat wasn''t just my imagination. "Master! What''s wrong! What''s happened?!" Claret''s voice penetrated through the growing fog of pain, but I could only barely understand her words, and didn''t have the leeway to respond. Just trying to think made my head feel even hotter. The voice continued to rampage in my head, the distress and panic clear even to my addled mind. Tears blurred my vision, only for the pain to grew even more intense. No, it was a different pain. There was a new pain coursing through my head that was even greater than the previous one. It was a ferocious, distorting pain centring on my face, but after a few seconds, or maybe a few minutes, it faded. A dull corner of my mind registered that it was [Alter Silhouette] disengaging against my will. But I didn''t have time for that, I gasped for air. Each breath I took in reduced the pain slightly for a moment, but it returned as I expelled the white mist from my lungs. It was only a slight reprieve, but I took it. The small allayment was just enough to slowly collect my thoughts in bits and pieces, and I was able to come up with a half-baked solution to at least help suppress the symptoms of whatever was happening to me. Or, at least, it was supposed to. Forcing up my aura, I tried to coalesce water and rain it down on my head, in the hopes to lower the temperature even slightly in the hopes that the pain would recede along with it. But the magic wouldn''t activate. More than that, I could barely control my aura. Only when I tried to manipulate it I became aware how the aura I''d been suppressing for so long had been freed, it''s ends whipping around like ferocious tentacles trying to whip at anything it could reach. Now that I was aware of that fact, I also came to notice that there was something caught in my aura, pushing against it, moving closer to me. As alarming as such a feeling was, I didn''t have the leeway to worry about it, and instead tried to activate more magic. From freezing the air to blowing wind in an attempt to lower my head''s temperature, I tried everything I could think of, but my magic refused to materialize. Or rather, it was extraordinarily unstable, to the point that there was almost no effect. Some tiny bits of water droplets would appear, or a slight wisp of air would flow, but it was so little that I barely noticed it even happened. There was no point to this at all. I desperately gasped for breath, the air itself starting to grow hot as well. I was quickly losing the slight reprieve I was getting. The voice in my head still echoing, but the fear and panic growing ever more while the words grew more and more incoherent. I couldn''t help but feel that they were expressing exactly as I felt, yet couldn''t feel like they were my own thoughts. Unsteadily, I rose up to my feet, desperate to try anything to relieve me of this pain, no matter where it came from. The sight of something passing through my body vaguely registered in my mind, but I didn''t have the leeway to think about it. One step, then another, I tried my hardest to move, but I wasn''t even aware of any directions or goals aside from getting the relief I so desperately needed. A third step, a fourth...? As I tried to take another step, something lifted me off the round. My panic was dulled by the pain I was already experiencing, but soon a cool breeze flowed over my body, giving me a slight bit of relief from the pain. Just enough to notice that the blurry scenery that my eyes refused to focus on appeared to be shifting despite me not moving my body. As confusing as it was, the slight relief I had gotten felt blissful in comparison to the full brunt of the pain I was subjected to, causing me to relax my body. Loud words were being shouted, but I couldn''t quite steady my thoughts enough to comprehend any of them. Unfortunately for me, my shallow reprieve was short lived, as my body was suddenly jerking side to side, the sudden acceleration bringing the pain back in full force. Suddenly, there was a sharp pain my my left arm, then the feeling of falling, quickly followed by a sudden but dull pain throughout my body as something impacted on my side. An ear piercing wail came from my side along with some sort of gooey feeling under me. The sound was followed by more hellish screaming from all around, adding to my painful headache. Doing my best to ignore the sounds, I forced myself back to my feet and weakly raised my head. For some reason there was some sort of large, incomprehensible thing in front of me. It sort of looked like a bunch of massive snakes as the heads waved around and struck at something above. The voice in my head continued to yell in confusion, panic, and pain, making it that much more difficult to comprehend what I was seeing. But while I couldn''t afford the mental strength to comprehend it, there was a thought that rose up. (Maybe if I eat it, the pain would go away?) With that single hope driving me, I took one unsteady step after the next towards the thing ahead. But in only a few steps, one of those snake like things turned towards me. But I didn''t care about that. Rather, the closer I got, the more I could vaguely feel that it had a strong aura. I could practically smell it. Despite the pain coursing through my head, I licked my lips. It had been truly a long time since I got a chance to taste the blood of something strong. Pushing past the pain, I closed in on the monster, one step at a time. But as obvious as it was that it wouldn''t just let me lap up it''s blood without resistance, the thought didn''t even enter my mind. Or rather, I didn''t have the leeway to let it enter my mind. That didn''t stop it from actually resisting though, and as it opened it''s giant maw, something came out, some sort of green blob flew out of it''s mouth and flew towards me. And just like how I didn''t have the presence of mind to consider it resisting, I didn''t have the leeway to consider doing something about that blob, and it splattered onto my unguarded face, knocking me to the ground. The weird blob splashed all around, anything that didn''t land on my my head continued to fly, redirected all around to my surroundings. While being knocked down wasn''t really a big problem for me, something else was, and it took me a few seconds to realize what it was. "Gyaaa~~~!!!" I screamed, my face was pure agony as everywhere the blob touched felt like it was on fire. I recognized the pain, because I had suffered it before. It was acid, and quite a powerful one at that. I could feel it burning it''s way through the outer layer of my skin. Fortunately my resistance against it was strong enough that despite it''s power, it wasn''t even close to being lethal. Unfortunately, due to being completely unguarded when it struck, I was suffering the full brunt of it''s effects. The acid wasn''t quickly removed, nor was it neutralized beyond the effects of my passive resistance. Worst of all, it had hit me in the face. As I instinctively tried to blink away the acid from my teary eyes, the layer of it on my eyelids was only transferred further to my eyes as they were eaten through, and quickly everything went dark, as I no longer had eyes to even see with. The voice in my head had changed from confusion and panic to fear and pain, but those were things I was more used to dealing with. Fear of the unknown, fear of pain, fear of death, those all things I had long gotten used to dealing with. The same could be said about physical pain of most forms. My time in the dungeon had let me experience both, and I had long since learned to deal with it to a certain degree. While internal pain in the form of a massive headache was new for me, now that I had time to deal with it, it became easier to move my body, and so while gritting my teeth hard enough that my jaw hurt, I got back up to my feet. I couldn''t see the monster in front of me as my eyes were nothing but a gooey mess, my passive detection skills still picked it up. Especially the [Mana Perception] allowed me to see it''s distorted figure. The monster''s aura was quite big, and comparing it to what it looked like, the aura extended quite a bit beyond it''s body and was covered in innumerable wispy ends that flailed around like a candle flame in the wind. Kicking off the ground, I lunged at the centre of one of the fat, rope-like bits that extended from some sort of central mass. First I tried to fire off some ice lances, but between the pain and rampaging voice in my head, I couldn''t concentrate well enough to manifest my magic into anything usable, so I immediately switched tactics. Instead of magic, I stretched out an arm to try swiping the creature with my claws. But against my expectations, my [Natural Weapons] skill wouldn''t stay active, and the extended aura blades that made up the bulk of my claws when attacking would flicker, refusing to stay extended for more than a fraction of a second at a time. Despite that, I swiped at the creature as I passed by it anyways. But unable to see it accurately, only the tip of my claws grazed it, and even then it kept flickering in and out of existence so my attack only made little pockmarks on it. I tried to manoeuvre and turn around in the air, but [Float] wouldn''t activate properly either, causing me to sail past the monster out of control. Unable to redirect my body for another pass, I readied myself to land and try something different. But things just wouldn''t go as I wanted. "Ku!" Only moments later, a dull thud hit the side of my body, launching me in a new direction. My body spun around, the only things I could see were the large multi-pronged monster''s messy aura as well as tons of little lights all around, one of which was distinctly larger and brighter than the others. But at this distance and my inability to concentrate due to the pain I was still under, I couldn''t determine what that brighter thing was. My body crashed into something hard, breaking it up into many smaller fragments. It felt like rock, but I wasn''t entirely sure because my eyes hadn''t recovered from being a gooey mess yet. I couldn''t help but wonder if this was the world that Alicia had seen in her final moments? Nothing but black nothingness, and the occasional dull light. If it was, no wonder she was so fascinated by my appearance. Shaking my head of the distracting thought, I pushed off of the rubble I was laying on and leaped at the monster once again, this time aiming directly for the middle of one of the snake bodies. Something whizzed by me as I few, but I ignored it and readied my next attack. Rather than trying anything fancy, I simply slammed my body into it with as much force as I could, and wrapped my arms and legs around the tree trunk like body, my fingers almost all the way around, I activated my [Natural Weapons] to hold on desperately as I turned my head and bit into it and sucked for all my worth. The monster flailed around and tried to knock me off with it''s other snake heads, but I was stronger than it and couldn''t be so easily dislodged. As I sucked, some of the pain subsided and my vision returned as my wounds healed up. Even the pain in my head grew a bit weaker, but it refused to go away. The strange voice grew more and more confused though, with something more odd mixing into it''s tone, but I ignored that as well and concentrated on devouring the delicious blood feast I had finally gotten. This creature, whatever it was, was incredibly delicious. It was a bit like roast chicken and herbed potatoes covered in a well spiced gravy. The flavour was rich and deep. Even if I wasn''t in such a desperate situation, it was a virtually irresistible flavour. Even if I hadn''t been starved of good blood for the last year, it would''ve been hard to hold myself back and not sup on every last drop. Something splattered on my back. It seeped through my robes and burned my skin, but as I continued to suck on the monster''s blood, the wounds quickly healed as if they never existed. Several announcements rang in my head, but I ignored them and savoured the flavour instead. The monster continued to flail around and splashed more and more acid onto me, but it soon weakened, making it easier and easier to hold on, and before long the long body fell to the ground with a heavy thud. My stomach filled to capacity, I finally let go. Due to how the monster fell, I was partially pinned underneath, but it wasn''t a problem at all and I managed to easily extract myself from under the creature. The monster weakly tried to move its body away, but there was no way I''d let such a delicious meal get away. I quickly hopped to the end of the snake body to it''s head and with a flick of my claws, I decapitated it instantly. With a bit of [Terranian Magic], I produced a massive stone jar and put the end of the monster''s decapitated neck into it''s mouth and started to force the blood from the rest of the creature''s body out of the open wound by squeezing the rest of it''s body using my telekinesis spell. The process was slow going, and was quite frustrating as my impatience to get all the precious blood out and preserved was hampered in how half-baked this blood extraction technique was. The monster was still alive, so it even tried to pull the neck away from me, but there was no way such a monster couldn''t pull me off of it at full strength, much less in it''s weakened state, could resist me. Its struggles lessened, and eventually stopped entirely. As the blood flow weakened, I lifted the entire body up with magic and let the last of it drip down before casually tossing the remains out of the way and carefully put the three quarters full giant jar into my bunny plush bag. If it wasn''t such an amazing magic bag, there was no way its mouth would be able to stretch wide enough to fit such a large container. As my excitement started to fade, I was forced to confront the burning sensation that still permeated most of my body. I was covered in that monster''s acid and it was still trying to eat through my skin. My recent feast had energized my body to the point that I was recovering from the wounds faster than I was taking damage, so the acid didn''t hurt that much. That said, it was still disguising to have on my skin and clothes, so I quickly washed it away with liberal use of [Aqua Magic]. To my surprise, for an acid that did so much damage to my acid resistant skin, my robes and bag got away with relatively little harm. My bag especially was in excellent condition, though my robes definitely felt thinner than before. I was glad that I had layered it so much when I originally made it. My inner clothes though didn''t fare so well. While my panties were made of the same material as my robes and thus had survived, if a bit thinner than before, the rest of my clothes were complete goners. There were only small fragments of it left that were being washed away with the deluge of water I used to clean myself up with. As I always wore my robes, my lack of pants, while a bit embarrassing, wasn''t much of an issue, my top and shoes were a real problem. Especially the top. As not having my tube top meant that my boobs would bounce everywhere uncontrollably whenever I did anything. Contrary to that though, having my chest freed of it''s constraints was a nice feeling. As much as I had gotten used to the tightness around my chest over the years, not having to suffer through that was a really nice thing. I just couldn''t do anything without them trying to attack my face all the time. There wasn''t much I could do about my shoes, but at least my high level meant that walking around on bare rocks wasn''t painful, even if it was pretty uncomfortable. Now that everything was done, I was feeling better, so I fell back onto my butt as I looked up. The sky had already turned blue. (The others are going to be wondering what happened to me huh?) I needed to come up with some sort of excuse. Ninetailed_Furball Hi everybody! It''s your friendly neighbourhood furball! (^o^)£¯ Looks like I was able to get this chapter out a bit earlier this time. Maybe I can make it a trend? ©c(¡ä©`£à)©° So, I suppose that this is a bit of a surprise then? An entire action scene, and a bit of a big one out of nowhere? I intended to foreshadow it a bit on the last chapter but forgot to add the line, but it was a minor point that might''ve looked a bit awkward anyways, so oh well. How did everyone like it? I came to realize that despite the fact that this story was predicated half on fluff and half on action, and yet there was basically no action in the last arc whatsoever, so I needed to make up for it a bit. (-.-) Oh, and if you guys are expecting Alicia next chapter, I''ll break the news now rather than make you wait, but she won''t be making an appearance that soon if things go as planned. Sorry about that, but I don''t like cliffhangers much, and don''t like to subject my readers to them if I don''t have to. m(_ _)m Well, then, see you another place, another time! (¨R?¨Q)/ Chapter 00 – Prologue Fire again! Aim for the eyes!" A volley of projectiles made from a variety of materials flew through the air, impacting the monstrous creature ahead of us, forcing it to close it''s eyes in fear of losing them. Unfortunately for us, we were hoping to blind it, not make it merely flinch. The large, 30 meter scaled creature, a magma drake, roared in frustration. Our team had succeeded in drawing it from it''s lair, but have been unable to do any serious damage to it. This was the perfect time to deal with it, when it was weakened after it''s hibernation, but before it could do damage to our lands. But our company wasn''t making much headway. Either we were lacking in firepower, or our composition wasn''t right, or maybe my strategy wasn''t good enough. "Damn, it''s not enough. First and second parties! Concentrate on it''s right flank!" Sixteen figures rushed up the left flank, spread out into individual formations and coordinated their assault on the oversized lizard. Most of them enduring the heat given off of the sizzling scales while trying to cut through them with sword and spear while their attached mages rained support fire on the enemy or enchanted friendlies as needed. The party leaders and their assistants coordinated their troops together, but their labour was far from being rewarded. The magma drake hardly noticed their valiant efforts, and treated them as little more then flies. Rather than deal with the troops embedded in it''s flank that was difficult for it''s bulbous body to reach, it instead prioritized it''s efforts on the command group and the accompanying support units. In other words, where I was standing. The magma drake drew in a breath, tipping off it''s next action. "Mage units! Put up a barrier front and centre!" I yelled at the defensive mages attached to my command unit. Without any hesitation, a trio wearing flowing robes tightened their formation in front of the command unit and erected a magical barrier large enough to encompass themselves and the command and attached support units. Right as the translucent barrier was deployed, the magma drake spat out fire from it''s mouth, engulfing us all in light and heat. However, that was simply it. To us, protected by our prided mages, felt it to be nothing more simply bright and a bit warm. A dozen or so seconds later, the flames dissipated, leaving behind a path of scorched earth surrounding a perfectly circular oasis. As it was no longer needed, the barrier went down and the mages that built and maintained it took a deep breath. Despite that, they didn''t relax. They were well disciplined and were ready to follow any order I gave for the glory of our nation, for the glory of our leader. Seeing that it''s ace didn''t do anything, the magma drake roared at us and instead charged. "Fall back! I''ll stop it!" The mages'' barrier was optimized for stopping ranged attacks, and was a poor match for a large foe trying to crash right through it. Stepping in front of my command unit, I hold my prided shield between my comrades and the steaming lizard. Without any hesitation I brace my trusty wall with my entire body. Understanding my intent, the others give me space. I feel magic flowing over and through my body as the mages cast support enhancements without me needing to tell them. The very thought warmed my heart. I was thankful for being given such excellent subordinates. I was only my disappointment I was unable to utilize them properly. I dug my feet into the dirt as I readied to stop the oversized fried newt''s charge when I heard it. "Glasgow, seven steps left" I did exactly was I was instructed. I knew that voice, as did everyone here. And just like them, I knew. There was no room for argument, for it was the voice of our goddess. Just in case, I re-braced myself as the sound of the magma drake neared. Out of nowhere, I saw a flash of blue and white go past my right side, followed by a hellish screach and a torrential rumble that threatened to bring me to my knees for more than one reason. When I opened my eyes, I realized that I was staring at the eye of the magma drake. But it wasn''t looking at me. Instead, it was focused on something above, and what I saw in it''s eyes wasn''t anger like before, but fear. A shadow flitted from above to the other side of it''s head. The magma drake let out another screech and desperately tried to raise it''s body, to withdraw, yet it was pinned in place. The rapidly cooling lizard''s cries grew weak, and the light faded from it''s eyes. When I realized what was happening, I dropped my shield and quickly rushed over around the giant newt''s head. While I made the short distance, I could clearly see a giant lance made of ice bisecting the creature''s left foreleg. As I finished making the turn, the sight of a small figure completely enveloped by robes blacker than the abyss standing at the magma drake''s neck. There was a soft sucking sound coming from the cloaked figure. Every part of the person''s body was completely covered, as if warding off the warm light of the sun. Rather, that was exactly what was going on, for our goddess was a creature of the night. Yet despite that, she didn''t abhor the day, and instead made effective use of it as well as the night. I came to a stop, and came to my knee, lowering my head. Despite that, I was still taller than her. She was small. To a human, she might''ve been considered a child, but to us, she was greater than any being in the world. So great, I felt allowing my head to be above hers was almost unpardonable, but due to the difference in our statures, trying to lower my head any further could instead be viewed as contempt. Thus, I pushed back my feelings on the matter once again as I waited. "Ah, sorry for taking first blood" I looked up the best I could without raising my head. Under that thick hood, I could barely make out her white skin and a single streak of blood that dripped from the corner of her thin, upwards curved lips. I felt blessed for the chance to see her from so close. "The first blood to the last drop, the entirety of kill belongs to you, as do our lives!" It almost felt like blasphemy to refuse her apology. "That''s right" "It''s as the commander says" Before I knew it, the rest of my command unit was behind me, bowing to our master. I almost felt ashamed that I didn''t notice, but our goddess came first, way above and beyond our comrades. "Well, if you feel that way. Just make sure to not waste any of it" """Understood!""" We all acknowledged, raising our heads and looking straight at our goddess. With a small wave, she rose up into the air to meet up with her aides who were waiting in the sky before they went off to wherever they were originally headed. Chapter 01 – New Project Before I knew it, I was standing in a line. I was surrounded by people wearing a confused look on their face. It seemed like I wasn''t the only one who didn''t know what was going on. The man standing in front of me suddenly started to grope his front, patting across his stomach. "I, I thought I was gonna die...was it just a dream?" His hand stopped just above his belly before he stared at them. (Die?) My mind went back to my last memory. I was working on an indie game, but I encountered a game-breaking bug less than a month before the release. My bank account was almost empty and my credit cards hardly had any leeway left in them. I spent the last two weeks trying to rewrite a third of the game to get rid of the bug and put the game into a playable form, sacrificing pretty much all my sleep along the way. I didn''t eat much either during then, not like I could afford the time or money it took to go shopping. I gambled everything on this game. After years of working dead-end jobs, I had enough and wanted to do something I was proud of. The result was the depletion of my life savings as I desperately coded my own game for over a year. The night before release, I was suffering chest and head pains, but I bulldozed through that, and managed to send the final build to the publisher minutes before the deadline. After that, nothing came up. I probably fell asleep, but that didn''t connect with where I was. No, in a sense, it did. The man in front of me clearly thought he was stabbed and was on the verge of dying, but now he''s fine and is standing in a mysterious line along with tons of others who are just as confused as we both are. (I must''ve died, and now this is the afterlife.) All I could do was crack a wry smile at the thought. I gambled a year of my life away, and in the end, I died without seeing the fruit of my labours? It wasn''t like I was hoping to get rich and famous, but at least make enough to survive until I could release another game. Now I wouldn''t know if any of my work would''ve paid off at all. Even if it had, even if it became some sort of impossible smashing success, I wouldn''t know. Well, I would actually. I wasn¡¯t conceited enough to think that such a thing would happen. And I knew my game better than anyone else. It probably would''ve flopped. The reception to what little advertising I could afford was lukewarm, and the state the game was in at the end was barely playable. The best I could hope for was paying off my credit card bills and keeping me going long enough to find another dead-end job. In a sense, it was a relief. Now that I was dead, I didn''t have to worry about any of that. I didn''t have to go through the crushing humiliation of a year of my life wasted, the thought that the best I could do was virtually dick all. The line continued to move as I thought to myself. "She''s not here, is she?" The man in front of me was muttering to himself all this time, his head swivelling around trying to check people out in the line, occasionally returning to hug himself, chewing on his thumbnail. He must''ve had a traumatic death if he was acting like this. It didn''t take long before the barren hallway we were following opened up into a large, mostly featureless room. All along the walls were an incredible number of identical doors with a light strip affixed above them. Most of them were red, with a few being unlit. Occasionally one of the red lights turned green, and someone would walk over from the line and enter the door. The light turned red again once it closed. As I got close to the beginning of the line, I saw a huge man wearing a colourful toga standing guard, guiding each person to the rooms with green lights. He looked a bit like a friendly police officer I sometimes saw that looked like he lived in a gym when not at work. Well, aside from the toga, at least. Sometimes people would ask questions or argue with him, but he patiently gave people instructions. When they didn''t listen, he dragged them by the arm or collar to one of the green rooms before coming back. I was pretty curious what was behind the doors. A closer inspection revealed that each one had a plate with a word or two on them, but I couldn''t read what was said on them. The script of each was different, and there didn''t seem to be any sort of pattern to connect them. It was like each plate was written in a different language. My curiosity about the doors was growing overwhelming, especially the doors with unlit light bars. It looked like nobody was going into them. Was it because they weren''t currently in use? Or was it a difference reason? The only way to know was to check for myself, but the guard was paying close attention to everyone in the line. Not only that, but while I saw tons of people enter the doors, I never saw anyone exit one once. It seemed like people went somewhere else after going through those doors, yet it was strange to think that there was more hallways beyond them. There were simply too many doors, and the architecture needed to make it work was insane. Then again, if this really was the afterlife, then common sense wouldn''t apply, nor logic or physics at that. A few more minutes pass and I had become second in line, with the fidgeting man being next to dissapear. Without warning, the giant guard pointed to a green-lit door. "C''mon, it''s your turn" "Huh? No. What''s that?" The guy started to argue back. "Sorry, I can''t answer your questions. Just calm down and go through that door" "No way man! How do I know you''re not gonna torture me over there?!" "As long as you stay calm and do as you''re told, nothing bad will happen. We accommodate everyone the best we can" "How can I trust you?! Nobody''s come back from those doors!" I was a little surprised. I didn''t think he was in a state of mind to notice that. "That''s because these doors are one way only. You''re holding back the line. Please just go through the door" "Nuh uh. No way! Screw that! I can''t trust you at all!" The man backs away. It looked like he was thinking of making a break for it. "Whoops, can''t have you break the rules" Faster than I could see, the guard grabbed the man''s arm and started to drag him to the aforementioned door. Despite the scene and everyone staring at the spectacle, the thought that went through my mind first was something quite different. (This is my only chance) Without sparing a second thought, I ran while making as little noise as I could towards the first unlit door I saw. I only had one shot at this. While I had no idea what the consequences of my actions would be, I could argue that any punishment they tried to give me for doing this was fundamentally unfair, since there was no indication that I wasn''t allowed to do this. "Hey, wha...?" Someone noticed and whispered a cry, but I ignored that person. Instead, I quickly reached the door and turned the knob. It wasn''t locked, no was there anything to it beyond what I expected. Without any hesitation, I slipped past the door and closed it quietly behind me. The room beyond the door was properly lit, yet there wasn''t anyone there. (Talk about a waste of electricity) ...presuming the lighting was powered with it. What greeted me was what appeared to be a small office. There was a desk sandwiched between two chairs and a pair of house plants standing in pots in the far corners. I didn''t recognize the plants, but that didn''t mean much in the first place. The desk was lightly cluttered with some personal belongings and a large crystal orb propped up on a stand. Aside from the orb, everything on the desk resembled random office toys, but as expected, I didn''t recognize a single one. It was like a universal rule that if someone had actually seen your office toy before, it''s a failure of an office toy. Leaving the pointless gizmos aside, the only thing that might''ve not been useless was the crystal orb. Normally I''d have discounted it as just an oversized office toy, but in this place, my common sense didn''t apply. Without anything to lose, and me possibly running out of time before someone figured out where I went, I tried placing the palm of my hand on the orb. Reacting to my touch, the crystal orb lit up for a few seconds, pulsating almost like a slow heartbeat, before settling on a dim glow. From there, a pair of screens appeared, one in front of each chair. They were hovering in the air like holograms. What was displayed on the screens looked like some sort of form. A profile picture of my face was plastered on the top left of the form. Beside and below it were a series of entry fields, most of which were empty, including my name for some reason. While both screens looked to display the same thing at first, a few seconds of looking at each revealed a simple difference: the one for the chair away from the door was prompting for additional input. It looked like normally I was supposed to meet someone in the room, who would fill in the various fields while taking my requests into consideration. If that was the case, then rather than letting someone else dictate what would go into my information, I''d rather do it myself. At the worst, I''d get booted and forced to go through the procedure properly while under more strict supervision...most likely. I sat down on the soft office chair and had a closer look. At the top of the form, the words [New Incarnation Settings] was clearly labelled. Most likely, the form was to set up my initial starting conditions on my next life. (To think that these rooms were for setting up our reincarnations!) If this was some sort of dream, then I didn''t want to wake up. I tried to touch the name field, but it was greyed out. It made sense, since normally your parents would name their new baby, not some sort of celestial power. The next field was destination world. The word [Terheim] was already set, and touching the field didn''t allow me to change it. (Perhaps the rooms designated which world the reincarnator was going to go to?) Following that was species. [Human] was placed there by default, but when I touched it, a drop-down box opened up, revealing a wide range of possibilities. The possibilities were nearly endless, but it quickly became obvious that almost all of them were automatic rejections. While most of them were things I''d never heard of, the fact that random animals and even bugs were on the list, the reincarnation process would allow me to become something that wasn''t even sentient. I wholeheartedly rejected that notion. Lots of the staple fantasy races were on the list as well, but the one that stood out for me was the vampire. Vampires had it''s own unique set of strengths and weaknesses, but that in itself made them more interesting than any of the more typical fantasy races. I just hoped that they weren''t considered to be a universally evil race or something. When I selected vampire for my species, a whole slew of additional options were added a little further down. The first of the new options was [apparent age]. It seemed like I could select what age I started as. Vampires weren''t born as babies in this world it seemed. I wasn''t too surprised by that fact, since most myths have vampires be ageless, so they always had the same appearance as when they turned. I was a bit skeptical about how it would work for someone born as a vampire from the beginning, but didn''t concern myself about it. There was no point in worrying about something you had no information about. For age, I selected 16. I figured that it was old enough that I''d be fine with it for the rest of my next life, yet I''d get a few extra years if I did grow beyond that. Regardless of the world, it was also old enough to be independent, but young enough that I wouldn''t be at a social reject for not being already married or something. The next were a series of options regarding physical appearance. For hair colour, I selected silver. For a vampire, black and silver are the only real options. I refused any other possibility. My own hair was near black, so I wanted something different for my next life, hence silver. Eye colour was fixed to red. I couldn''t change it. Same with skin colour. It was fixed to pale. The next option was height. Rather than simply just a drop-down box, this, as well as the rest, were all accompanied by sliders. The default settings on all of them were [Normal Distribution Random] and the sliders were greyed out. When I opened the box, the revealed options were various other distribution patterns for random, with manual at the bottom. I selected manual of course. For height, I moved the slider to a bit under a quarter from the bottom. My current height was well above average, just a bit over two meters. Frankly, my excessive height gave me no end of trouble, and I was eager to take the opposite end of the spectrum without hesitation. I''ve always envied people who could fit on a bus seat between two others without problems, or could walk through public places without worrying about hitting their heads on stuff. Short people always envied tall people like me, but from my perspective, the world was designed for short people, and generally it was at the expense of the tall. At least that was my personal experience. The next setting was physical attractiveness. That was maxed out. No doubt in my mind, there was no reason to go any less than that. Any debate there was a waste of time and energy. I continued to play with the sliders a bit, but since there was no feedback, I wasn''t sure about the effects. It wasn''t like my portrait picture changed as I fiddled with my appearance settings. Half unsatisfied, I moved on. The next option almost blew my out of my seat. The label for the section was [Skills]. At first, I wasn''t sure what it meant, but looking further down, the meaning dawned on me. The [Skills] didn''t refer to techniques that a person accumulates through knowledge and practice, but are quantified abilities built into the person themselves. The first few entries proved that point splendidly. Below the label [Skills] was another sub label [Default Skills], which had a single entry [Local Language] included. Touching it opened a tool-tip that described it in detail. [Local Language]: Knowledge of the languages used in the incarnated world. Available by default for any users incarnated outside of standard birthing. In other words, it gave me the ability to communicate with the people of the world because I wouldn''t have a few years to learn under parents. It was a pretty considerate skill. It made me realize how odd it was that I could read the form in the first place, but I waved the idea away with the presumption that any power that could reincarnate people across multiple world would find the ability to adjust systems to allow anyone to understand them was a pretty paltry ordeal. Below [Default Skills] was another sub label [Racial Skills], and under that was the two skills [Blood Sucking 1 (Vampire)] and [Natural Weapons 1 (Vampire)]. I opened the tool-tips on them to read their descriptions. [Blood Sucking 1 (Vampire)]: Allows one to suck a target''s blood or similar fluids and absorb their essence. [Natural Weapons 1 (Vampire)]: Strengthen one''s own body as if it were a weapon. Exclusive to claws and fangs for vampires. The sight of this made me want to jump for joy. It seemed like the world I had inadvertently chosen was ruled by game mechanics. It was like many of those books that had grown popular lately. The fact that the skills had a [1] on them implied that they could be improved further, and that the world quantified the people''s abilities in a tangible way. Once something was systematized, the possibility of loopholes and exploits appeared. The thought of finding such a thing excited me. Unfortunately, the fields stated that I had zero available points to purchase starting skills. Reexamining the fields again, I saw that [Local Language] cost zero points, [Natural Weapons 1 (Vampire)] cost one point, and [Blood Sucking 1 (Vampire)] cost a whopping four points. As the latter two were both racials, I couldn''t remove either to get some points back. Not like I''d remove blood sucking. If I didn''t have that, I doubt I''d survive long as a vampire. I had no idea how normal food would effect a vampire, but I doubted I''d get much nutrition from such a thing. [Local Language] was a freebie, so I didn''t touch that even to see if I could remove it in case I couldn''t figure out how to get it back. Below that was a few more options labelled under [Miscellaneous], and among them was one of particular concern for me: [Memories upon incarnation]. The default option was erase. I impatiently changed it to preserve. I absolutely didn''t want my memories to be erased. It would ruin the whole point of everything I was doing. If I didn''t remember who I was, then it was the same as doing this all for a complete stranger, rather than myself. The next option I looked closely at was [Starting Location]. The default option read [Racial Default]. The tool-tip only gave the vague message of starting in locations typical for the chosen race. I imagined that simply meant being born from a mother like normal for a human or being more likely to be born in a big city, but the message was too vague and generic to satisfy me. The lack of context made me extremely uneasy. I went through the options, but they were all pretty vague and generic. Each one was in the vicinity of something generic, like a city, lake, mine, mountain, etc. This form was probably made to work for any world, so there probably wasn''t any options to get more specific than that. Then I noticed one option that was a bit different from the others: [In the vicinity of rich resource deposits preferred by chosen race] The tool tip implied that it would put me near a location that was one of the highest concentrations of resources that were considered extremely desirable by the race I chose. The impression it gave was that for a place with lots of small rodents and birds for a fox, or maybe a literal gold mine for humans? Just like the others, it was vague, but it felt more reliable than the others. Especially when I had no idea what kind of landscape would be preferable for vampires, nor what kind of association other races had with them as well. Finally, I reached the bottom of the form, and a strange field was waiting for me. [User Privilege Level] When I opened the drop-down box, it revealed four options: Minimal, Standard(default), Moderator, Administrator. I selected the fourth option without any hint at hesitation. When the admin option exists, always pick it. That was my belief. But before closing the box down, a warning window opened up. [Warning, administrator rights can only be given to a limited number of users per world. In addition, rights cannot be changed until user returns to the Life Settlement Facility. Available administrators in chosen world: 1/1. Do you wish to proceed?] It was a bit unfortunate that if I hit yes, I''d be taking the only admin slot for the world, but I couldn''t bear with not taking the privilege while I had the chance, so I unwaveringly hit yes. With that, all the fields were completed, so I hit complete at the bottom. [Confirm settings] Of course I hit ok. With a smile, I sit back. I had no idea if what I did would actually do anything, and even if I had succeeded, I had no clue as to what came next. To me left was the sound of paper being rolled out. I sat up in surprise and grabbed the sheet as it came out from a slit on the left side of the desk. When I looked at the sheet I was lightly pulling on, I saw the details of the form I had just completed was being printed out, starting from the bottom. While I wasn''t sure what would come next, it looked like I had done everything right up to this point. Suddenly, a pillar of light descended from above, surrounding me. Little motes of light rose up and my body felt like it was losing it''s weight. Rrriiippp While I was distracted, I accidentally pulled too hard on the printed sheet and it ripped into two. Before I could do anything about it, the light grew stronger, blinding me. My feet rose off of the ground, then everything went dark. Chapter 02 – First Steps I opened my eyes. When I came to, I was lying on a patch of grass under the shade of a tree. Sitting up, I had a look around. I was in the middle of a forest. The trees were pretty big, but I could see the dark blue sky easily in the many breaks in the canopy. Through one particularly large break, I could see the peak of a large mountain. I repeatedly blinked, confirming and reconfirming what I could see surrounding that peak. ...For some reason I could see the stars even though it was the day. ...For some reason there were three suns, each a different colour. ...For suns, they weren''t that bright. I was forced to squint, but I didn''t get bright spots in my eyes for looking directly at them. Still, it was a strange feeling to see a red, green, and blue sun rather than a single yellow sun. As weird as it was, such a thing was a minor point for me right now. It was much more important for me to get my bearings. The last thing I remembered was confirming the form entry in that weird office after slipping out of that strange line. (That''s right! I reincarnated!) I quickly looked down to confirm my new body, but my excitement was quickly washed away with confusion. The view as I tried to look down at my hands was pretty alien to me. The various shapes and sizes didn''t match up with anything I was used to. My hands were tiny, and my limbs were slender. On top of that, it looked a bit like someone stuck their butt in front of me, but at an impossible angle. A quick glance around me confirmed that I was alone, so I raised my hands and grabbed hold of the bulbous mounds that were blocking my sight. I could feel my fingers sinking into the soft flesh as I squeezed. My mind reeled. This feeling that was foreign to me was clearly being transmitted to my brain. Hoping against hope, I put a hand between my legs and felt around, but that last desperate wish was shattered when a completely alien sensation started to signal my brain. No longer having the energy to keep myself propped up, I flop back down onto my back and stare at the sky. Now that I was looking at it more properly, the sky was strangely dark looking. It was more of a dark blue with some splotches of colour here and there, along with all the stars and three suns. It was hard to imagine it was the midday sky, but everything below that suggested it was so. The vegetation around me didn''t look too different from Earth, but the sky, and of course my own body was. I looked at my own hands. They were tiny and so frail looking. My arms were like sticks. It wasn''t like there wasn''t any meat on them, but even the bones underneath were small. My fingers overlapped when I wrapped them around my wrist. I couldn''t do that before. They wouldn''t even touch. There was so much I didn''t know about myself or this world. No, in a sense, I didn''t know anything yet. It was possible almost all my knowledge and common sense didn''t apply in this world. There wasn''t anyone around me to help either, so I was stuck figuring it all out on my own. Being dropped into the wilderness with nothing to my name, I had to start with survival in mind. Rather, I didn''t even have a name, now that I thought about it. I could certainly use the name from my last life, but considering how much changed about me, it didn''t feel right. Well, my name didn''t matter if I didn''t have anyone to call me by. I dug into my memories, and found some stale, half-baked knowledge about survival that I picked up randomly online at some point. "When it comes to survival in the wilderness, always keep the rules of three in mind" I mumbled to myself. The cute, high pitched voice that reached my ears made my back itch. It felt so unnatural for such a sound to come out of my mouth, but I had to get used to that. (The rules of three state that you can only survive for three minutes without air, three hours without shelter, three days without water, three weeks without food, and three months without hope) Well, I was breathing fine, so I had already cleared the first step. The second was my next concern. Shelter didn''t refer to a structure hide in, but rather something to generally protect yourself from the elements. In other words, clothes. Something I was really lacking in. I looked at my bare skin and sighed. If I was looking at this body from the third person, I''d have been pretty excited, but the first person perspective ruined it for me. The three hours without shelter most likely referred to suffering from exposure and freezing to death, but I wasn''t cold in the slightest. The environment didn''t feel particularly warm, but I didn''t feel cold despite that. Even still, I did want to protect my dignity at least, even if nobody was around to strip me of my modesty. After that, water was next on the list, and food after that. There was no harm in looking for all three at the same time, but it was important to properly prioritize. With that thought in my mind, I quickly rose up, and almost came crashing down just as fast. My centre of gravity had drastically changed, making it more difficult to stay balanced. Not only that, but my legs were further apart than in my last life, making my steps awkward. To think simply standing was so difficult in a new body. I wondered how much of that was attributed to my differing sex and how much was simply because it was a new body. I took a few careful steps to confirm my new balance before taking a look around. There really wasn''t much remarkable about my surroundings. I was surrounded by trees, ferns and bushes grew scattered all around, with patches of grass marking where the light of the sun filtered through the broken canopy. To my side, though, there was one thing that was out of place. Aside from myself, of course. That was a flimsy piece of white something that didn''t look natural at all. I picked it up and had a glance, to reveal that it was that sheet of paper that I grabbed right before I was transported to this new world. The top of it was ripped off so my old portrait wasn''t on it, nor was the first few settings. The first line was torn, making it hard to read, but I made out the words [Sex: Female]. The entries below that were the appearance settings I went straight to after I selected my species. It was pretty obvious I skipped that line because my eyes were attracted by the options below it. To think I made such a blunder. It made me worried I had skipped over any other important information and I skimmed through the form just in case. In the end, I didn''t see anything else wrong. When it came to oversight, that seemed to be the only real blunder I had made back then, but it was a big one. I didn''t want to live out my second life as a woman, but it wasn''t like I had a choice. I had no idea how to get back to that strange space aside from dying, and even if I succeeded, there was a high chance that I wouldn''t be allowed to get all the things I wanted, like keeping my memories, or remembering my past, or especially preserving the knowledge of my previous lives. Not being able to be the same sex as my previous life sucked, but it wasn''t as bad as it could be, and it was only a matter of time before I got used to it. I scratched my head, but gave up thinking about it. Survival came first, and the consequences of my mistake could be left until I met some of the locals. Stepping away from the tree I arrived beside, I took the torn paper with me. It was the sole physical memento I had of my previous life, even if it neither existed while I was alive, nor did it have any information regarding my old self, but I was reluctant to dispose of it, and leaving it for someone else to find was dangerous. I folded the sheet and held it firmly in the palm of my left hand as I started to trek across the forest, careful with my steps. I was barefoot, so any little thing could cut my soles, limiting my ability to get around many-fold. My balance was extremely unsteady, but the actual act of moving around was surprisingly easy. Either my new body was stronger than my old, or I was simply that much lighter. Or both. Most likely both. The last year especially I spent most my time secluded indoors as I worked my failure of a project. I couldn''t help but keep touching my chest as it swayed. If anything, I was really starting to want something to hold it in place. I dreaded the idea of having to run while the pair of flesh globes bounced around trying to get me to trip. Frankly, it might''ve been because of my perspective, but they were big. Not as big as some other women I''ve seen, but way bigger than what I''d have liked on myself. Which was to say I wish I didn''t have them in the first place, but that was nothing more than denying my reality. The reason felt a bit different, but I did need to adhere to the second of the survival rule of threes. With no particular goals, I headed towards the mountain I could see through the occasional break in the tree-line, the only distinct landmark I had. As I walked, I admired everything around me, staring at one new sight after the next. The strange shapes of the bushes to the large trees that rivalled the tallest I''ve ever seen in pictures. My feet frequently stopped. At first it was because I lost my balance while staring at something as I walked past it, but eventually it changed to me just stopping to have a closer look at things. Sometimes it was an oddly shaped leaf on the ground, or others it was a bug I''ve never seen before crawling or flying around. This world was simply mysterious, and surprisingly beautiful. That thought was even more impressive considering that I was fundamentally the indoor type in my last life. Maybe it was because I was happy with everything I could see from my computer monitor before, but here, where I had to physically move to see something, walking around and exploring was an exciting experience. That said, I was worried about my ability to survive on my own. I had never taken any survival courses, and the closest thing I did was some outdoor activities during summer camp as a kid. I did read some bits and pieces on the field online, but it was all fragmentary, and hardly from reliable sources. Even more importantly, it was all knowledge from Earth. It was easily possible that none of it applied here, a world with three suns. But there was nothing I could do but keep trying things until I find those that worked, and hence I kept walking. I picked up a rock and a strong looking stick for self defence. I didn''t know if I was weak, but the stick took quite a bit of effort for me to break to size. Hopefully it would work as a decent club. Hopefully I wouldn''t have to find out. As I continued to walk, I noticed that the suns were moving to my left in the sky, suggesting I was moving north. Or south, depending on what the standard orientation was in this world, if there was even a common consensus regarding it. I was growing hungry as the hours passed, but it was hard to find anything. I had no knowledge regarding foraging for food, especially when it came to figuring out if anything was edible or not. I tried sniffing a few fruit I found hanging in some of the trees, but they didn''t smell very appetizing at all. Wary about eating something poisonous, I avoided them, but if I didn''t find something to eat soon, I might be forced to gamble on it. Suddenly, I smelt blood in the air. The scent was surprisingly strong, and it was easy for me to follow it. There was barely a breeze blowing, so the smell probably wasn''t coming from far away. But the strength of the scent probably meant that there must have been a lot of blood around. The worry that I was heading towards the scene of a slaughter was diminished by my hunger. The thought of fresh meat almost made me drool a bit. I quickly moved from tree to tree, peeking out before each dash, trying to keep myself in cover as much as possible in case some great danger was responsible for the scent. It wasn''t long before I found the source of the smell, only to be greeted by a single small creature dancing around a small fire while holding the body of a bloody rabbit. No matter where I looked, there weren''t any other creatures nearby. My first reaction was annoyance that my initial reaction was so far off the mark, but it was quickly replaced by the thought that I had found an excellent opportunity. The creature was humanoid, and was holding what looked like a rabbit in one hand and a simple spear in the other. It was pretty short and it''s skin was moss green, and its face was ugly as all hell. It was entirely naked aside from a dirty loincloth that looked to be little more than old pelt hung around it''s waist with string. It was yelling out while dancing in a circle. The yells didn''t sound like intelligible words, and more like random animal howls. It didn''t look to be much more intelligent than a chimp. All put together, it looked pretty much like that one fantasy monster: goblin. If my guess was right, then it was the cockroach of the fantasy world, meaning that killing it was a good thing. There wasn''t anything to feel bad about the act, or rather, I''d be doing the world a favour by doing so, and I''d get an easy meal as a bonus. With my mind made up, I threw the stone I was holding past the goblin. It sailed cleanly through the air and thumped hard against the ground. The green stubbie dropped the rabbit and looked towards the sound, holding it''s spear in both hands. At the same time, I jumped out of my hiding spot behind a tree and dashed at the goblin. A few seconds late, the monster noticed the sound of my footsteps rushing towards it and turned to look my way. "Hyaaah!" I yelled out as I swung my stick with all my strength, doing my best to ignore how cute my yell sounded. The goblin turned it''s body to try to intercept my attack, but it was too late, and the blunt end of my stick smacked it clean in the forehead, knocking it down to the grown with pure force. Hardly without any hesitation, I raised my improvised club and swung it again, impacting it against the goblin''s skull. And again, and again. By the time I stopped, it''s head was clearly caved in, and any residual twitching had nothing to do with it''s ability to fight back. I fell onto my butt as I breathed heavily. It was the first time in both lives I''ve ever killed something bigger than a bug. Despite that, it didn''t feel as bad as I feared it might. I wasn''t sure if I was inclined towards such a way of life in the first place, or I was more desperate than I realized and that just made it easier for me to throw away any previous inhibitions than I would otherwise. The smell of blood was stronger than ever, and I could even tell the difference between the rabbit''s blood and the goblin''s blood. Unexpectedly, it did nothing but stimulate my appetite even further, so without further ado, I took the goblin''s spear and used it to cut open the rabbit. The rabbit was a bit bigger than anything I''ve ever seen on Earth, but what really made it stand apart was it''s incisor. In particular the top ones. They were much bigger and sharper than what rabbits normally had. It reminded me of the pictures of beavers I''ve seen before. Frankly, they looked pretty dangerous for something that people normally associate with cute. It was a reminder that my common sense didn''t work in this world. I took the goblin''s spear and used it to cut the animal open. The spearhead was made of stone, chipped into a pair of edges, and kept in place with some sort of string. The basic design was the same as those primitive spears often found in museums. This, combined with the fact that it was wearing clothes, even if it was just a loincloth, compared to me, who was naked and wielded nothing but a broken branch, made me cry a bit on the inside. A fantasy cockroach was living a more civilized life than I had managed since coming to this world. I, a human, the species of tool makers was beaten at that very act by a goblin. (Wait, homo sapian meant wise man. Homo hablis was the handy man. By that logic, humans aren''t defined by their ability to create and use tools, but their ability to use their heads) I satisfied myself with those thoughts and continued to skin and cut up the rabbit. Once I was done and lay the cut chunks of meat on top of the flayed hide, I went around and gathered small sticks and used them to spear the meat and stuck them near the fire the goblin had been dancing around. Frankly speaking, the smell of the cooking meat wasn''t that appetizing, and I couldn''t help but keep checking to see if I had burned any of it or not. Instead of a nice roast or barbecue, it smelled like just burnt meat to me. Maybe it was because there wasn''t any seasoning, or maybe that was the nature of this rabbit? After a short while, and constant checking, I removed a fully cooked piece of rabbit meat and bit in. End result: it was terrible. It was sinewy and tasted like wet plaster, or at least what I imagined such a thing tasted like. I forced myself to chew the meat, but the juices that came out just made it worse. In the end, I forced myself to swallow it, but even the feeling of the lump going down my throat felt bad. I couldn''t help but wonder if I''d get sick eating something that tasted so terrible. Just looking at the rest of the cooked meat made me groan and I just turned my back to the fire. By accident, I ended up turning towards the goblin corpse. Without the smell of burnt meat constantly overpowering my sense of smell, I could smell the goblin''s blood clearly. For some reason, despite how bad the meat was, the scent stimulated my appetite again. It was strange that when the scent of cooked meat was disgusting to me, the scent of blood smelled delicious. I unconsciously licked my lips. As my tongue ran whetted my lips, it ran across my elongated canine. The strange feeling made me realize my mistake. These canines weren''t those of a human, at least of the kind I was familiar with. That was because I had not only changed my gender, but my species as well. I had completely forgotten about that fact due to the fact that I had been wandering around under the sun without any problems. It wasn''t like there weren''t any vampires that couldn''t handle the sun fine in fantasy stories, but I just presumed that being under the sun equalled not vampire. With that said, I couldn''t help but stare at the base of the gooey mess I had made earlier. The goblin was getting cold, and a lot of the blood had already been soaked by the ground, but there was probably enough for a small snack. My revulsion of drinking it''s blood was actually much lower than I expected. It was probably related to how good it smelled and how hungry it was making me. With a bit of trepidation, I flipped the goblin corpse onto it''s front and put my lips to it''s throat...and almost hurled. Now that I was so close to it, the goblin''s body odour became overpowering. Combined with the disgusting meal I just had, my body tried to reject everything it didn''t like all at once. I wished I had a bucket of water with me, but without such a thing, I grabbed some of the cooked meat and rubbed it along the goblin''s neck. Careful as to avoid burning myself I held the meat using the stick. It was weird using perfectly good food to clean something so dirty, but for me now, meat was little better than garbage. Once I had removed as much of the foul odour from the goblin neck as I could, I threw the remains of the rabbit meat into the fire and tried again. The neck was slick with grease, but the smell was much more tolerable. With a bit of nervousness, I used my fangs to bite into the neck, then sucked the trickle of blood that came out. The blood was a bit thin and tasted like a frozen dinner salisbury steak drenched in cheap gravy, but for me right now it was like drinking artisan honey after being starved for a day! Forgetting myself, I sucked harder on the puncture wound. In the back of my mind, I was aware that I wasn''t just drinking through my throat, but also through my fangs. It turned out they were hollow, and I was able to suck deeper using them. I was ecstatic, and kept trying to suck more blood out even after the trickle ran dry. In a desperate attempt, I raised the goblin''s legs up, hoping some blood welled further down the body after it''s heart stopped. I was rewarded for my efforts with a few drops, but even that ran out much faster than I desired. I released the goblin''s corpse and flopped onto my back. I grit my teeth in frustration. It was like being served a tiny sample of a dish from a first class restaurant after spending the day starved while waiting in line, only to be told I wasn''t allowed to eat anymore. (If only I remembered I was a vampire faster, I could''ve drank all of that goblin''s blood.) Such thoughts weren''t productive in the slightest, so after a few minutes of rest, I got up and got ready to move out again. I grabbed the goblin''s spear and the rabbit pelt. It wasn''t properly processed, but I figured the pelt could be used to make clothes once I worked on it a bit, and the spear was better than anything I could make on my own. In addition, I removed the goblin''s loincloth. It was the dirtiest thing I''ve ever touched, previous life included, but if I could make it even remotely clean, it would help to restore my modesty. That said, it stank to high heaven, so I hung it on the end of my new spear and carried that on my shoulder so I could stay as far away from the smell as I could. I also grabbed the rock I originally threw. Despite how primitive and simple it was, it had a variety of uses. Now ready, I took off, continuing in the same direction I left off. As I walked, I opened up the sheet of paper again. I had forgotten I was a vampire, so I wanted to confirm what settings I had set. For now, the important ones were my skills and the admin privileges I got. The latter I had no idea what to do with, or even what it was for, but the former suggested that I was capable of using special abilities. I had three skills according to the sheet: [Local Language], [Blood Sucking I (Vampire)], and [Natural Weapons I (Vampire)]. [Local Language] was pretty useless until I found someone I could talk to, [Blood Sucking] I had demonstrated already. I hoped to be able to use it again soon. [Natural Weapons] was the last, and the only one that was likely useful, but I hadn''t tried yet. The [Natural Weapons] for vampires were their claws and fangs. I looked at my hands, specifically my nails. They were long and pointed, but hardly looked like claws. More like just typical women''s nails, though on the shorter end of even that spectrum. Playing with them revealed the truth though. They weren''t flexible like normal nails, and resisted my attempts at bending them. Not only that, but they were sharp. Very sharp. They really weren''t like human nails, and more like the claws of the cat I used to have, despite it''s shape. Not only that, but when I tensed my fingers with the will to claw at something, they grew in length and curved inward a bit, showing their true form. Aside from that, my fangs obviously made good weapons. Human teeth worked decently as weapons if you ever had the chance to actually use them, and my fangs were much longer and sharper than any human teeth. Even without any benefits given to me by my skill, they would''ve made fine weapons, presuming I got close enough to bite my enemies. But with such game-like elements in play, I couldn''t help but wonder what other game-like features existed in this world. Was it like a lot of the stories where there were levels and stats as well? If that was the case, then I''d definitely need to figure that sort of thing out. As well, how to get new skills, on top of how to raise the skills I already had. Did they go up through usage, or was there more stringent requirements? Could I learn new skills by doing things, or was there something specific I needed to do to get them? (For that matter, since this was a fantasy world, what about magic?) If magic existed, I really wanted to learn the skills for it. I wanted to know about anything and everything that was impossible on Earth. Instead of getting distracted by every new thing I saw, I ended up wandering around while my mind floated through the clouds as I thought about the possibilities. Suddenly, I heard a strange yelling. I perked my ears and heard more yelling. Rather, it sounded more like the cries of a wild animal, rather than coherent yelling. And it sounded familiar as well. It was similar to the cries made by that goblin. It sounded like there were three distinct voices, but since the goblin cries were pretty incoherent and carried little meaning, it was difficult to tell. That said, I quickly crept up, dropping everything but my weapons in a bush. When I peeked out from behind a tree, I saw three goblins squabbling, just as I expected. It looked like one was trying to get the other two to do something, but they were mostly ignoring the first one''s demands, occasionally taunting as extra measure. I felt pretty pathetic. The first time I got to see any social interactions in this world, and it was a group of squabbling goblins. Their so-called speech wasn''t even coherent enough for my [Local Language] to pick up as anything intelligible. Be that as it may, I was already licking my lips. I had a prime opportunity to get three goblins worth of blood right now if I succeeded. I couldn''t forget the taste of my first kill. All three goblins were dressed just like the first one I found, naked aside from a single loincloth each, and each carried a primitive weapon. The one yelling at the other two had a stone hatchet, and the other two spears like the one I had. Considering the difference in length, the spears were a bigger threat to me, since I also had one, though since they were only about two thirds my height, my overall reach was better. With that in mind, just like last time, I opened up with throwing my stone past the group. When it impacted the ground, all three jumped and looked at the source of the sound, tightly gripping their weapons. The moment their heads turned, I sprinted out from my cover. I made almost the entire distance before they realized the real threat was behind them. With a great swing, I bashed the first spear wielding goblin in the side of the head with my stone spear. A satisfying crack resounded, and the smelly green creature fell over lifelessly. Without losing any momentum, I tightly gripped my spear and thrusted out with it at the second spear wielding goblin. But to my surprise, while the spear did hit it''s mark, the head broke off from impacting the monster''s skull. I had damaged the cheap weapon in my last attack, and now it didn''t do nearly as much damage as it should''ve. Unperturbed, I take another step and try thrusting again. The initial impact knocked the goblin off balance, giving me a big opening. This time, the broken shaft found it''s way into the ugly face''s eye and broke through the thin bone behind it, braining the creature. I tried pulling my weapon out, but it got caught and the goblin came with it, as if it had some sort of morbid attachment to my weapon. I let it be with it''s fetishes as I turned to the third goblin empty handed. The green cockroach had a look of shock at the fact that I took out two of it''s comrades so quickly, but it composed itself when it realized that I had let go of my weapon. With a sneer, it raised it''s weapon and charged at me. I, in the meantime, grinned and counter-charged. The ugly goblin, surprised at the gap between us closing much faster than it anticipated, hesitated before swinging it''s weapon. A fraction of a second too late, instead of burying it''s stone axe into my body, it''s shaft hit my left shoulder as my extended arm stabbed into it''s chest. The light quickly faded from it''s eyes, but I was too busy to worry about that. Instead, I closed my fist and pulled on it''s ribs, bringing it close to me, and I bit into it''s neck as fast as I could. The sweet taste of it''s blood flooded my mouth, intoxicating me. Words entered my head, but I was too preoccupied to worry about them. Instead, I revelled in being able to taste this living nectar once again, and I desperately sucked it up, as if someone was threatening to take it away from me. But the feeling disappeared all too soon. There was so little blood in the bodies of these goblins. I limply dropped the goblin''s body and turned around. There were two more bodies on the ground. The ecstasy of drinking blood made me forget, and I quickly rushed to the next body to fill my stomach of the honey-like fluids. Then once again on the third goblin. With all three goblins drained of all of their life fluids, I collapse onto my back, rubbing my warm belly. I couldn''t help but grin. I wasn''t full, but I was satisfied. Never before had I ever felt so satisfied by anything. I thought about how I didn''t like blood much in my last life, and how it was thrown away by the meat industry like sewage, yet all I could think about was how much of a waste such an act was. If I was still on Earth, I''d have gone to one of those factory farms and found a way to buy it all. I''d swim in it, and drink until I burst. Without any hint of my smile fading, all I could go was giggle. I didn''t even notice how girly and cute sounding it was, nor the disparity between my expression and my thoughts if viewed by an objective third party. While basking in the afterglow of my meal, I was unable to realize how much my thoughts had changed already while I rested. Chapter 03 – The Nature of Things After a short break, I got back up and started to loot the bodies. These goblins were even poorer than the first I found. All I got was two spears, an axe, and three exceedingly dirty loin clothes. They smelled just as bad as the first one I found, so I tied them to the end of one spear and slung both spears over my left shoulder while I carried the axe in hand. I considered grabbing my broken spear and dropped stone, but I was just about at my limit as to what I could carry by hand. Instead, I went back and retrieved the rabbit pelt and my last loin cloth, and tied both to the end of my carrying spear before continuing my trip. As I continued to walk north, I noticed that the ground was slowly sloping upwards. It seemed like I was climbing a gentle hill or something, but the trees blocked my line of sight too much to get a good picture. (If this keeps sloping upwards, it''s probably not the way to civilization, is it?) I hadn''t really thought about trying to find any cities, but practically speaking, that would''ve been the right thing to aspire to as my first goal, aside from just surviving. But now at this point, I started to wonder how good that would be before I got my bearings. Just minutes earlier, I lost control over myself. Drinking blood really was a powerful urge. Surrounded by people, I wondered how well I could control that urge if someone got cut near me. Maybe choosing to be a vampire wasn''t such a great idea? Maybe a beast person would''ve been better? I saw a few of those on the list. But vampires were practically unaging in almost every media. That was pretty hard to resist. Maybe an elf? Some have them also being unaging. Then again, if I could control this urge, then living in a city wouldn''t be a problem. I needed to get practice doing such a thing. Even if I ended up not living around other people like my previous life, not being able to control my blood lust would be a serious detriment. (But it really was tasty...) Before I realized it, I was licking my lips again. (No! No! Bad vampire!) I hit myself in the head, admonishing myself for getting so caught up in those feelings. This might be harder than I thought. That aside, when I was drinking those goblins'' blood, I heard some words in my head. I dismissed them at the time because I was so engrossed in feeding, but they sounded important. The first one, thinking back, sounded like ''You have reached level two!'' The more I thought about it, the more I was sure that''s what the voice said. I gained a level, like in a game. A smile crept up onto my face. (A level. It wasn''t just skills!) I didn''t particularly feel any stronger, but that could just be because the feeling of having my first real meal overwhelmed me. (But there were more words after that) After that first announcement, I heard one more while drinking from the second goblin, and then again from the third goblin. Thinking back, the pretty-sounding woman''s congratulatory voice said ''You have gained the [Breeding 1] skill!'' and ''You have gained the [Spear Technique 1] skill!'' (Ugh, how terrible) One sounded good, but the other sounded pretty nasty. From what I remembered, the [Blood Sucking] skill not only let me drink a creature''s blood, but let me absorb their essence as well. I thought that it meant that it allowed me to digest the blood as food, but maybe that wasn''t what it meant. The level I gained could''ve come from the skill, or from the fact that I killed four goblins already. The [Spear Technique] skill likewise could''ve come from the fact that I killed two goblins with a spear, aside from the fact that my spear was broken while I used it on the second one. But that nasty sounding [Breeding] skill couldn''t have come from anything I did myself. I was a virgin in both lives, so strictly speaking, nothing I''ve done should''ve allowed me to earn such a skill in the normal way. That left only one possibility: I can gain skills by drinking the blood of my targets. (Wow, just wow!) I didn''t know how hard it was to get skills normally, but this gave me a massive edge! Being able to gain skills I haven''t even practised, possibly even raising skills I already had, the extremely high value of blood kept going up inside of my mind. (This...is going to make it hard to live an ordinary life) Not like I intended to in the first place. I was going to live how I wanted after all, not conforming to what people expected from me. But if I was going to gain a lot of skills this way, it was going to be difficult to manage if I couldn''t view them when I wanted. Not only that, but it was important to be able to know what the skills did. While I was in that other space, I was able to touch the skills to get a description. If I could somehow do that here as well, then I wouldn''t have to worry about my skills doing things I couldn''t predict. That said, the staple of these game-like worlds was some sort of menu or character sheet opening up through one technique or another. With that thought in mind, I tried every permutation of opening a way to see my skills and information on my own I could think of. (Menu. Open Menu. Select Menu. Main Menu...) Rather than go through the most likely commands first, I tried to keep my trials organized to prevent repeats as much as possible. It wasn''t like I was in much of a hurry, no matter how much the thought excited me. (...Status...oh!) In the end it didn''t take long, and a transparent screen opened in front of my eyes. The screen was filled with my personal information, as expected. (Hmm...[Name:]...it''s blank) Not like I really expected much from that field. It wasn''t a priority, so I left it for later. ([Species: Vampire], [Sex: Female]...) I''ve already been reminded of those two facts more than I liked today. Below that, I started to find actually useful information. ------------------------------------State: NormalLevel: 2XP: 8/12 HP: 32/32MP: 20/20STR: 6CON: 9AGI: 12DEX: 11INT: 10ANI: 8 Skills:Default Skills:Local LanguageRacial Skills:Blood Sucking 1 (Vampire)Natural Weapons 1 (Vampire)Breeding 1Primary Skills:Spear Technique 1------------------------------------ I could clearly see my information put into quantified values. When I touched each part, I was able to get a tool-tip filled with the selected item''s description, just like in that other space. Level: The collective strength of a person''s base abilities. Raised by gaining XP.XP: The representation of spiritual growth when slaying foes or through actions of intense labour or creativity. It looked like I could gain levels though means not just by killing monsters, but the description was a bit vague. I''d have to experiment with it. Not only that, but looking at the values themselves, I was probably one or two goblin kills away from reaching level 3. I wondered if I also got XP from sucking their blood? [HP]: Hit Points. The amount of injury one can sustain before perishing.[MP]: Mana Points. The amount of mana available within one''s body to be used.[STR]: Strength. One''s ability to exert physical force upon the world.[CON]: Constitution. One''s ability to resist injury.[DEX]: Dexterity. One''s ability to move accurately and precisely.[AGI]: Agility. One''s ability to move quickly.[INT]: Intelligence. One''s ability to manipulate mana to create a phenomena.[ANI]: Anima. One''s ability to resist unwanted magical manipulation. The attributes were pretty straightforward, and pretty much as expected. Though it was notable how low my [STR] was, without something to compare against, the numbers themselves didn''t mean much to me. [Breeding 1]: Allows one to breed with other creatures, regardless of compatibility. Offspring will always be of the parent with the higher [Breeding] skill.[Spear Technique 1]: Increases one''s ability to use spears and spear-like weapons. Well, that answers my question on the [Breeding] skill. The effect was a bit depressing, but not really surprising. Goblins were often depicted as a monosexual species that captured females to propagate. This looked like proof that they were also like that in this world. It was a depressing skill to have, but I just had to avoid using it. (Did I just decide to become an eternal virgin?) Actually, looking a bit closer, the skill was greyed out. There was the fact that it was classified as a racial skill. Maybe because I wasn''t a goblin, the skill didn''t work for me? I hoped that was the case, but I couldn''t help but worry that if someone saw I had this skill, they''d label me as a slut or something. On the other hand, the [Spear Technique] was pretty nice. I hoped that I could figure out how to make my own spears or get my hands on a quality one to take proper advantage of this skill. As I was thinking about my skills, a new sound entered my ears. It was faint, but it was the distinct sound of water. Despite some problems, I couldn''t help but feel that my first day''s been pretty fortunate so far. I was slowly, but steadily getting stronger, gaining useful equipment, even if they were exceedingly primitive, found a good way to feed myself, and now I found a water source. I was still naked and I hadn''t found a single hint of real civilization yet, but considering I basically started with nothing, I felt like my progress was pretty good. And being naked wasn''t as bad as I feared. It was still embarrassing, and frankly I was glad I hadn''t found anyone yet due to that, but this area was sufficiently temperate. I hadn''t felt cold even once since arriving. For once in my life, luck was really on my side. Even if I had to die for that to happen. My steps hurried. While I wasn''t thirsty, I felt dirty. Touching those goblins so much made my body grimy and the feeling was disgusting. I burst out from around a large bush. What greeted my sight was a small river flowing roughly from the northwest to the southeast. There weren''t any signs of any creatures nearby aside from some animal tracks. It looked like it was a popular watering hole, but despite that, it was currently deserted. Not minding such a detail, I hurried to the water''s edge and put my things down before quickly wading into the knee-high water. As I was about to bathe, I noticed my reflection in the water. I haven''t had a chance to actually get a look at my new body yet, so I was quite curious as to how I looked. Though the rippling water, I could more or less see my own face. Starting from the top, my hair was an elegant, shiny silver, long and straight, coming down below my hips. My eyes were large and round, appearing to be half-filled with wonder-lust and curiosity, and half-filled with penetrating intelligence. Below that was a small, bit of a button nose, with slightly pouty lips, all framed by a small chin and round cheeks. The reflection was like a cute girl that was still halfway into becoming a beautiful woman. The unsteady reflection made it hard to see clearly, but she looked like she''d grow up to become a top-tier woman. If I met her in my previous life, I wouldn''t have hesitated to tap that ass. That''s a lie. If I had actually met her and she tried to talk to me, I would''ve been completely intimidated by her. Not only were her eyes pretty striking, but the thought of interacting with a girl who was leagues out of my range would''ve instead made me break out in a cold sweat. And that girl was now me. I was never a popular guy in my last life, rather I was mostly a loner in general. I had no idea how to act with a face like then when the time came to actually talk to someone in this world. Frankly, the thought alone was a bit scary. I shook my head. There was no point in worrying about something that might not crop up in a while. I pulled back a lock of hair that fell into the water when my fingers touched my ear, but the shape wasn''t familiar. It was pointed, like an elf''s from fantasy tropes, but it wasn''t too long. The point only stuck a couple of centimetres further than human ears. Vampires often had pointed ears like this, but a lot of the time their stories were on Earth, so it had nothing to do with any other species. It made me wonder how they compared the elves of this world however. Would people who saw them think I was an elf? Or maybe a half-elf? Were halves even possible? If such a thing was on the species list, I didn''t see it. but the list was insanely long, so I could''ve easily just missed the entry. Turning my mind back to present matters, I tried drinking some of the water. Despite being cool, it tasted extremely stale to me and difficult to swallow. It made me pretty sure that vampires didn''t need to drink water. Blood was probably enough hydration. Finally, I got down and sunk my body into the river. The cold water ran over my skin, but the feeling of it taking away the dirt and oil from my skin as I wiped my body with my hands was invigorating. I paid acute attention to every little unfamiliar curve of my new body as I explored it for the first time while I washed. It was ironic that the first woman I got to intimately touch in years ended up being my own body. Taking my time, I made sure to remove every trace of the muck from those goblins off of my body. When I was done, I lay on the riverbed, enjoying the feeling of the water flowing over my skin. I didn''t notice it before, now that I was paying attention to it, my skin felt more sensitive. While I wiped my body, I could feel every detail of my fingers on my body, and now I could feel the tiny whirlpools of water as the river flow broke against it. I wondered if it was because it was a new body, or it had something to do with being a vampire, or if it was something else. Not like it mattered. It was a nice feeling. After a few minutes of rest, I got back up and wiped the excess water off of my body. Strangely, while my body had chilled a little, I didn''t feel particularly cold. Was the water warmer than I thought, or did it have to do with my new race? Packing that thought to the back of my mind, I went over and grabbed the pelt and loincloths I was carrying around and dumped them into the river water to wash. Almost immediately a black haze drifted from the scraps of leather I got from the goblins and flowed away with the water. I hoped that it was just dirt, not something dangerous for anyone who decided to drink down river. Taking my mind off of my unfounded worry, I thoroughly washed the rabbit pelt. No matter what I did though, the inside stayed wet and sticky, and pieces continued to peel off. It was feeling like a lot of work I didn''t know about was still left to be done if I was to actually use it. Next I started on the dirty leather left by the goblins. These were a much bigger ordeal, but it was still in the realm of my knowledge. I rubbed the black sheets against each other and against the sand in the river bed, and plumes of black fog erupted and were washed down. The sight was a bit unnerving, but I took it as proof that the leather was getting clean. After what felt like hours, but was most likely less than 30 minutes, all four loincloths had become a light brown colour. With a careful sniff, I confirmed that almost none of the stink remained. Happy with the result, I tossed all the clean hides to the side and I scrubbed my hands with the sand on the riverbed, removing all trace of that goblin stink. Once I was finally finished that too, I sat down under a tree beside the river to rest. My hands were red and my arms sore. Even my back hurt, after being hunched over for so long. But at the very least, the looted leather was now in a usable form. It wasn''t ideal, but I didn''t have to worry about getting some sort of strange infection from them anymore. I leaned back against the tree and looked up at the sky. For some reason, it had started to grow even brighter than before. The sky to the east had grown to a bright red. (Was there a fourth sun in this world?) It was the only explanation I could think of, and frankly, it wouldn''t have surprised me. As the sky grew brighter, rays from the fourth sun started to peak through the breaks in the canopy. The river was quickly engulfed with light so bright it reminded me of when I''d focus sunlight with a magnifying glass to make a newspaper catch fire. It was a bit difficult to look at, even when squinting, so I turned my head away while I waited for my eyes to adjust. What greeted my sight were more points of bright lights that fell through the smaller gaps between the leaves as they slowly moved while the sun rose. As one such point slowly made it''s way closer to me, I amused myself with the image of a giant with a magnifying glass trying to burn things using the sunlight. But against my expectation, a sudden pain flared on my arm! It was like someone was scraping the point of a red hot iron rod against my skin! It wasn''t just the feeling, but I could smell the scent of burning meat as well! In a panic, I roll over and get away from the spot I was at, and hid my body on the other side of the tree I was leaning against. I looked at my arm, trying to figure out what just happened. To my surprise, my right arm and a part of my torso was had black burn marks on it, complete with smoke rising from it. The shape was like if someone unsteadily tried to draw a line across the side of my body. I thought I was attacked, but the burn marks looked drastically different from any sort of attack that I could''ve come against, unless if someone tried to use a laser against me. The thought was stupid, as everything so far suggested that this world was most likely more primitive compared to Earth. At the very least, goblins wielding stone weapons most likely wouldn''t exist if the technology to create a portable laser weapon existed. I tried to wrap my my mind around what happened when I noticed that there were quite a lot of those bright spots moving around in the forest. They weren''t as bright as the ones before, as my eyes had mostly gotten used to the light, but those spots were obviously just the light of the fourth sun passing through the gaps in the foliage. But something suddenly felt off in my mind as I thought that. (Why is the fourth sun so much brighter than the other three combined?) It wasn''t just that, but things that I just passed off as different because this wasn''t Earth and was governed by rules that I didn''t understand, might not have been as different as I thought. It was weird to see stars in the sky during midday. It was weird that one sun would be so much brighter than three others. It was weird that I could stare at any sun without suffering from bright spots at the very least. And, why could vampires walk around in broad daylight without any consequences? The answer, they couldn''t. I made a fundamental presumption that was entirely wrong. I arrived in this world, not during the day, but the night. Vampires were creatures of the night, so it was a given that they''d have superior night vision compared to humans. It was a given that they''d primarily operate during the night and hide during the day like any other nocturnal creature. And, as with the common lore of vampires, it was given that their biggest weakness was sunlight. My burns didn''t come from someone with some sort of mysterious weapon out to take my life or something, it was the effect of being under direct sunlight. Suddenly those bright spots moving around started to look much more threatening than they did mere seconds ago. Here I was, under the flimsy and unpredictable shade of a forest, and dawn had come. I didn''t have a moment to lose. Without any real options, I turned around and started to stab at the soil in between the roots of the tree I was hiding under with my claws. The canopy didn''t offer reliable protection against the deadly sunlight, and if the wind blew, the movement of the rays would be completely beyond my ability to predict. I needed solid cover, and the only thing that could give me that right now was the ground itself. Not worrying about the fact that I was scraping away the skin on my hands, I desperately dug, flinging soil behind me. My heart pounded in my chest more than it ever had. I could smell blood as my hands bled from the reckless digging, but rather than stimulate my appetite, all it did was remind me of my mortality. Quickly, as fast as I could. As the minutes passed on, as the brighter the surrounding world became, the more I was pressed into a corner, both figuratively and literally. I started to push my body into the small hole as I dug it. I was desperate for the small, tangible safety from the greatest threat to my life. I didn''t know how long it took. Possibly mere minutes, but it felt like hours. But I managed to dig a hole big enough to fit my entire body inside of awkwardly, lying on my back, my legs folded above me, I covered all but a small hole to both breathe through, as well as to see, even if the world outside was inverted from my position. Even still, I was careful about it. The hole was small and level to the ground. But just in case sunlight poured through it unexpectedly, I held onto some loose dirt to fill it in, even if I risked suffocating because of it. I bared my fangs as I glared at the world that was so bright it almost hurt my eyes. (Damnit! How could you? How could you take away half the world from me?!) Hate filled my heart as I stared at the moving bright spots created by my nemesis. In my head, I understood that the hate and anger was completely unjustified, that it wasn''t a malicious attack by someone out to get me or something. But emotionally, I couldn''t accept it. I had known when I chose to become a vampire that I most likely wouldn''t be able to walk around during the day. I knew, but I didn''t realize how different it was to know when compared to understanding. Now, squeezing my body into a tiny, dirty hole, the feelings that welled from within were as dark and dirty as the dirt around me. I couldn''t accept the fact that I was being denied the daytime, even though almost all living creatures on Earth, including myself, were forced to give up between a third to half a day just to sleep. Such logic couldn''t temper my thoughts as I just stared and loathed. The fact that my wounds wouldn''t stop throbbing didn''t help in the matter. Chapter 04 – Dungeon Discovery No matter how terrible it was, the sun eventually went away. On the other hand, I didn''t manage to get a wink of sleep the entire time. The sun just continued to overbearingly pressure me the entire time. Once I was sure that it was gone, I opened up the entrance to my dugout. I poked my head out and looked left, right, and up, making sure there weren''t any traces of the sun. With a sigh of relief, I pulled myself out. (So much for my bath. I immediately got covered in dirt and blood again) I looked down at my hands. Just last night they looked so soft and smooth, but now they were ragged and bloody. If I didn''t find a way to properly protect myself during the day, my maxed initial appearance settings were going to go down the drain. (Gah, another thing to hate the sun for!) Before I realized it, pain was shooting up from my hands, and I unclenched them. The need to make progress had gotten much stronger, so I hurried to the river bank. There, I found the things I left behind yesterday...most of it. The rabbit pelt was gone. It seemed like some animal took it since everything else was still there. While it was annoying, for me it was actually the least important bit. Without further ado, I quickly rinsed myself in the river, then put in some work to modify the goblin loincloths. Using my claws, I made some quick snips here and there and tied other parts together. What resulted was a leather bikini. The absolute most I could do with my skills and available materials. It was pretty embarrassing to wear, but it was better than being naked. Barely. Unfortunately the top did nothing to support me, and only acted as covering. If I was more skilled, I probably could''ve gotten a bit of support out of it, but the thought only lowered my mood even further. There wasn''t anything more I could do, so I picked up my weapons. Even just holding my weapons hurt my hands, but I grit my teeth and bore with it. While they weren''t much, they did increase my survival chances. Bearing with the pain, I crossed the river, and continued towards the mountain I could occasionally see. It didn''t take long before I found a pair of goblins. One armed with a stone axe, the other a spear. They were lazily walking together. It looked like they were sleepy, as one of them yawned. My stomach started to complain to me that it was empty. I didn''t have any reason to refuse it. With that, I threw one of my spears at the pair and went into a mad dash, a spear in one hand, axe in the other. The thrown spear didn''t quite hit it''s mark, but it did graze the spear wielding goblin, making it flinch long enough for me to close the gap and stab it through the eye with my second spear. I let go of it and turned to the second goblin, who was still in the middle of recovering from it''s surprise. Without waiting for it, I closed the extra step in between us and swung down my axe, leaving a large gash through it''s right shoulder. It stumbled a step back as it lost it''s balance, but I closed the difference in an instant, and without any hesitation, I bit into it''s neck, loudly slurping it''s blood. Once it was drained, I pounced on the first goblin and emptied it as well. Only when there wasn''t a drop left for me to drink did I come up for air again, and with the cool air entering my lungs, did my mind clear enough for me to think again. Once again I had lost myself to my blood lust. It was definitely going to be difficult to handle, but absolutely necessary to be able fit into any society I find...unless if it''s a vampire society. As I reached out to pick up my weapons, I noticed that there wasn''t any pain from my hands anymore. I looked down, and realized that they had healed up completely. There wasn''t any trace of the tears from the digging. I touched the skin on my palms and fingers and marvelled how they was just as perfect as when I first arrived in this world. The only conclusion I could come up with was that drinking blood also healed me. The fact wasn''t too much of surprise, but how quickly I healed due to it was. I also touched the burn marks on my arm, and while they were still there, it didn''t hurt as much as before. A few more goblins and even that would disappear without a trace. In terms of consolation, this was a pretty decent one, I thought. It made me wonder just how much I could heal this way, but I wasn''t eager to do any experimenting. With a bit of a skip in my step, I picked up a pair of spears and an axe, and continued on my way. As I walked, I confirmed my status again. I had gained another level, and learned the [Axe Technique] skill. All my stats had risen a little thanks to the level as well. Some more good things to happen to me since coming here. But that aside, I had noticed that the slope I was climbing had been growing a bit steeper. I hoped that it meant that I''d find a cave soon, as no shelter would be as good as that for me. If not, then I''d have to dig myself a hole again, though this time I knew to prepare it earlier. A few more hours of climbing, and I had reached a dead end. Rather, the ground grew more rocky and the slop had suddenly increased to the point where it wouldn''t be called hiking, but rather something closer to rock climbing. For a second, I considered climbing the steep slope to get a view of my surroundings when I noticed an odd feature on the mountainside. There was a break in a particularly rocky part of the cliff. With my curiosity piqued, I tried having a look at the only distinct feature I could see. The break revealed itself to be a small cave, just big enough for two people to comfortably walk side by side through. I sniffed the air and listened carefully, but couldn''t detect anything in particular. It seemed like the cave was vacant. If that was the case, it would make a perfect base for me. A bit eager, I stepped inside, lightly tracing the walls with a finger. The stone was smooth and dry, though highly irregular. The cave itself wound back and forth lazily, but despite not being able to see outside anymore, I could still see just barely. There was a faint light from further in that provided just enough light for me to not walk into one of the walls. Suddenly, the cave opened up into a large room. It was an almost perfect dome about as big as half of a basketball court. The floor was even and flat, and the walls were smoothly carved from the rock face. The room was empty, save for a stone structure sitting off to one side. It was an elegantly carved stone fountain. The circular rim had a nice, wavy pattern on the outside, and the flat lip was both high and wide enough to comfortably sit on. The water was clear, and it looked like it was properly drained through small holes at the water''s edge on the rim. In the middle, there was a large, cylindrical pedestal. Water was shooting out of a ring of holes from the pedestal''s sides, projecting outwards only a little and making a crisscrossing curtain of water that splashed down. The waist high pedestal itself was large enough for an an adult to stand on comfortably, but was empty for some reason. I leaned my weapons against a wall and brushed my hand against the fountain''s edge. Quite a bit of dust had accumulated on it, suggesting that it hadn''t been used in a long time. It felt like a good place for me to make my base. It was a nice sized room that came with it''s own water source. I didn''t need it to drink, but it would be great to be able to not worry about water for cleaning and washing. Prey seemed to be plentiful outside, and best of all, the short but twisting corridor that lead to this room blocked the damnable sun. If I could make a sturdy door, then I didn''t even have to worry about animals or monsters wandering in and attacking me. That said, I wanted furniture. Or at least the equipment to make some furniture, like a bed, or a bed, but especially a bed. I hadn''t slept at all in the last two days. (Huh?) I chalked it up to the stress earlier, but now that I was more relaxed, I noticed that I wasn''t feeling sleepy at all. I''ve been going on for more than 24 hours already, yet there wasn''t a hint of being sleepy. Did my body now work on a completely different circadian rhythm? Or was it simply just better able to deal with sleep deprivation that much better? It was apparent that I had a ton to figure out about my new body. I splashed the water from the fountain onto the rim and started to scrub all the dust off of it. Then I moved on and washed the pillar itself before cleaning myself. When I climbed back onto the fountain ledge, I saw that the water had gotten cloudy. I hoped that I didn''t mess the fountain up, and that it would be able to refresh the water on it''s own. Now that it was clean, I climbed on top of the pedestal, put my hands on my hips, thrust out my chest, and yelled in the best, deep and booming voice I could let out. "Bow down pathetic mortals! For now, I.Am.Your.GOD!" ... Despite my best efforts, the voice that bounced around the hard walls was still light and girly. But even still, I didn''t regret it in the slightest. A pedestal like that existed for someone to use to look down on others, even if I was the only person in the room. Satisfied with my foolishness, I lay down on the fountain lip to rest a bit, but a surprising sight greeted me instead. The ceiling was covered in little glowing dots, like it was trying to be a recreation of the stars outside. I had forgotten, but it was strange that I could see in this room so clearly. Without that glowing ceiling, the cave should''ve been pitch dark after the first few bends, but instead was probably brighter than the outside. This clinched it. This was going to be my new home for the foreseeable future. It would''ve been a shame for something this nice to be left abandoned. After a short break, I noticed that there was another entrance on the other side of the fountain. Thinking about it, it was pretty obvious, but I had gotten completely distracted by the strange sight of a fountain inside of a cave. Piqued, I tried exploring this path. Just like the other path, the cave winded back and forth gently for a short while before light from the other side started to reach me. But unlike the first time, the light on this side was much brighter, making it difficult for me to see. I put a hand on one wall as I followed the path, blinded by the strong light. Suddenly I stepped on what felt like grass. The cave floor was hard stone all the way through, so there was no way for grass to be growing anywhere. The rock wall ended, but I took a few more steps, feeling out the grass. My eyes finally adjusted to the brightness and I froze at the sight before me. What greeted me was the sight of an open field. A giant plains that continued for as far as I could see, the ground covered in tall grass. Somehow, I entered a mountain, and after walking less than 100 meters, I ended up outside again. There was no way I had somehow gotten to the other side of the mountain so quickly, nor could it have been some sort of clearing hidden inside of the mountain or something. I felt like I was having heart palpitations. My hands were shaking and I was hyperventilating. This scene was absurd, and went straight beyond simply not adhering to my own brand of common sense. This was wrong. So extremely wrong that I couldn''t wrap my head around it. I rotated my head skyward to give myself some breathing space, but instead something bright entered my eyes, forcing me to squint, right before my eyes almost shot out of their sockets. Everything was pushed aside for a single emotion: terror. Turning around, my feet took me back the way I came, faster than I could think. I didn''t have time for that, nor the leeway. I slammed into the cave wall, but it hardly did anything to slow me down, as I just dragged myself back to my feet and continued running, bouncing off the walls in the narrow hall like a pinball. Soon, I ended up back in the fountain room. Without a single thought, I dove into the fountain and hid my body behind the pedestal under the curtain of water. I held my head in my shaking hands, tears running down my face as I desperately drew breath. ... (How did I even get back?) Once I had calmed down enough for my brain to reboot, the most obvious question struck me. I had been standing under the sun for a good ten seconds before I freaked out and ran for the shade. If my previous experience proved, it took only a fraction of a second for my my skin to start incinerating like a paper airplane being shot down by a sci-fi plasma cannon. I looked down at my hands and there weren''t any burn marks on them. I stretched around and inspected my body the best I could without a mirror and couldn''t find a single mar on my skin outside of the partially healed burns from the previous day. Somehow, I had come out of that ordeal completely unharmed. The very thought and inconsistency with my sole previous experience was so mind boggling that I thought my brain was starting to overheat as I tried to process it and simply dunk my head into the water in a desperate attempt to distract myself. ... Once my lungs started to burn from the lack of oxygen, I surfaced and leaned against the fountain''s pillar, too mentally tired to properly support my body as I tried to wrap my head around the situation. Sunlight was deadly against vampires like me, just like in the stories. The effect was instantaneous, as I had experienced. But the sun in those plains had no effect on my body. Either there was some sort of hidden factor that, combined with the sun, caused me to spontaneously combust, or that sun wasn''t real. It was then that I came to realize a suspicious point, and got up. I''d been unnerved enough that I was shaking as I got out of the fountain, but if I''d regret it if I didn''t check out the truth. With unsteady steps, I made my way to the first entrance and slowly made my way outside with my body pressing against the wall. After a few gentle turns, I reached the end of the tunnel. One glance was all it took for me to confirm it: it was still night. I could see the stars and three coloured objects in the sky, which were most likely moons, not suns. I reached out and let the light touch my skin directly to further confirm that I wasn''t hallucinating or something. Now that I had confirmed this, I went back into the cave, past the fountain, and reached the other side. I was this time greeted by a vast, open plains. And on this side, it was day. It wasn''t possible for me to have lost track of time to the degree that midnight had turned to midday in the less than hundred meters I had travelled just now. With a shaking hand, I reached out to test the light on this side of the cave. The tip of my claw grew light from the sun, but aside from that, nothing had happened. But that wasn''t enough proof. It was possible my claws were simply impervious to such an issue, so after I steadied my breath, I reached out a bit further, and let the light touch the tip of my finger. Then the first knuckle, and the second, then the palm of my hand. I kept moving out further and further, before my entire body was bathing in the light of the sun, except that was impossible from my own experience. If I was standing under sunlight without turning into ash, then the only possible answer was that I wasn''t actually standing under the sun in the first place. The fact that just on the other side of the cave it was still night was proof of that. I hadn''t somehow teleported to the other side of the world or something, but I was in a place that simply seemed like it was outside during the day, rather than actually be that. A space that simulated an environment, that defied the physical limitations of location. A place perhaps bigger on the inside than the outside. In all sorts of games and stories, there was one that fit that description: the dungeon. Especially in recent books, dungeons were a magical space that simulated various environments including outdoor ones. They endlessly spawned monsters and were either impervious to or automatically repaired any damage to the environment within. They also often automatically removed anything that wasn''t alive if they weren''t carried by something that was after a certain amount of time. On top of that, treasures of all sorts existed to be harvested from within. Their purposes varied from being something intentionally created by an intelligent force to draw people inside to spontaneously coming to existence as a physical phenomena that existed in the world. There were a lot of rules I needed to figure out, but it was probably safe to assume that the fountain room was most likely a part of this dungeon. If this wasn''t the only one in the world, then it was pretty likely that fountains existed at the beginning of every dungeon. That being said, it was weird for there to be such a thing. A room that indicated the beginning of the dungeon wasn''t too strange, but a fountain specifically was weird. Why water? Anything could''ve been used to greet people, and anyone who purposely came to a dungeon would''ve brought their own water source. It wasn''t like the nearest river was that far in the first place. I couldn''t figure out the reason, so instead I came back from my tangent. Frankly speaking, I was still shaking. The incident the previous day had obviously traumatized me, and just standing in this artificial sunlight really put me on edge. But on the other hand, I had found a dungeon. Dungeons were pretty much always treasure troves in fantasy stories. Even if there weren''t any literal treasure, there were monsters, which meant I had an endless supply of blood to feed off of. For me, that meant food, XP, and free skills. For a vampire, I imagined that these were more important than any kind of treasure that could be found in any chest. Since I declared that fountain as my new home, this dungeon was my backyard. It was only natural that I''d conquer such a thing! (But maybe tomorrow) I was a vampire, so I operated better at night. If it was daytime inside the dungeon, then I''d simply wait until it was night here before I started any hunting. With that thought, I turned around and walked back to my home and lay down on the fountain lip. The stone was a bit cold for sleeping on, especially with how skimpy my outfit was, but it wasn''t unbearably so. So with that, I went to sleep for the first time since arriving in this world. Chapter 05 – First Floor ... (I can''t sleep...) It seemed like I''ve been rolling around and changing positions for a few hours now, but I just wasn''t tired at all. No matter how much I closed my eyes, my mind wouldn''t drift off to the lands of dreams. I ended up getting up from all the boredom and gave in. If I couldn''t sleep, then I''d just face the music and go do something. But if I went outside, if it wasn''t day already, then it would be day soon, so the only direction I could go was deeper into the dungeon. With my mind set, I picked up my looted weapons and my feet brought me back to those plains, despite how harsh the bright sun was on my eyes. Looking at at the plains, it was obvious that it would be a pain to hunt there. The tall grass did an excellent job at hiding any monsters, and the vast featurelessness of it all made it easy to get lost. At least the entrance itself became a landmark, but that depended on how far everything went. But standing around wouldn''t do me any good, and with an unsteady step, I started my exploration of the dungeon. It didn''t take long for me to notice that the plains weren''t entirely featureless. While most of it was composed of chest-high grass, even from the entrance, there was plenty of short, ankle-high grass as well, and that short grass made a path. It felt like things were designed so I was supposed to stay on the path while exploring. Well, being ambushed in the taller grass and being forced to fight something that could easily hide in it was scary, so I naturally avoided trying that route. But as expected of a dungeon, there were even corridors and everything set up. The paths were generally pretty straight and ended with junctions or sharp turns. I did my best to remember the route I was taking, even occasionally looking back to confirm my orientation relative to the large stone that marked the entrance. I was glad I had honed my internal map-making skills as a kid, as this all reminded me of all those maze-like dungeons that often showed up in the older retro games. After a handful of turns, something appeared on the path. It was a white rabbit. Except it wasn''t like one from Earth. This one was big, and when it noticed me, it bared it''s teeth, some of which were easily as long as my hand. It was the same animal that I found the day before that the first goblin had, but this one was a live. Without warning, the big rabbit charged straight at me! I figured that it would run away instead like a normal rabbit, so it''s actions took me by surprise, delaying my reaction. As it tried to snap at me, I leaped to the side, letting it glide past me mid-leap. The rabbit landed just past where I was, wherein I turned and swung down my axe, cleanly bisecting the small monster...or rather, more like crushed it. The axe wasn''t as sharp as I thought, so the big rabbit''s guts were splattered on the ground, giving me a huge whiff of it''s blood. The next thing I knew, I was holding the rabbit corpse in my hands and was licking off the traces of blood from my lips. I wasn''t that satisfied though. There wasn''t much blood in a creature this small. It was even less than that of a goblin, which was further reduced by the amount lost when I crushed it''s guts with the blunt axe. Rather, I ended up sucking it''s blood without thinking at all. The more I drink, the more it was like my body was going on autopilot to get any blood I smelt into my body. This was extremely dangerous. Not only could I end up trying to drink in the middle of a fight at this rate, but someday, I might try to drink the blood of something I shouldn''t, like a person who only cut their finger. I would never be able to live around other people if I didn''t get control over my urges. That said, I dropped the rabbit corpse and checked my weapons. It seemed like I dropped them all while I was engrossed in feeding. The spears looked fine at a glance, but the axe head had cracked. It might still be usable, but only barely. I still had two good weapons, and even my claws if those broke, so it wasn''t much of a loss. poof! There was a sudden flicker of light and puff of smoke behind me, causing me to stagger back and lose my balance as I fell onto my butt, acutely aware and annoyed by how my chest continued to bounce up and down for several seconds after I had stopped moving. The rabbit corpse has disappeared, and in it''s place was a soft looking pelt. I got up and inspected the white fur. The size and shape looked like it was the hide of the rabbit I had just felled, but it was entirely undamaged, without a single trace of the crushing I had given the monster. The underside was soft and dry, a nice light brown coloration of treated leather. Even when I sniffed it, there wasn''t a trace of fat or blood on it. Somehow the monster had turned into a perfectly processed pelt. All I could think of was that it was how dungeon monsters worked. When one was defeated, it would turn into an item drop after a few seconds. But the fact that I managed to drink it''s blood earlier, and didn''t feel any hungrier after the monster disappeared, it looked like if you can extract stuff off of the bodies before the despawn you can keep them. It seemed like dungeon monsters were strangely realistic in weird places, while not in others. Especially the way they disappear and drop items made me hesitate to consider them living creatures. They really felt more like a group of bits that jumped out of the computer that generated it. As I was about to move on, I saw a small grey gem on the ground. It looked it it was buried under the pelt. It was small enough that I could fit a dozen in my closed fist without any problems. I wasn''t sure what it was, but it was soft like a gummie candy. Some fantasy books had the staple of monsters having some sort of magic stone in their bodies that could be used to make all sorts of things. At the worst, I could use it as a decoration, so I placed it into the middle of the rabbit pelt to carry. I still had that sheet of paper from the beginning tightly held in my hand as well. Carrying it like that was a bit of a pain, so I added it to the gem before wrapping the pelt around the two securely then tied it around my neck like a short scarf before I continued on my way. It didn''t take long before I had my next encounter. This time I was faced with a transparent blue hemisphere the size of a large beach ball that jiggled as it moved towards me. The outside looked like was protected with a thing but sturdy membrane and the inside was entirely filled with some sort of jelly-like fluid aside from a single core the size of a baseball that looked a lot like a cell''s nucleus. The nucleus lazily swam around as the main body slowly shuffled my way. The monster in front of me was a slime. There was no way to call it anything else. The staple monster of most fantasy genres, especially eastern ones. Once the slime was a bit outside of arm''s reach, a part of it extended and formed into a tentacle. Some R-18 thoughts flashed through my mind and made me freeze, but I shook those thoughts away. Such a thing didn''t make any sense if you thought about it for even a second. A soft, squishy sensation wrapped around my arm, bringing my thoughts back to my current situation. The slime pulled on my arm, but I moved a foot and braced myself, resisting it. But against, my expectation, when it pulled again, the blue blob flung itself towards me. Wary of it trying to eat my face or something, I quickly move to the side, causing the gelatin snack to bounce twice on the ground before stopping. It tugged on my arm again and jumped, but once again I avoided it. This wasn''t going anywhere, but I wasn''t stupid enough to allow it a third try. There was a chance it was smarter than it appeared. Before it could jump again, I spun one of my spears and cut through the tentacle. The transparent jelly spewed out from the severed ends before the slime sealed the end and withdrew it''s appendage. The remaining bit partially deflated as the fluids spilled out, leaving me with a weird hollow tube wrapped around my arm, but otherwise unmoving. Not wanting the slime to have time to try something else, I quickly thrust my spear into it, aiming for the nucleus. It may have been moving around, but it was slow and predictable. On my own, the strike might not have been perfect, but my [Spear Technique] skill probably corrected my aim a little and the little orb was perfectly split in half. The main body slumped down and deflated down to the size of a soccer ball, darkening in colour before it stopped moving. Cautiously, I stepped up to it and poked the mass. The body jiggled like a gelatin dessert, but didn''t show any signs of life. (Is it possible for me to eat?) Now that it was dealt with, this was my first question. The best part of killing a monster here was drinking it''s blood to both sate my hunger and gain new skills. This slime probably had skills as well, and while one probably wouldn''t be enough for me to learn anything, it was filled with some sort of life giving fluid. And as an added bonus, the scent alone was nice, like the faint sweetness of a flower or a freshly baked dessert from a small distance. With a little bit of trepidation, I picked the slime up, dug my fangs through it''s membrane, and sucked on the fluids. The consistency really was like a jelly, though it flowed much better than any gelatin snack I''ve ever had. And rather than a fruit flavour, it tasted like a weakened version of a vanilla flavoured short cake. It was just good enough that it was better than nothing, but hardly satisfying at all. Since I probably wouldn''t ever be able to enjoy any kind of cake for the rest of this life, it did make me hope that there would be a monster that tasted similar, but was much more strongly flavoured. If I could get find a monster who''s blood was especially rich, and have it with the life fluids of a monster that tasted similar but much stronger than a slime''s, it would make for a full-course vampire meal. When I started to imagine such a thing, and a grin crept up onto my face as I vacantly looked at the sky. I didn''t know where to find such a thing, but it became a dream of mine. Maybe in the future I''d find a wider variety of blood and blood-like fluids I could drink and enjoy. There were a lot of things for me to look forward to. For now, I wiped the drool off of my chin and moved to find more prey, and hopefully the way deeper into the dungeon. But after a couple of steps, I became aware of the feeling of wetness on my neck and chest. I used the rabbit pelt to wipe myself, but even my bikini top was wet. I could only ignore it and hope it got dry quickly. The slime corpse had disappeared in light and smoke as well, leaving a small clay jar the size of my fist and a tiny blue gem. The jar was filled with a jelly of some sort, but when I tried eating some of it, there wasn''t any flavour to be had at all. It was probably something a bit different from the jelly body of the slime, maybe an extract. The slime tentacle that had wrapped around my left wrist was still around, so I peeled it off and tossed it aside. There was a bit of discoloration on my skin where it was in contact. It might''ve been trying to dissolve my arm while it held on, but it was probably too weak to do so without pulling me inside of it''s body. Everything was wrapped up in my rabbit pelt and tied to my neck. The weight was starting to pull at my throat and was a bit uncomfortable, but I had to bear with it if I didn''t want to just throw away all my loot. It didn''t take long before my third encounter. This time I was face-to-face with a wolf in the colours of wet dirt. The sharp increase in difficulty rooted me until it growled and charged at me. My instincts kicked in and I dove to the side, avoiding those intimidating teeth. As I clamoured back onto my feet and turned around, the beast had already started it''s next charge. My mind blanked out as my chest filled with fear and trepidation. I couldn''t decide on how to fight this wolf, and hence my hand froze as I pointed one of my spears at it, without even bracing it properly. But luck was on my side. The wolf was in mid-jump, and while poorly aimed, the head of my spear struck into the beast''s shoulder, the force of it''s momentum sliding the spear out of my hand, but rather than be thrown out of the way uselessly, the butt end impacted on the ground and braced the shaft against the wolf''s movement, driving the head through it''s hide, gouging out a sizable tear in it''s flesh. The wolf tumbled as the excessive force broke the spear in half. For me, though, the smell of it''s blood drifted over and filled my senses. Hunger and desire blew away the fear I was just now harbouring. Only a single thought occupied my mind. (I wonder what it tastes like?) The wolf got back up, but the damage to it''s shoulder prevented it from using one of it''s forelegs. Now that it was hurt, it wasn''t able to do the big leaping attacks like before, and could only try to snap at me with it''s jaws as it awkwardly tried to move into range. For me, the fight had already become a simple matter. I simply stepped into it''s side, then drove my claws into it''s flank as it tried to turn to face me. The light started to fade from it''s eyes as it twitched. Impatient, I pulled it closer and drove my fangs into the fur of it''s neck and bit down. I was rewarded with it''s warm life as it filled me. It''s earthy taste reminded me of a barbecued cut of cheap meat lathered with a no-name brand sauce. Pretty low class, but tasty despite the price. It wasn''t the most delicious thing in the world, but to me, the dopamine spike I got was like happiness itself. But like all good things, it didn''t last forever, and eventually the wolf ran dry. Or rather, I did it again. It didn''t happen with the slime since it''s fluid was much different from blood, but the second I smelt blood again, everything else stopped mattering. Or maybe it would happens with the slimes as well, now that I recognized it as not only edible but tasty, even if it was thin. Once I finished my small meal and waited for a short while, the wolf corpse disappeared like my other kills, and was replaced with some loot. This time it was two pairs of fangs as well as a small brown gem. The fangs were clearly from the wolve''s upper and lower jaws, as they were of different size and shape. I touched my own fangs and was left with a smile, confident that mine were much sharper than these. With so many meals almost back to back, I was starting to get a bit full. I didn''t know how vast the floor was, but I didn''t want to go back so quickly. My curiosity drove me to keep exploring, even if I''d start wasting my kills soon. Well, I doubted this dungeon was actually made for vampires like me, with having to deal with the harshness of the sun from the first floor, so I was really just taking even more advantage of the dungeon spawns than normal people would. Speaking of which, I didn''t know when it was, but I had stopped shaking. The artificial sun was still painfully bright, but I didn''t feel some sort of innate fear to it anymore. (But the real sun outside...) ... I squatted down and hugged my knees. That thing was still scary. Even just thinking about it. I wanted to overcome my fear of it, but frankly speaking, there really wasn''t much advantage of doing so unless if I found a way to walk outside under the sunlight. I was able to operate fine here, day or night, and everything I needed was here as well. There wasn''t really much of a reason for me go outside and risk being vaporized by losing track of the time. It was probably a good idea to eventually go and explore the outside as well, but for now, this dungeon was more than big enough for me. With those thoughts firmly secured in my chest, I pumped my fist and jumped up to my feet, as I was reminded of something that was firmly attached, but not secured, to my chest. It turned out that the first floor of this dungeon only had four types of monsters. The big rabbit, the slime, wolf, and, it turned out, goblins. The goblins were pretty much the same as the ones outside, and ended up becoming an easy source of fresh weapons for me. While early on, the monsters always came only one at a time, after a few hours of exploring, their numbers increased, from two, to three, and finally to four. It also turned out that each monster had more than one drop, though they always dropped the same gems in addition to whatever else that I got from them. The rabbits gave me either their hides or a chunk of their meat. I took the hides but left the meat. I couldn''t eat them anyways. The slimes dropped a jar of gelatin or a bright green leaf that smelt like mint. When I tried to chew on the leaf, the mint taste was so repulsive that I almost choked and was left gasping for my breath for the next few minutes as the smell invaded my lungs. It was a shame too, since I liked mint in my previous life. I thought I could make toothpaste with it. Maybe it was just too strong? I kept a few but threw most of them away. The wolves left their fangs and their hides behind. Their hides were fully processed with the fur removed. They were large and tough, and I was looking forward to making clothes using them, although I knew basically nothing about leatherworking and only had the more bare bones experience in how to sew. I kept both drops and even used two of the hides as makeshift bags, replacing my first rabbit pelt. One was strapped onto my back and the other I carried by hand. The goblins either dropped a sealed glass bottle with a cloudy green liquid inside or a bag of nuts. I tried tasting the liquid in the bottle, but it was extremely bitter and smelt of moss. Both drops were failures to me, so all I got from them were their weapons. Also their gems. They had brown gems like the wolves. They were pretty and it was easy to carry even a large number of them as long as I wrapped them up in a hide properly. Also, there was a new type of goblin in the dungeon I hadn''t met before. They were virtually the same as the other two, but carried a sword, rather than a spear or axe. To be exact, it was one of those Aztec wooden swords with stones embedded in them along one edge like teeth. They cut amazingly well, but also were by far the most fragile of the three weapons. The teeth broke on almost anything hard, and because the stick had a slit for the stone teeth to be embedded in, they were bad at blocking and parrying as well, as they easily broke in the attempt. Unlike a real sword, it was a pure offensive weapon even beyond the axe, which I learned to block attacks reasonably well, though the spear was the best at it by far. When it came to feeding, I did get some more skills. I wasn''t sure what the rabbits gave me, but perhaps [Natural Weapons]? It leveled up while I was drinking from a wolf, so I was sure that they gave it at least. I also got [Fleet of Foot] off of the wolves as well, and even managed to get it to rank two. The latter was a generic passive that raised my [Agility], most likely as a percentage. Thanks to that, my movements had sped up quite a bit, and dodging and manoeuvring had gotten much easier. That alone had also made [Agility] my highest stat by far. I hoped to get similar skills for my other stats. Especially for [Intelligence]. I really wanted to learn magic so high [Intelligence] was important. The slimes gave me [Alter Form], but it was a racial so I couldn''t use it. It seemed that was the skill that allowed them to create tentacles. If I could use that, I could have some great late night fun when I got a girlfriend. Wait, I was a woman too. (What''s the common stance on same-sex relationships in this world anyways?) [Alter Form] reached rank two as well, even though I couldn''t use it. In addition, I got the [Create Acid] and [Acid Resistance] skills from them and got them to rank two. [Acid Resistance] did as the tin said, but [Create Acid] was quite interesting. At rank one it was only able to produce a few drops of a weak acid per second, but at rank two it got upgraded to being able to make a baseball-sized blob of acid of moderate strength at a time. I could even manipulate the effects to a certain degree, so if I maxed out the strength and viscosity, I effectively got an acid strong enough to be extremely painful if I hit a weak point, while thick enough for me to throw before it dripped through my fingers. [Acid Resistance] also prevented me from taking damage from my own attack, and when I drank a monster''s blood I recovered all my spent MP, making it a quite useful distraction. I couldn''t wait until my acids got strong enough to do serious damage on their own. From the goblins, I got the new skills [Axe Technique] as well as [Sword Technique]. Those two, along with [Spear Technique] all went up to rank two as well. While rank one only had a small about of benefits, rank two''s were pretty noticeable. Despite never having fought anything in my previous life, I could see a tangible amount of skill and ability that went into each of my strikes. It was as if I was an experienced veteran or something. [Blood Sucking] was such a powerful skill. By the way, it also rose to rank two, though most likely because I used it so much. Nothing else could''ve given me even a single point towards it after all. As a side note, [Breeder] had also risen in rank, though I didn''t want it to. I wanted that skill to go away, even if it had no effect on my body. In addition to all the monsters I had killed, eaten, and looted, there were two more things of note. The first was that there were traps. Most likely because it was the first floor, the traps were generally weak, though they did have the potential to be deadly, as they were often near where I found monsters. The most common trap I found was a simple foot trap. It was similar to a bear trap, but made with flexible branches and ivy. They simply immobilized me when I accidentally stepped on one, but the sound of them snapping shut often drew attention to nearby monsters, and I had to deal with both at the same time. It is against my beliefs to mention how my of them I found by stepping on one. The next common were just a wide pool of thick mud on the ground. Sometimes they were hidden with fallen grass, but they were always pretty obvious. I examined the first one I found a bit closely, but it looked like if you stepped in it, the heavy mud would impede your ability to pull your feet out, making it extremely difficult to move around. It was pretty nasty when it came to traps to deal with while fighting. But maybe because of that, they were the single easiest to avoid, even if they were big. Lastly, the hardest to find was also the most troublesome. They were basically a miniature pit. They weren''t very deep, and only big enough for a single foot to step through. Even if they were deeper, you would only get a single leg stuck due to their small size. But even then, they were only about as deep as a single step on a staircase. What made them nasty was that because the grass still grew from inside, all you could see was a slightly darker spot where the artificial sunlight didn''t reach as far down. And hidden inside was a single thin spike that would stab into your foot. The few times I got caught in one were extremely painful, and fighting with an injured foot was tough. It really made me wish I had construction boots or something. I doubted that those spikes could go through those thick soles. Fortunately, since I was a vampire, once I got past any ensuing fight, all I had to do was have a meal and my foot was healed. I pitied any normal person who would''ve had to walk around with a hole in their foot until it healed normally. Onto the next bit, I also found treasure chests here and there. The first one I found was suspicious as all hell, and gave me flashbacks to the mimics that would kill me in a certain dark fantasy action game. But no matter how much I examined it, there didn''t seem to be any problems, so I warily opened it using the end of a spear. The wooden chest opened without any fanfare, and when I looked inside, there was a pair of leather pants inside! I was so happy I actually cried. My first real piece of clothes! I removed the bikini bottom and put the pants on. They were a bit tight, but fit as if they were made for me. It was especially strange feeling it so snug against my crotch, but the pants wouldn''t fit any other way. It didn''t come with a belt, but I figured if I didn''t find one soon, I could always just make one from all the leather I had acquired. There were other chests I found along the way, but they either had metal coins in them or small glass bottles with various liquids inside. Most were a clear blue, but some were different. My experience with the goblin drop was fresh in my mind, so while I took them all, I didn''t check their contents. I didn''t know how long it had been, but I found myself in a large, cleared area. It was circular and the place didn''t open up into anywhere, but had plenty of space. The middle was barren without any grass, like it was made with a specific purpose in mind. A campfire came to mind, but it felt a bit weird to think that such a consideration would''ve been made on purpose. There were many other side clearings along the way as well, but none were as big as this one. A glance made me think that it was about as big as the fountain room I started off in, but it wasn''t like I had a measuring tape to confirm it. The main reason why I even considered spending any time here though, was that just past this ''room'' was a chest-high wooden door, and behind it was a staircase cut into the dirt. I couldn''t see where the staircase led to since it slowly curved to the left, but a few dozen meters away, I could see a space that was cut away from the plains. It looked like a large, circular area of the plains were simply cut out and stopped existing. It was deep enough that I couldn''t see the bottom from where I was standing, but it was most likely the goal of this dungeon floor. If that was the case, then it was obvious that there was a boss in wait over there. Once that realization came to mind, I started to debate the merits of facing off against the boss on the spot. The first consideration was my stuff. I had basically everything I owned on me, though it was also all stuff I had gotten since I first found this dungeon. I obviously couldn''t fight while carrying it, not something as strong as a boss. My choices were leave it here so it didn''t hinder my boss fight, or take it with me and drop it at the beginning of the fight, and hope it didn''t get in the way. I was pretty worried that anything I left without supervision might disappear, and it would suck if I beat the boss only to find out that my stuff was gone. Dungeons in fantasy stories often had cleanup systems in place, and I didn''t know what sort this one had, presuming it had one. That meant that I pretty much had to take my stuff with me to the fight, in case it''s taken away or eaten by something behind my back. The second consideration was my equipment. In terms of weapons, I had plenty, though most of it was of low quality. Thanks to all the animal hides I had gotten, it became easy to carry spare weapons. I had started to carry several spares tied together by a pelt. Pulling one out in the middle of a fight was dangerous, but it worked great for when I was forced to fight without replenishing my weapons several encounters in a row. But aside from my claws and fangs, my weapons were the worst. They were good enough for the random mobs that wandered the floor, but I was hesitant to imagine that they were enough against a boss. Since they were simply goblin loot, they rarely lasted more than two or three attacks, so it was easy to imagine even if I was able to continue to retrieve all my weapons as they broke, I might still be forced to fight with nothing but my [Natural Weapons] in the end. It wasn''t a pleasant thought against something that could possibly be faster and bigger than me. When it came to defence, I was stuck with nothing but my leather pants, and I wasn''t sure if it would count as actual armour. Since I didn''t have any real clothes aside from it, I was also hesitant to actually test it''s capabilities. Generally speaking, it was probably better to presume that I had no defensive equipment. Finally was my own strength. Unfortunately I had no way to really know on this front. What was the typical strength increase for bosses in this world? What was the typical amount of leeway needed for the fight to be considered ''safe''? My level had risen to 5 during my fighting on this floor, and was getting close to 6. Was that good, or was it bad? I had no idea. I was basically curb stomping all the monsters at this point, but if I was supposed to be doing that at the beginning, and then get strong enough to basically walk through everything before facing the boss as a real challenge, then I was still far from strong enough. I really wished I had access to a wiki or a forum. The thought made me realize just how much I used to rely on such a thing when the stakes had gotten pretty high. I often paused games I played to look up boss fights if I thought that I''d lose more progress than I wanted to risk if I died against it. Well, it was pretty rare for me to actually lose against a boss when I thought that the stakes were that high though. But this was real life, not some game. If I lost against the boss, then that was it. No continues, no nothing. I''d be sent back to that white place, and I''d lose everything. That sombre thought made me realize it just wasn''t worth the risk. It wasn''t like I was in a hurry. Enjoying my life was my top priority, and fighting these mobs was getting pretty fun. If the treasure chests respawned, then I could wait until I got some more equipment. I could also make some basic stuff with all the leather I had acquired as well. It would be nice to be wearing a full set of clothes when the boss fight happened. I couldn''t do much about the quality of my weapons, but I could at least learn to use my claws better first. I took a second look at the gates that barred me from the boss fight, and turned away. Since I was only going back, it didn''t take nearly as long as it did to get to the boss room. A few time I took a wrong turn, but for the most part my memory didn''t fail me. I didn''t have to fight any monsters until about a third of the way back. It seemed like it took a bit of time for them to respawn. The ones I did fight didn''t pose too much of a problem. Any damage I did take was quickly healed with a simple blood snack. I also got a bit more loot thanks to that. I checked a few spots where I found treasure chests, but they had despawned and the rooms were still empty. Maybe chests appeared randomly? I needed to do more exploration in the future. When I got back home, I dropped everything near the back entrance and stripped down before jumping into the fountain to wash myself. No matter how strong my blood thirst was, I was still able to resist licking off any blood that had splattered onto my body or spilt onto the ground. I didn''t know if it was my personal revulsion that made it possible, or that my blood thirst mostly just aimed me towards drinking directly from a body. It was nice to get clean, though I was starting to wish I had access to soap. I think it was made from lye and oils? Lye came from wood ash, so I could just burn down a tree to get that, but the oils were a problem. Animal fats worked, but the monsters I fought didn''t drop any and looked pretty lean. Or rather, they were pretty scraggly. Maybe I could find something better on a lower floor, but taking weeks or even months of exploring to find a good source of oil wasn''t very appealing. I might be able to get enough by just scraping little bits here and there instead. But to do that, I also needed a container. A jar of some sort at the very least. I might be able to make one if I could find clay. Maybe I could find some if I dug into the dirt in the dungeon? All sorts of ideas started to form as I bathed. Things I wanted, things I needed, stuff I wanted to do. Ideas kept popping into my mind one after another. Most of it ended up becoming quality of life items like proper clothes, cleaning equipment, furniture, etc. As I relaxed in the water, I noticed that it wasn''t as cloudy as it was when I last left the room. The bottom of the fountain didn''t have any residue either, so it was pretty clear that the fountain did renew it''s water. I was glad it meant that dirtying the water wouldn''t come to bite me in the ass in the future. Once I felt satisfied, I wiped myself down the best I could with my hands and wrung out my hair as I got out of the fountain. Towels and a hair dryer were pretty high on my list of wants as well. My hair especially was difficult to deal with, being so long. I had never had such long hair before so I kept forgetting about it, but when I did remember, I constantly worried about it getting caught in practically everything. I thought that women looked better with long hair, but actually having long hair was such a hassle. I was tempted to cut it with my claws, but I was also pretty hesitant about it. I could cut it on my own, but there was no way it would look good, and if I met people with hair that looked like was cut by a lawn mower would leave a much worse impression than simply excessively long hair. In the end, the fact that I could just deal with it when it became intolerable stayed my hand. When I got as dry as I could manage, I went back to the dungeon and harvested some of the tall grass that made the outer boundary. The grass was pretty strong, but was a cinch to cut with my claws. I cut them to a reasonable length, then took another batch and used them to tie the first set together as if it was string. What resulted in was a crude straw broom head. I had spears I could use as a shaft, but I figured that the broom head was too low quality to work out that well. Now that my tool was ready, moved all my stuff and put them on the fountain lip then splashed a bunch of water around the ground, then used my impromptu broom to sweep the ground of dirt and dust. Any time I did anything in this room my feet quickly got covered in dirt, and I was sick of it. Taking time to wash my entire body, only for my feet to get dirty the instant I took a step out annoyed me. It wouldn''t have been so bad if I had shoes, but I didn''t. I really wished I had a deck brush or something, as the grass broom did a rather poor job of pushing around the water and dirt, but it did get the job done eventually, even if it left broken pieces of grass all around. The dirty water was pushed out of the room and into the dungeon floor to be soaked up by the soft ground over there. But the floor was still pretty wet and wasn''t clean enough for me, so I grabbed one of my rabbit pelts from one of my bags and used it like a rag to wipe up the excess water and remaining dirt, as well as my broom''s leavings. I left the dirty pelt outside in the dungeon when I was done with it. I had plenty and it was easy to get more, so one wouldn''t go missing for me. Now that my home had reached the bare minimum of cleanliness, I put my clothes back on, untied my bags and spread out my loot. The first thing I did was take all weapons and lined them out across a section of wall. I had managed to bring back three spears, four axes, and four swords, all of goblin make. Or rather, since they appeared in the dungeon, perhaps they spawned with the goblins? Next, I spread out the rabbit pelts across the floor. I had twelve, and all together they made a nice, soft carpet, though since they weren''t connected, they easily separated and made gaps as I moved on top of them. Sewing them together was a priority once I finished organizing my things. After that, I lay the wolf hides in a pile. There were nine of them. I had more than enough to make a full set of clothes, though it presumed that I didn''t end up wasting most of them. I had never made my own clothes before, so there was going to be a lot of trial and error involved. At least it was easy for me to get more if I kept failing, so there wasn''t much pressure involved. I took one hide and spread it across the floor. On top, I placed all the rest of my loot. There were the slime jars, mint leaves, wolf fangs and little bottles I found in the various treasure chests. I had eighteen jars of jelly, five minty leaves, twelve sets of fangs and five bottles of variously coloured mystery liquids. I took one of the larger wolf fangs, then put the whole set along with the hide to the side by a wall. There wasn''t really much for me to do with any of that for now. The fang I cut down using my claws into roughly the shape of a curved needle. It was hard, delicate work. While my claw cut through the fang reasonably well, it was small, so I kept dropping it or poking my fingers. The end result, I could barely call it usable. It still had the same basic curvature to avoid making it too weak, but was as thin as I could make it. I had added a hole to pass thread through, but now I was lacking in that very thread to use. Well, it wasn''t like I hadn''t planned for that. I had a whole pile of wolf leather. I had already decided how to get my thread. I took one of the hides and spread it across an empty section of the floor, then while pinning it in place the best I could, I dragged one claw along the edge, following the curvature of the hide as close as I could. I repeated this over and over until a third of the hide was cut down into strips. If I needed more, I could just work on it again later on. Next up, I took three hides and lined them side by side, overlapping so that there weren''t any gaps to make one large, wide sheet. I grabbed my wolf fang needle and a strip of leather, passed the leather through the hole and started to sew leather together...or tried to. The very act of trying to get the needle through the hide was a lot harder than I imagined, and the needle slipped through my fingers twice before I just gave up in frustration. I knew leather clothes were held together either with glue or stitches. I didn''t have any glue nor any idea how to make it, so I went with stitches, but there was no way it could be this hard, or else it wouldn''t be used everywhere. At least I thought so. After thinking about it for a minute, I tried something different. If my needle couldn''t easily pass through the leather on it''s own, then I just needed to give it an easy path to follow. I used a claw to poke holes through the leather, making a simple crisscross pattern. Then I tied the end of the leather cord and passed the needle through the slits. This time not requiring any pressure at all. The cord wasn''t long enough, so I tied the end off then continued with the next strip. The process ended up not taking long at all, and all three hides became one large piece in no time. I removed any extraneous pieces of leather and squared off the outer edge before I admired my work. It was extremely rough and amateurish, but I was happy with my progress. Next, I lay on the giant sheet and after finding myself a good position, I pulled the ends over my body and wrapped myself up. From there, I poked a hole in the leather roughly where my shoulders were. I unwrapped myself and found the two slits my claws made, then opened holes centred around them big enough for my arms to easily fit through. Once done, I got up, picked the leather sheet up and put my arms through the holes before wrapping the whole thing around me again. I felt like an oversized burrito, but this was a necessary step. As straight as I could, I cut the leather at the height of my neck and removed the excess. Now I could see, but the sheet was digging into my shoulders. I removed the sheet and cut up the scrap, and sewed them to the top of the material before trying it out again. The new pieces became the upper shoulders, but I had to fix and redo them twice before it became remotely comfortable. I cut away the excess on the front as well so that I didn''t have a massive amount of spare leather flapping around. Originally, I planned it to simply meet at the middle, but then I realized I had no idea how to make or get a zipper, so I ended up letting the front flap reach the other arm in preparation to be held in place with buttons or something. Next, I cut up more leather to be a bit longer than my arms and sew them into a pair of tubes, which I attached to the arm holes. Finally, I adjusted the front and added a row of loops and wolf fangs in place of buttons to hold everything together. Now that I was done, I tried my new coat out! Giddy with excitement, I plunged my arms through the sleeves and buttoned the front together. Overall, it was heavy and stiff, though not as bad as it could be. The leather itself was soft and flexible. It would probably soften up even more as I wore it. I grabbed one of my spears and went out to the dungeon to try my new coat out. ... I came back, but was no longer wearing my new coat. Fundamentally it worked and did a great job of covering my body...but the weight and stiffness worked against me much more than I expected. It wasn''t like I couldn''t fight with it on. I was already strong enough that the coat didn''t hamper my movements to the degree that it could cause problems there, but despite that, it caused problems somewhere else entirely, which entirely prevented it''s use. The coat would move as one object along my skin whenever I moved around. My shoulders and back felt raw after only fighting a few monsters, but that wasn''t nearly as bad as the soreness of my chest. If I didn''t eat to heal up and remove my coat, I would''ve still been bleeding from the way my coat rubbed against my chest. The skin only broke a little, but the memory of the pain involuntarily surfaced when I looked at the coat. I threw it against a wall and slumped beside the fountain as tears leaked, both from the memory of the pain and all the time I had wasted. The coat might still be usable if I could layer the inside with something much softer, but until I found such a thing, it was a piece of trash, only good as a reminder of my failure. After a few minutes of self pity, I took a strip of leather and cut it up and laced some leather cordage through the front to secure it. I put it around my body and fastened the new strip. In only a couple of minutes, I had made a chest wrap. I tried some simple exercises in my room, and it proved to be quite effective. It was tight feeling, but that was exactly what I needed. My breasts had no space to move, and I was covered properly. At least better than that bikini. The realization that this was all I needed made me go back into the corner and cry about the waste of time I had created. Once I recovered, I went to do some more work before I headed back to my backyard, I mean the dungeon. I took a few more wolf pelts and worked them to create a large backpack. It was modelled after those big hiking backpacks I saw people wear sometimes, and had a couple of big pouches to hold small items like the gems and small bottles. It also had a large waist-band to increase it''s security and an additional band just below my breasts to hold the shoulder straps together while I fought. An announcement resounded in my head. The fact that it did happen made me feel a bit better regarding all the work that went into my failed coat. To celebrate the occasion, and also because I forgot, I made myself a simple belt and looped it onto my pants. I wished I had a belt buckle, but since I didn''t, I was forced to simply go with a simple knot. It wasn''t too secure, but it felt better to have it than not. As an added bonus, I could hang stuff off of it if I ever felt the need. As a final project, I cut a rectangular length of leather and used it to securely wrap my character sheet, then made a cord to tie it off tightly. Now I was reasonably sure that it would be safe as long as it didn''t get wet. I grabbed all the scrap leather and threw them into the dungeon to be consumed. I confirmed that everything else I threw out that way before had already gone, so I was sure my guess was right, that anything left alone in the dungeon would disappear after a while. With everything done, I grabbed my weapons and went back to do some level grinding in the dungeon. Chapter 06 – Second Floor I spent the next while exploring alternate paths through the dungeon. The paths were pretty complicated, so my mental map had quickly become a jumbled mess. I could roughly remember the main paths, but since it seemed like the routes often intersected and split apart, it was tough trying to figure out where and how they crossed. All along the way, I killed and ate and looted the monsters, as well as picked up the contents of any treasure chests I found. The monsters had gotten pretty easy to fight. My level was definitely higher than theirs, and their movements were pretty simple, making their actions easy to predict and counter. All the loot that I felt were worth taking were put into my backpack. Just having a proper bag was making all the difference. It was easy to put things in quickly and safely, yet even when the stuff moved around inside, the bag itself was snug and secure, making it easy to fight without having to remove it. It wasn''t perfect, and I kept a mental note of all the places where it needed improvements, like how I should''ve added little pouches on the waist-band to make it easy to put away little items like the coloured gems. My biggest complaint was how the leather rubbed against my skin. If I didn''t keep healing by drinking blood regularly, the skin directly touching the leather would''ve gotten raw after an hour of wear. Since the danger to me was starting to get pretty low, I spent a lot of time trying to resist my urge to feed, but the progress hadn''t been going so well. I tried to make my goal to wait ten seconds before eating after a kill, but waiting even a single second was beyond my self control until I had eaten to the point where I had started to feel bloated. By that point though, the urge had weakened enough that it felt like there wasn''t much point in practising, but I did it anyways. I held a fresh corpse in my hands and breathed in the scent while resisting the urge to bite down. I hoped it was helping, because every time I started to feel hungry again I wasn''t able to stop myself from biting down immediately. My exploration speed was going up as I got used to fighting and looting. By the time I returned to my home to empty my bag and clean up twice, my level had reached ten. [Fleet of Foot], [Create Acid], [Acid Resistance], and [Natural Weapons] had all reached rank 3, and I could fell the tangible benefits of them all. My movement was clearly faster, my acids were now strong enough to eat into the monster''s flesh in seconds, and my claws developed an extendable aura that could cut through anything I fed them like warm butter. In addition to that, I had learned the [Throwing Technique] skill after repeatedly throwing my weapons at monsters. The skill simply improved the strength and accuracy of my throws. If I wasn''t strong enough to beat the boss, I had no idea how you were supposed to figure that out without sacrificing entire groups of people to find out. Every time I went back, I spent a little while working on my equipment. Little changes to my backpack, or replacing my chest wrap as I came up with new ideas. I added additional pouches on the bag to make it easier to use, but the biggest change for me was when I tried lining the entire inner surface where the leather touched my skin with rabbit fur. It was a lot of work to sew it so it didn''t move around, but once I did that, the softness of the fur got rid of almost all the chafing all at once. It was so effective that I considered trying it to redeem my failed coat, but I realized that the problems with it was far more than just the lining. On the other hand, I tried making a chest wrap entirely out of a rabbit pelt, and it worked out great. So great that I ended up making a few spare and even some panties the same way. Those itched a little, but the results were better than wearing the pants without anything in between. As I was working on the pelts, I noticed that the rabbit leather was much thinner and softer than the wolf leather. I wondered if panties would work better if I reversed the facing of the material instead. It was something for me to consider in the future when I remembered about it. Once my gear was ready, I sped through the dungeon, using the shortest path I knew. I only brought my bag and a few of each goblin weapons. I didn''t want to bring anything that would slow me down, but I figured the bag would be necessary if the boss loot ended up being big enough get in the way of fighting if I carried it by hand. I ran past the monsters until I found the clearing right before the boss gate. I had found two more clearings like this in other places, and the only explanation I could come up with were that they were rest places. That said, I didn''t need much space or time to prepare for a boss room. I still hadn''t felt sleepy once since coming to this world, and my physical exhaustion would be blown away whenever I drank some blood. That said, once I reached the clearing, I backtracked a bit and intercepted the last group of monsters I blew past. They were chasing me, but didn''t get far due to the difference in [Agility]. Three brown wolves. I took them all down with a single spear and drank their blood to top myself off and helped myself to their drops. Throwing my cracked spear away, I took hold of a new one in my right hand and a sword in my left, then held my pelt of spare weapons untied so it would be easy to grab more if the boss fight ended up going worse than I hoped. I faced the wooden gate. It was simple, yet robust. Just a pair of wooden posts combined with two side swinging doors with black cast iron frame and hinges. The heavy doors swung in silently when I pushed them. The lack of sound despite their size inversely raised the tension. Behind the gate, the ground sunk down in the shape of stairs, and softly bent to the left. I took each dirt step deliberately and carefully. A trap after the boss door was crazy, but just because it wouldn''t be done in a game was no reason why it wouldn''t be done here as well. But as luck would have it, there was no indication that there was such a cheap trap, and when I made a full 90 degree turn and out of sight of the gate, the ground opened up in front of me. The floor was grass again, but the area was a large circular depression cut out from the plains. The walls were almost 10 meters high and made from packed dirt. There was another large wooden door on the far side, this time over two meters tall. In between me and the door was a large brown wolf. This one had white stripes and was twice the size of the previous brown wolves, of which there was a pair of flanking the bigger wolf. They were laying down as if asleep, but as my foot entered the ring, all three woke up and looked right at me as if they were some sort of machine that suddenly got power. But unlike a machine, they started to growl and pace around, the smaller brown wolves trying to flank me as the bigger one approached from the front. It was obvious that if things stayed 3v1 for long, I''d be at a serious disadvantage, so it was the first problem I needed to fix. With that in mind, when I judged the spacing was good, I threw my bundled weapons at the middle wolf then sprinted towards the one on my right while the line of sight to the big wolf was obscured. The wolf I charged at froze for a split second before charging at me, it''s maw gaping wide as it snarled. For me who had seen the exact same thing dozens of times, it was a simple and easy attack to deal with. With a single thrust, my spearhead entered the wolf''s eye before being pulled out immediately. I was careful not to let the stone blade hit the back of the wolf''s skull as the bone was hard enough to shatter the brittle spearhead in an instant. The wolf collapsed mid step, and it''s body dragged along the ground gouging up the soft grass before coming to a full stop. I didn''t need to check to confirm that it was dead. Experience had taught me that was enough for these wolves. The remaining two wolves realized what happened in the second they were surprised by my actions, and changed directions to charge at me directly, abandoning their previous strategy after it had so spectacularly failed. Just like before, I counter-charged the bigger wolf. But this time, due to the positioning, the smaller wolf was behind and to the side of the boss. A few steps in, I pulled back my arm and prepared another thrust. The large wolf saw this and instantly jumped to the side to avoid my attack. Except that I had considered that would happen. Despite being creatures that simply spawn in the dungeon and fight intruders no matter how reckless it is, they did have basic learning capabilities and used their brains a little. I didn''t know how much creativity they were capable of, but they were at least as intelligent as a real wild animal despite the fact that I''d never witnessed them retreat, no matter how bad things looked for them. It was as if they were compelled to fight any and all challengers. That said, even if they would act taking your previous actions into consideration, their ability to adapt was poor from what I saw. They always picked from obvious counters, and just like that, the boss wolf dodged to the side when it looked like I''d try to thrust my spear straight at it. Instead, I changed my grip on the spear and threw it at the smaller wolf like a javelin. Thanks to the [Throwing Technique] skill''s adjustment, the spear flew straight and true. The wolf tried to move out of the way in the last second, but was unable to avoid the spear from impaling it''s side. Without slowing down, I closed the remaining gap and slashed upwards with the sword in my left hand. The serrated stone blade easily ripped through the monster''s neck, but was unable to go through it''s spine in a single swing. Not like it was needed, with both it''s windpipe and major blood vessels in it''s neck severed. The sword on the other hand was in bad shape, and I didn''t need to look at the spear I threw to also know that there wasn''t much life left in it either. But I was still in a fight. Stopping my feet wasn''t an option, so without confirming anything, I rolled to my left before spinning around. "Grraah" I was right. The boss wolf snapped at where I was just standing. If I hesitated even a little, it would''ve gotten a piece of my side, if not worse. The wolf growled lowly as it once again slowly circled around me, this time just simply trying to find an opening rather than having any sort of strategy. Me on the other hand, after losing both weapons to the second wolf, was unarmed. ... (As if) While short in range, my claws were far stronger than the cheap goblin weapons I''ve been using this fight. Not only that, but my fangs were able to crush bone as if they were everyday biscuits. Not like they tasted any good like wholesome biscuits. (Actually, I want some crackers with liverwurst) The fact that all my favourite foods were basically inedible to the current me made my heart cry. Recreating any of them in this world was entirely pointless. The wolf on the other hand had lost it''s patience and lept at me. I cleanly dodged to my right. Such a slow and predictable move had no chance at touching me. When it''s attack failed, it tried again immediately, but I dodged to my left. But after repeating it a third time, I lost my balance and fell onto my butt. Seeing it''s chance, the large wolf pounced at me, eager to tear my throat out. But rather than crying out in despair, I cracked a smile. My left hand reached behind me and grabbed the first sturdy thing it touched and I swung it clear at the wolf''s face. I had lured the monster to my weapon cache, and now a goblin sword was striking right at it''s face. But to my surprise, the wolf saw my attack bit down on the sword, shattering it. With my new weapon gone, it tried to bite me again. While I didn''t expect that, the time it took to reopen it''s mouth was enough for me to follow up and stabbed my fingers, or to be exact the claws on my right hand into the wolf''s shoulder, cutting right through the bone and sinew. The force pushed the wolf back, but I didn''t let the space between us extend. Instead, I pulled on it''s wound and bared my own fangs, burying them in it''s neck. The monster struggled as I fed, enjoying the richest meal I had in my new life. The struggles turned into spasms, which eventually turned into twitches, and finally disappeared entirely. All too soon, my meal had ended. Despite it''s larger size, the boss wolf wasn''t enough to fill me. As my [Blood Sucking] skill went up, so did my speed at sucking blood as did my capacity to drink. Drinking quickly was always great if my prey was still alive when I started, but I kept half regretting not savouring the taste more. Then again, it wasn''t like I had the self control to not slurp up my meal as fast as I could. The larger capacity I had gotten was a double edged sword as well. On one hand, it allowed me to drink much more and acquire skills much faster, as I didn''t have to stop eating just because I was full as often. On the other hand, it made it harder to control my eating, since it took longer for me to get full. I really hoped that I wouldn''t start getting fat because of my appetite. (How many calories is blood anyways?) Shaking the stupid thought out of my head, I remembered that there were two more wolf corpses. Without sparing a thought, I lept to the closest and hungrily ate my heart out, then again on the last wolf. But I found that the other two wolves weren''t as satisfying anymore. The boss wolf tasted much better, and while it wasn''t like the smaller wolves suddenly started to taste worse, but they just weren''t as palatable. (Is it like eating cheap mac and cheese all your life then suddenly getting a taste of high class food?) But then again, I had high class food once as part of a celebration, and it sucked. I gathered my weapons again and took out another spear, my old trusty spear. As I did that, all three monster corpses disappeared and left their drops. The smaller wolves both left fangs. I was tempted to just leave them, since I had a pretty big pile of them just sitting around back home. The boss on the other hand gave me something new. At least a little new. That was it''s pelt. It was the wolf''s entire pelt fully processed and ready to be used. The fur was surprisingly soft considering it came from a wolf, but the leather underneath was very tough. Markedly tougher than the hides from the other wolves. But these properties made it hard for me to use. The fur was nice, but the leather was too stiff to use as clothes. I could remove the fur and use the leather as some sort of armour, but that also felt like a waste, and that presumed that I could actually make equipment from it that both worked decently and wasn''t a pain to use or wear. The only thing I could think of using it that fully took advantage of it''s properties was a rug. It would be soft on my feet and wonderful to lie on, but tough enough that it could survive a long time being walked on. It felt like a pathetic way to use such a nice pelt, but it did take advantage of all it''s properties. But such things were for later. Once I packed everything into my bag, I turned to the door at the far end of the boss arena. Just in front of it, a treasure chest was standing where there was empty space before. The chest was much nicer than any of the chests I''ve seen so far. It was made of lacquered wood and the metal keeping it together looked like was made from polished steel. As much as I wanted to rush over open it, I couldn''t ward off the worry that it might be a trap. Maintaining as much distance as possible, I poked the lid with my spear. When nothing happened, I tried applying pressure and cracked the seam open. Since nothing still happened, I opened it all the way then jumped back just in case. But nothing happened. I was relieved that nobody had seen it. I was the only one there after all. Nobody else could see what I did. I stepped over and had a look at the contents. What greeted me was a pair of black leather boots. They were sturdy, with thick soles and a medium high ankle. The style kinda looked like something I saw soldiers wear in those old world war one pictures. I cleaned my feet the best I could and quickly put them on. The inside were soft and warm, and the laces tied up cleanly. The fit, just like for my pants, were perfect. There was definitely some sort of adjustment made so that any equipment I find fit perfectly. With those thoughts in the back of my mind, I stood up and tried taking a few steps. My gait was unsteady. It had been a while since I last wore shoes of any kind, and despite how well they fit, not being able to feel the texture of the dirt under my feet was a bit unnerving. But it was much better to go around in boots than bare foot, so I had no choice but to get used to it. The ankles were a bit stiff, making sideways motions difficult, but front and back, as well as rotations weren''t a problem. Happy with my new loot, I headed off to see what was beyond the big doors. When I pushed on the large double doors, just like last time, the fact that it didn''t make a sound was a bit unnerving. Beyond the door was a set of stone stairs carved out of the stone tunnel itself. It ran down in a loose spiral to the left. I took each step slowly to make sure that I didn''t miss any traps or ambushes. In the end I didn''t find anything of the sort, and instead after descending what felt like two or three floors, I reached a wide cavern. It was perfectly circular with a domed ceiling. To one side was a familiar sight, quietly spraying water like nobody''s business. It was a carbon copy of the fountain room at the beginning of the dungeon. The familiar sight had released all the tension in my body, and without a second thought I stripped down and jumped into the fountain to wash up. I wasn''t too dirty, but the feeling of dried blood on my body was a bit annoying. If there was a fountain here, then that suggested that there was a fountain behind every boss room. Be that as it may, that didn''t mean that I could wash up at any time as I wanted, as there wasn''t any certainty that I wouldn''t get lost or stuck somewhere. I needed to take advantage of the fountains every chance I got. After a bit of relaxing in the cold water, I put my gear on again and moved out through the other tunnel. What greeted me was...more tunnels. Once I got past the initial winding tunnel that had the same shape as the one at the beginning fountain, the passage opened up drastically, but only to reveal more tunnels. This one looked like it was carved out of a different type of rock. The fountain room was a nice medium grey, but this was more of a dull red/brown. And the walls weren''t nearly as smooth either, like it was carved out roughly. On a certain level, it felt like the dungeon had finally started. A few turns later, I encountered the first monster of the second floor. I felt like leaving the dungeon immediately. What lay ahead basically looked like a giant earthworm. It was a good four meters and wiggled in that creepy squish and push style. It''s head reared up and looked at me with whatever it had that was considered to be it''s senses. But what happened next sent goosebumps across my whole body. The end of it''s head opened up, revealing three circular rows of teeth. (Nope nope NOPE!) I just turned around and hightailed out of there, back to the fountain room, stripped down and dove in. The very sight of that monster made me feel dirty and I obsessively scrubbed my body. I could hardly believe that such a monster existed. It didn''t look strong, but it''s appearance just sent shivers down my spine. There was a good possibility that the entire floor was filled with similar monsters. At the very least, the floor was some sort of cave, so all the monsters were probably of cave or underground types. Defeating them probably wouldn''t be much of a problem, but when all my weapons broke, I''d have to fight those things with my claws. I didn''t want to touch such monsters though. That worm looked pretty slimy, and I wouldn''t be able to clean myself off until I returned to the fountain. But an even worse image cropped up when I imagined my hands covered in goo after killing one of those worms with my bare hands. (Did these guys have blood in their bodies?) The resulting image in my head make me pull my knees in and shiver. I really didn''t want to know what those worms tasted like, but if I couldn''t control myself after killing one...nope. Definitely nope. If I didn''t want to go through such an experience, the only way to make sure was to avoid killing any of them. The thought of going an entire floor without any XP or new skills was a bit depressing, but it was better than the alternative. I just had to make up for it on the next floor. With my mind made up, I force myself out of the fountain and get fully equipped once I dried my body the best I could. Once done, I reached the beginning of the cave floor then took off at a quick jog. I wanted to sprint, but I doubted I could last long doing so, and even the shortest route to the boss room would probably take a while if the first floor was any indication. I saw the creepy worm again and it reared it''s head at me when it sensed my presence. Without giving it any chance, I ran past it, giving it as wide of a berth as I could, then kept going. One after the next, I continued to do the same thing. There were giant ants and millipedes as well, all gross once made so big and I felt like my goosebumps had turned into a full allergic outbreak or something. Running constantly and taking one sharp turn after the next soon became a heavy burden on my body, but I didn''t dare to slow down while any monster was in eyesight. I took short breaks in side rooms, but didn''t stay for long. I didn''t know if monsters could enter these rooms, but if a few did, they''d block the entrance and I''d have no way out without killing them, defeating the entire purpose of running away from them in the first place. Not only did I avoid the monsters, but I avoided treasure chests as well. I didn''t have the time to check for traps on them nor did I have the leeway to carry a bunch of extra loot just because I got greedy. I did consider dumping the pelt I got from the previous boss, but decided not to, since it wasn''t too heavy to be a big deal while it stayed in my backpack. I found a circular room with the same size and shape as the safe zone by the boss door on the first floor. There, I lay down to rest, reasonably confident that I didn''t have to worry about any monsters trying to get in. It never happened in the first floor, and I needed a break. I also needed a meal. My stomach was getting angry at me after running for so long without a meal, but I refused it with all my might. It was one thing if I had brought something, but since I didn''t, I couldn''t fill myself. There was no way I was going to touch any of those gross oversized creatures. The very thought of drinking their fluids made me cringe. Once I was fully rested, I took off again, blindly searching for the boss door. Without any way to track the time though, I had no idea how long I wandered for. There was no sun or moons, and I never got sleepy, so there was no system in place for me to guess how long I''d been running around at, especially since I''d been leveling up so much on the first floor that any baseline based on my my experiences while I was outside wasn''t helpful. As I my breathing had gotten coarse with exhaustion, I finally found the gates to the boss, and right beside it was another safe room. I gladly entered the room and lay down to rest for the second time since starting my run on this floor. My stomach''s protests had gotten louder again, now that the burning feeling in my over stressed legs had started to fade, but I refused it like Stalin refusing to feed the Ukrainians. I massaged my calves and thighs though the thick material of my leather pants. Fortunately it seemed like vampires didn''t sweat, so I didn''t have to worry about feeling sticky and gross, but despite not having fought once on this floor, I still felt dusty and dirty. Well, I was sitting on this dirty floor and leaning on this dusty wall, so it was bound to happen. I was looking forward to washing up in the fountain after beating the boss. But I wasn''t looking forward to facing the boss at all. Regardless of the difficulty, it was likely to be a stronger version of one of the monsters I had already seen on this floor. I really hoped it wouldn''t, and maybe I''d fight a big mole or something, but such thoughts were nothing but escaping from reality. (Moles are cute though. At least the cartoon ones I used to see online) When I felt like I had fully recovered, aside from my stomach, I headed to the boss door. Despite resting, my body felt a little weak from the hunger, but I ignored it. The doors gave way silently to the pressure I gave off. With my hands, not my eyes. This time there wasn''t any stairs leading down, and instead the boss room was directly in front of me. It seemed like that change was because this floor was underground and the other was above ground. Technically they were both underground, but the first floor had the appearance of being above ground. What stood in front of me was a giant ant with a bloated rear end, flanked by four of the more normal giant ants. "It''s an ant with a huge ass" I weakly chuckled at my bad joke as I tried to escape reality once more. Unlike last time, I hadn''t had time to get plenty of experience fighting the normal version of the boss monster, so I wasn''t sure how to win this fight. Ants, like all insects, had an exoskeleton, meaning that they were basically naturally armoured. This most likely didn''t mean much to my claws, but I flat out refused to expose myself in such a way where I''d be deliberately covering myself with bug goo. The only alternative was to find ways to beat those monsters with my weapons before they all broke. As long as the next floor wasn''t disgusting like this one, fighting bare handed wasn''t a big deal. Rather, even fighting bare handed was technically impossible since I always had my claws. Looking at the monsters in front of me, there was a high likelihood of my weapons breaking against their exoskeletons. At best, they''d break through and mutually destruct, but that didn''t seem very reliable. The weak points of an exoskeleton were it''s joints, obviously, as well as the eyes. Those were the way to go. I took a spear in hand and my spare weapons together in my left hand, wrapped in a wolf pelt in such a way to make them easy to pull out, though I risked them falling out if I wasn''t careful. With nothing more I could add to such a vague strategy, I charged straight away at the closest ant. Once I got a few steps past the doorway, the fat ant, one I presumed was the queen, moved it''s antennae and the other four charged in response. The ants weren''t nearly as fast as the wolves, but their gaits were more stable and had less openings. Not only that, but there were more of them. When I got close to the closest bug on the right, I sidestepped on the outside and thrust my spear straight behind it''s head. The stone spearhead tore into joint between it''s head and thorax, but the strike wasn''t deep enough, so while the big insect staggered, it didn''t stop moving, and tried to aim at me while I turned away to reposition. But ahead of me was the ant closest to the one I struck. It had moved from the wounded monster''s right to it''s left, as if it anticipated that I''d go that way. It opened it''s mandibles threateningly, but I didn''t worry about that, and instead thrust my spear out at it''s compound eyes. The spear impacted a lens, but the shaft shattered under the repeated pressure, leaving only the spearhead left slightly embedded. While the bug was stunned from my attack, I swiftly threw a kick out at the remains of the spear partially embedded in the ant''s eye before using it as a springboard to create some distance. The stone shard was thrust into it''s head from the impact, strength clearly was leaving it''s body as I backpedalled. To my left, both unharmed monster bug were in the middle of circling me, while the first ant bared it''s mandibles threateningly while approaching from the front. The smell of the blue fluids that were seeping out of their bodies made my stomach yell out louder in my ears than ever. Before I knew it, I was licking my lips. It wasn''t the usual red blood, but it was similar enough to evoke the same response from my body. But I was in a life or death struggle. The fact that I was now being attacked from two fronts was painful, as my eyes kept glancing at both the wounded and dead arthropods rather than trying to keep track of all the living enemies. I shook my head to clear it even a little. My spear wasn''t working very well. It didn''t have the power to penetrate the eye or joints very well. The other weapons were more risky due to their shorter range, but had the power to make up for it. I quickly removed a goblin sword from my weapon bundle and faced off against the ants as they continued to close in. I went into a run again, and again towards the first ant I attacked. But this time it was ready for me and reared it''s body, threatening me not only with it''s jaws but it''s front most legs as well. Since it had stopped moving due to it''s new pose, I easily sidestepped it and got to it''s blind spot. No matter how wide an ant''s vision was, there was no way it could see anywhere where it''s eyes didn''t cover. With a quick series of steps, I jumped and ran onto the monster''s abdomen and placed my sword in beside it''s neck and pulled the serrated blade back against the joint. Already weakened, the stone sword teeth made quick progress on the monster''s flesh. But being as fragile as it was, the shaft snapped mid strike. In a panic, I kicked off of the ant and created some distance, but to my relief, the monster simply shuddered for a second before collapsing. It looked like I had severed something vital. There were two normal ants left plus the queen. The queen hadn''t moved once since the beginning. (Is it one of those ''I''ve fallen and I can''t get up'' scenarios?) I smirked at the thing that looked so fat it needed a powered electric cart to move around. As if it understood that I was thinking poorly of it and wanted to prove me wrong, the big ant really did rise up and lift it''s bloated rear. My eyes turned into globes at the sight. I couldn''t imagine how such thin legs could support a body like that, but the monster had already proved me wrong, and had started to approach me. It from in front and it''s two remaining subordinates from behind. I was perfectly sandwiched in between. From a positional standpoint things weren''t looking good for me, but in reality the queen was so slow I could entirely ignore it. It was as if it was moving entirely on sheer will power, which if it wasn''t a monster I would applaud and maybe even cheer it for. So in other words, rather than a three on one, it was more like a two on one with my blood thirst being an annoying spectator jeering and trying to provoke the actors, or rather just me. I took out an axe and circled around the ant corpse that was lying in between me and the remaining two threats. With my legs pumping at full strength, I approached the monster on my right, the closer of the two. As I closed in on it, the arthropod raised a foreleg and tried to stab me with it. But such a slow and predictable move had no chance at working on me. I stepped to the side and ducked under. The leg simply impaled the stone floor where I was just at a split second before, whereas I was now underneath the monster at kissing distance. Not like I''d do something like that to such a creepy creature. Instead, I spun and used my whole body to swing my axe up, driving it through the ant''s neck. The joint split apart spraying bug goo all over the place to my displeasure. Not entirely dismembered, the head flopped down, held by a small piece of flesh with pieces of my stone axe head embedded in it. Without any time to lose, I used the dead ant as cover to retrieve another sword to deal with the last remaining ant. Legs stabbed all around me as the monster desperately tried to get to me, who was still trying to extract myself from under the dead monster''s corpse. The difficulty in trying to evade in that situation taught me how poorly planned my last move was, but with a big shove, I lifted the stiff body off of me and escaped with only some minor scratches. The corpse flopped back down with a big fwump. The last ant monster was partially entangled after the sudden movement, and I didn''t let that go for. Squeezing in between the ant corpse legs, I climb it''s body with a bound and jump onto the last surviving ant. I grab the base of one of it''s legs for stability, then swing my sword as hard as I could across it''s neck joint, severing it in one go. "Wah!" Suddenly losing it''s control nerves, the now dead ant flopped down, it''s weight overcoming any tension left in it''s legs. With me still on it, I fell as well and bounced off of it''s carapace and rolled on the ground, getting covered in more ant juice sprayed out from it''s open wound. With all the enemies down, my tension had started to fall, and the sound of my hunger had suddenly started to scream out loud, desperately trying to urge me to feed. As much as I wanted to, I couldn''t avert my eyes from the fresh ant corpses. skitter But as deafening as my stomach was, it didn''t cover the fact that the sound of ants moving around hadn''t stopped. I looked behind me only to see one more ant monster still alive and moving towards me. It was such a minor threat that I had forgotten that the ant queen existed. It was hard to see it actually hurting me, but it was still an enemy. That alone made it possible for me to push my hunger back and concentrate on finishing the fight. But the queen was slow, extremely slow. I took out another axe and with a jog, I circled around it and got behind the monster. It tried to turn around to face me, but when the other ants weren''t fast enough to avoid exposing their rear to me, there was no way the sluggish queen could. Without any reverence to royalty, I jumped onto the monster''s bloated abdomen and climbed on top. But instead of continuing to the thorax to cut the head off as I intended, I noticed that the top of the abdomen pulsed with a regular rhythm like a heartbeat. Intrigued, I lower a hand and touched the surface. Even to my hand it felt just like a heartbeat, although the shape was completely different. A small corner of my mind registered that there was drool dripping from my chin. Chapter 07 – Hunger The next thing I knew, I was lying on the ground, looking up at the ceiling. My skin felt disgusting. When I touched my chest, big threads of goo connected between it and my hand. I tried to shake it off, but there was so much on my body that it didn''t make a difference. When I raised my head, I was still in the boss arena. There were a few random items lying around as well as a treasure chest standing proud in front of a large doorway, but otherwise it was empty. I thought back to the last thing I could remember, but suddenly I had a massive urge to throw up. My mind was filled with the images of the last few minutes. When I went to kill the ant queen, the sight of it''s heart beating beating under it''s abdomen carapace made me succumb to my hunger, and I bit down, tapping directly into the organ as it sprayed blue fluids around every time it contracted. I sucked the monster dry, but having lost all self control, I moved from one ant to the next, before finally collapsing with nothing more available to eat. My stomach was filled with that bright blue liquid and my body covered in the yellow goo that came squirting out as I crushed and ripped the ants open to access their circulatory system. I wanted to hurl. To reject the fluids from such disgusting creatures, but my body denied me. As I tried to think about how much I didn''t want to eat the ants, I couldn''t help but remember how good it tasted. It was like deep fried chicken served with a huge helping of sweet and sour sauce. No matter how much I spit and squeezed my stomach, my body refused to let the blood I consumed go to waste. After a few minutes, I gave up. My mind and body were obviously at conflict when it came to this floor, and my mind stood no chance at winning while I was still so hungry. Despite their large bodies, those ants didn''t have much blood in their bodies. I took one glance at the monster drops, but turned my head away. I didn''t want anything they left, lest it remind me of the taste of their blood. The treasure chest was different though, since it''s contents had nothing to do with the boss. I opened it to reveal a pair of red leather gloves. A shirt would''ve been the best outcome for me, but clothes were clothes. I held onto them without putting them on for now, since my hands were still sticky with ant goo, it was pointless to wear them before I cleaned up. Hopefully there''d be a fountain in the next room just like last time. Past the double doors, down the stairs, I arrived to the welcome sight of another fountain. Dropping my things on the dusty floor, I ran and jumped into the cold water, not even taking the time to remove my clothes first. I submerged my entire body and rubbed my hands against my skin and clothes. Sticky strands of goo drifted away from my body as I desperately tried to remove all traces of those ants from my body. "Puaaah!" I burst out from the water when I couldn''t hold my breath any longer. The worst of the goo was now gone, but I was far from satisfied. I removed my clothes and continued to scrub my body, getting rid of every trace of ant from my body. Eventually there was enough loose goo in the fountain water that it wasn''t really possible to get any cleaner. Slightly disheartened by that, I stood in the fountain stream to at least get half my body completely free of the gunk. As I stood in the cold water, I washed my clothes, then retrieved the rest of my stuff and washed anything that got dirty from that fight. Since there weren''t any traces of this fountain being used before I got to it, I cleaned it up as well so I could lay my things on the lip to dry. Then I sat on the central pedestal to wash any remaining trace of sticky ant goop from my body using the fresh fountain streams. When I was finally done, the mental exhaustion had finally caught up to me and I just lay on the pedestal, letting my legs dangle over the edge and the water spray lightly massage my calfs. I reflected a bit on what had happened to me up until now. The last floor was absolutely terrible for me, with the results from the boss fight being the lowest point of all. But despite that, I couldn''t help but be glad I chose to become a vampire. If I had stayed human, or chosen a normal fantasy race, I would''ve most likely died already. This dungeon was rich in resources, but it was a bit monolithic when it came to variety. Not only that, I had no confidence that I could''ve found enough food to survive for long outside of the dungeon. But inside, there was only meat. It was possible I could find fruits, vegetable, and grains further in, but betting on that was pretty foolhardy. At the very least, even if there weren''t any monsters that dropped food on the first floor, I could''ve tried to cut the monsters themselves up before their bodies disappeared. But even then, the human body wasn''t meant to survive on meat alone, let alone raw meat, since I doubted even now I could start a decent fire to cook that meat. As a vampire, it was all irrelevant. While I had been all alone so far, it really hasn''t been a problem. This dungeon was providing me with everything I needed as a vampire. Not having anyone to talk to wasn''t even that big of a deal. I was pretty isolated the last year due to working so hard on my failed game, and I didn''t have much in terms of friends even before that. And while the last few hours were pretty terrible, I''ve been enjoying this new life of mine a decent amount. It wasn''t hard to say that I was looking forward to the future. Sometimes I really wanted to take back my words with all my heart. After resting up and drying my things off, I got dressed and headed to the next area. What greeted me was the interior of some sort of ruins made of stone. The entire hallway I was in was lined with stone bricks, and the dirt behind the occasional missing brick suggested that I was underground. Rather, in an underground zone. While the atmosphere was pretty creepy, that wasn''t the problem. The problem was the first monster I faced was a skeleton wielding a cheap, rusty looking scimitar. The rattling undead with jerky movements was a bit unsettling, but that wasn''t the problem. The problem was the fear that every monster was going to be similar to it. And not because they were undead, or made of bone, or that the very sight made a shiver run up my spine. It really wasn''t. I wasn''t scared. Really. The problem at the root of things was that they didn''t have any blood. My stomach had already been having a tantrum while I''d been waiting for my clothes to dry. I''d only been able to placate it with the thought that I could eat my heart out on the next floor. Those hopes were shattered with the sight of something that didn''t even have blood running through it''s nonexistent veins. I sighed in the end. There wasn''t anything I could do about going hungry on another floor. (Way better than trying to fight it from making me eat bugs again) And of course, the moment when I thought that, a niggling corner of my mind tried to lure me back to the second floor with the taste of the blood of the creatures I wanted to avoid. I fought down the urge. The skeleton had already approached me while I was in thought and swung down it''s weapon. The monster was still slow despite it being the third floor. Rather, it felt slower than the wolves on the first floor. I simply stepped inside of it''s range and swung my spear at it''s neck, entirely ignoring it''s attack. Since now I was inside the skeleton''s sword arc, what hit me wasn''t a sharp blade, but it''s bony wrist. The impact stung more than I expected, but I ignored it for the sake of this easy win. And, while it was a win, it wasn''t as easy as I expected. The hit broke the skeleton''s neck, taking the head off with it. But when I stepped back to see what sort of drop I''d get, it''s sword arm rose up and swung it''s weapon once again. Surprised by the unexpected action, I dove to the side to avoid the attack, narrowly avoiding an injury. The skeleton closed in on me and prepared another swing. I rolled away to avoid this third attack before getting back up. The monster was still moving just as well as before, as if the head was nothing more than a decoration. Rather, now that I thought about it, it probably was nothing more than a decoration, being empty in the first place. I bit back the wry smile and thrust my spear out from outside the skeleton''s range. The cheap weapon impacted squarely on the undead''s bleached sternum, and while it did crack, my spear shattered in my hands. I bit back a curse as I hopped back and took out an axe. I had brought a decent number of weapons originally, but I had already started running out. I had used three against the wolf boss, and another five against the ant boss. I had just lost another spear, leaving me with only a sword and axe left. In terms of weapons, I was in a dire straight, but while the goblin weapons didn''t work well against these skeletons, this one had it''s own weapon, and my claws were fundamentally my best weapons from the start, even if I used them the least. I drew my last axe and charged the skeleton, swinging my weapon with as much force as I could muster. My swing arced down and impacted on the monster''s sternum where it had already been cracked. The cracks spread before shattering the front of the ribs. My axe continued it''s trajectory and impacted against the spine behind the ribs, separating one of the joints. The skeleton could no longer maintain coherency and it fell apart. I quickly grabbed it''s weapon before the rest of the body disappeared. My axe was now only a splintered handle, and was no longer usable. My claws might''ve been strong, but the lack of range made them risky to use. It might not actually be much of a problem on this floor, but I didn''t know what the next floor would be like, so I needed to be prepared just in case. The bleached bones disappeared like how everything did in this dungeon, and left me with it''s drops. There was a black gem and...a big thighbone. It was possible that the bone could be used for something if I knew the unique crafting styles of this world, but I didn''t. It was nothing but dead weight, and not likely to be useful as a weapon. Instead, it simply reminded me of a roasted meat on bone without the meat. My hunger was really grating on my nerves, making me think of food that wasn''t even edible by the current me. A little more depressed, I pocked the stone and went on my way. A bit further into the dungeon, I found another skeleton. This time it was wielding a bow and had a quiver of arrows. "Tsk" I clicked my tongue. It had only been the second encounter and yet I had already become irritable. If I wasn''t so hungry, I''d have welcomed the fight. The skeleton slowly prepared it''s bow. I dropped my weapons and raced forward to avoid getting shot. I didn''t have a shield, and dodging an arrow looked difficult. I had a shortage of usable weapons here, so carrying them in battle would slow me down, so I ditched them. In addition, I wanted to avoid getting hurt while I couldn''t heal by drinking blood. By the time the skeleton archer fully drew it''s bow, I had closed the gap and swatted the bow to the side, making the monster fire it''s arrow off at a wall. Before it could counter, I drove my claws into it''s upper arm, splitting it into two. The bone pile reacted by reaching for me with it''s left arm, but I simply grabbed it and pulled it past me, breaking the skeleton''s balance. In a mostly smooth motion, I twisted it''s arm behind it and mounted it''s back, pinning it to the ground. It tried to move and get at me, but it was entirely helpless. I sighed. This position was perfect to drink an enemy''s blood, but this one didn''t have any at all. If anything, my hunger just continued to grate on my nerves, and the thought that I''d continue to suffer like that for the rest of the floor gave me a headache. I wanted to eat something. Anything. But there wasn''t anything to eat, and so it was annoying me to the point where I started to grate my teeth. (If I couldn''t eat anything, then I''ll just satisfy myself by biting stuff) The stupid, childish thought entered my mind, but since there wasn''t any problems with doing so, I lowered my head and bit the back of the skeleton''s neck, pretending it was the neck of warm wolf, and sucked air through my teeth. But against my expectations, while I was doing nothing but clenching down on a the dry spine, I could feel something enter my fangs, and it wasn''t air like what was entering my mouth. It was cool and wispy, and tasted faintly like cotton candy despite not touching my tongue. The skeleton continued to resist against me, but after a few seconds, it shuddered then stopped moving. Simultaneously, the taste disappeared and my fangs were empty again. I tried biting harder and sucked with as much force as I could, but all I got was a mouth full of bone shards as my fangs pulverized the brittle spine. Instantly filled with regret, I got off of the monster remains and spat out the fragments. By the time I was done, the skeleton archer had disappeared, leaving just a black gem and a clay jar about as big as both fists combined. Both my current fists. If it was my old hands, I suspected it would only be as big as one. When I opened the jar, it was filled to the rim with some sort of dull brown powder. It had a slight tinge of blood to it''s smell, but the taste was weak and very stale. It didn''t seem to be fit for consumption, even for me despite the faint taste of blood. Most likely, it wasn''t actually some sort of blood product. The jar itself could be useful, but unless if I had a way to get back to my home base quickly, it was a large weight I didn''t need. I only took the gem and moved on. The bow and arrows disappeared with the rest of the body, so I had to remember to grab it more quickly next time. Even more importantly though, I wanted more of that taste. I thought I wouldn''t get anything because they were undead, but to my surprise, I did get something to eat, even if it was weak in flavour. On a floor with nothing but bloodless undead, it was miles better than not getting anything to eat. The nutritional value was probably pretty low, but getting sugar candies was better than starving. Once more, I wanted to take back my words. I had been exploring this level for hours. Unlike the second floor, I actually fought all the monsters I encountered, explored the side passages, and grabbed what loot I could. All the monsters ended up being various types of skeletons. There were ones wielding scimitars, bows, a bardiche, then there was one that was basically a skeleton dog. None of them gave me any drops aside from bone or bone related materials aside from black gems as expected. I did take their weapons, but soon I reached my limit since I wasn''t using them on this level. Skeleton monsters were just too slow to make it worth it. They were more annoying in their relentlessness, and it looked like their attacks had a decent amount of punch behind them due to the markedly higher quality of weapons over the first floor goblins. Of course, I benefited from that fact by taking them. I also looted the treasure chests I found, but like the first floor, the majority of the loot were just crystal bottles with various coloured liquids inside of them like the first floor. There were also a few gemstones, but the best item I found was another pair of pants. This time it was made from some sort of sturdy black cloth. I''d rather have gotten a shirt, but the pants were more comfortable and much easier to move in than my previous one. While the comfort came from the nicer material, the ease in movement came from the fact that they were hotpants. While it was a bit embarrasing, it wasn''t like anyone was watching, so I prefered the hotpants to my leather ones for the slight boost in mobility. That said, I really wanted a shirt. It wouldn''t have been much of a problem if I was still a guy, but right now, I couldn''t help but feel how inappropriate this was, basically showing off my underwear. The problem, then, was the fact that eating the essence of those skeletons hadn''t been working out for me nearly as well as I hoped. It wasn''t like taking raw sugar to temporarily deal with starvation until you can get a proper meal. It was like eating artificial sweeteners to trick yourself into thinking that you were putting food into your body while desperately hoping that you didn''t succumb to starvation. In reality, it wasn''t that terrible, since I got skills out of it, but the more I ate from the skeletons, the harder my cravings hit back after I finished a meal. And with my cravings hitting me so hard, I was really irritable. If someone saw me, they''d have though that I was a crack addict desperate for her next hit. In a sense though, food was an addiction so the analogy wasn''t too wrong. It was just that food was one that was necessary to live. I had completely lost track of time though. As hard as it was to keep track of time in a dungeon where nothing changed on top of being a vampire that had no need of sleep, now that it was so difficult to concentrate on anything at all due to my hunger, I couldn''t even get a general grasp of how long I''ve been wandering on this floor. It could be days, weeks, even months if I was more out of it than I thought. Or maybe it''s only been a few hours but my cravings had made every hour so excruciating that the seconds ticked by like minutes. I was loathing the floor that denied me proper feed, that kept tricking my body into thinking it finally got what it wanted most, only to be cruelly shot down at every turn. My actions had lost proper sense or strategy. I wandered like a zombie, and any time I found an enemy, I pounced on them like a beast, hoping this time that this monster had at least a drop of blood somewhere inside it''s body even though my senses told me that was impossible. My body had become covered in scratches with some deep gashes here and there. At first when I noticed, I had thought that since I was bleeding, I had finally found some blood to drink. But when I did so, rather than finally being able to sate my craving, my blood didn''t taste like anything I had had before. It wasn''t sweet. It didn''t remind me of a hearty meal, or even some half-baked snack. It was more like drinking tap water when I had already drank my fill of coffee. It wasn''t terrible, but it was plain and unfulfilling. Just the act of sucking on my own wound made the dark void in my gut grow instead of shrink. That realization made me cry for the first time in this life. Finally, after so much struggling, I was blocked by a large double door. "Fufufufufu...wahahahahaha! Finally!" After so long, I couldn''t help but burst into laughter. Just one more fight and I would be free from this hell. I''d be able to rush to the next floor and eat to my heart''s content! Without any mental leeway to create a plan, I simply charged into the room and pounced on the first thing that came into range. It was a skeleton with a scimitar. I had gotten plenty of levels already, and even raised some skills, so it was no match for me, and I quickly sucked it''s essence out before it could even strike. A hot, searing sensation filled my right biceps just as I was letting go of my empty prey. When I glared in the direction of the offender, I saw a skeleton with a bow pulling out an arrow from it''s quiver. Without any thought, I lept at the archer automatically. A sharp pain came from my right calf, but I ignored it and bit into it''s neck bone, sucking it of the energy that made it move. Only when my second prey was drained that I looked at the source of the pain. It was skeleton dog trying to rip open my leg with it''s jaws. But the fact that it had bit me didn''t register in my mind. Instead, I simply raked my claws across it''s skull, shredding it instantly, and bit into it''s spine to get that feeling of feeding for even one more second. When I was done with my third prey, I looked up and saw two more wielding bardiches. Despite the pain in my calf and arm, I sprinted at full throttle at those two and plowed into the first, violently biting into it''s neck, then leaping at the other to drain it as well. It had probably only been a handful of seconds and broke every rule of engagement I normally followed, but I didn''t care. It was still taking too long. When I rose up again, the only enemy I could find that was still standing was a large skeleton a head taller than the others. It wore a full fledged chest plate, gauntlets and greaves. In it''s hands was a sword and shield, and it was in a defensive position as it slowly approached me. I scowled at it. The shield meant that it would take more time to get close enough to feed on it, and I hated that. Despite that, I made a mad dash at the offending creature and grabbed at it''s shield. But before I could do anything, the shield rushed at me, knocking my entire body down. The impact disoriented me as I rolled end over end before coming to a stop. For a second, I didn''t know what happened, but the gears that have been gunked up due to my hunger had managed to turn, and I realized that it bashed me with it''s shield. "Waaaaaaahhh!" I yelled as I charged at the big skeleton again. I was angry. Angry that it didn''t have the decency to go down quickly when I was so hungry. It tried to block my path again with it''s shield, but this time I wasn''t having any of that. Instead of trying to pull the shield to the side, I stabbed at it''s middle with my claws and easily broke through the metal boss and the bony hand behind it. Without anything to hold it up, the shield that was half as tall as I was fell onto my arm. I swung my arm to free it of it''s weight, but the sharp edges of the broken shield left scratches all along it. I didn''t even notice as now I was so close to reaching the next floor. With my other arm, I grabbed the collar of the skeleton''s breast plate and pulled my body up and bit into it''s neck. There was a few dull thuds and a sharp pain in my body, but I ignored it. Fresh blood was so close that I could almost taste it. The big skeleton finally lost strength and collapsed. My body hurt all over. There was a big gash on my right arm and I could feel a dull pain in a few other areas. It seemed that the monster struggled more than the others before it stopped. I didn''t care though. The wounds I had would stop bleeding after a minute. It seemed like any cut would stop bleeding pretty quickly with my current body. And the wounds themselves would all get better when I finally got a proper meal. I was giddy with excitement. I was looking so forward to the feeling of warm blood oozing out of my prey''s body. I wondered what the next monster would taste like. As I did that, the skeletons all disappeared, leaving their drops. I wanted to hurry, but there wasn''t any harm in spending a few seconds to gather my loot and leave them in the next fountain while I went to feed. There wasn''t anything in between me and my next meal anymore. I only gathered the gems from the normal skeletons, but from the boss I got it''s big breast plate. It was unfortunate, but it felt like a waste on me. Something that heavy would slow me down when I was currently a speed type. My long awaited top was going to go unused for a while. The treasure chest also contained a breast plate in it for some reason, making me twitch. Nonetheless, I grabbed it all and dragged them to the fountain past the boss room. Nothing could lower my mood now that I would get my long anticipated meal. To speed the process up, I left everything in the fountain room. My weapons, my loot, even my bag. I was only going to have breakfast, so I didn''t want anything to weigh me down as I went to enjoy it. While I couldn''t muster the patience to fully clean up for my meal, I did at least wash my hands. It might not have any health effect for me, but being at least a baseline level of sanitary was etiquette. With a big smile on my face, I headed off to the next floor. After exiting the fountain tunnel, I was greeted with another cave of some sort. This time it was more of a grey colour, and the rock walls were much rougher, like it was a naturally formed cave. I wondered what sort of monsters inhabited this floor. Not like it mattered. (Whatever it is, I''ll just grab it and sink my teeth in) After my second turn, I was face to face with the first monster of the floor, and my smile instantly disappeared. What stood in front of me was a giant, humanoid thing more than twice my height. But it''s size wasn''t the problem. Nor was the fact that it''s skin was a dull brown with a metallic sheen. The problem was that what stood in front of me was obviously a golem. Another creature that had no blood. "Why the hell!!!" I was furious. I would''ve been happy with virtually anything as long as I could suck it''s blood. Tears crept out of my eyes. It was as if the universe was deliberately trying to torment me. I ran at the golem and kicked it with all my strength. Pain ran up my leg, but I ignored it. The huge metal object toppled from the force I imparted onto it''s dented midsection. Without any delay, I jumped onto it and started to claw at it. I wanted to release everything that had gotten pent up in me in the last floor and just let it all out on this big, cold, unfeeling piece of trash. My hands hurt from the sharp edged as I tore the monstrosity apart with my claws, as I peeled away it''s outer metallic shell and stabbed the glowing orb in it''s torso. The golem had stopped moving, so I got up. I felt empty. I was hungry, and miserable, and just felt like there was virtually nothing left to make me keep going. I started to walk again. Hope against hope that it was just a fluke. That the universe didn''t conspire against me. Something seemed to have been left behind by the golem, but I didn''t care. It wasn''t going to conveniently be a blood bag or something. I dragged my feet around one corner, then the next, and what greeted me was a giant. It was a light orangy brown colour, and almost the exact same shape as the previous golem. That was it. I''ve had enough. Tears wouldn''t stop falling. Unable to bear with it, I just ran away, all the way back to the fountain. I just jumped into the fountain and moved to the far side and hid myself from both entrances, and just cried. I was so hungry that it physically hurt, yet the dungeon had denied me three times. It was like it was saying that it didn''t want me here or something. Up until then, I thought of the dungeon as a paradise. A gift from the gods for vampires such as myself. But the reality was starting to seem more like that was an illusion. I can get stronger here, possibly extraordinarily so, but only if I could survive through this hell of constant hunger and denial. I didn''t have that sort of strength, and that was presuming that this wouldn''t keep going until I collapsed and starved to death. "This...I can''t do this" There was no way I could continue and finish this floor at this point. Not with how much hunger had weakened me. I wouldn''t last that far. My only option was to go back to the second floor and fill up on those disgusting bugs. I hated the idea, and despite everything I hesitated to do that. And so, I cried. The second time in this life I cried. I held my knees and hid behind the fountain''s pillar and cried my heart out. "I wish I was back on the first floor..." And everything went dark. Chapter 08 – Skill Gathering After a split second, the lights came back. I jolted upright. The lights had never flickered or faded or anything since I first found this dungeon. There was no reason why such a thing should happen. They were one of the constants of the dungeon as far as I knew after all. I was nervous, but I had to know what happened. Slowly, I crept along the side of the fountain pedestal and looked around. At a glance, there wasn''t anything wrong. The room hadn''t changed, nor had the fountain. But as I looked, I realized there was a difference. The fountain I was in should''ve been one I had only just visited, yet it looked clean. There wasn''t any traces of dust on it anywhere. Not only that, but as I stood up and got out from under the water curtain, there wasn''t any trace of any dirt or dust anywhere. There should''ve been footsteps in the dust on the floor when I entered and exited the room, but there wasn''t. It was only then I noticed something that definitely shouldn''t have been there: my things. I found several piles of various drops on leather hides laid out on the floor along with a carpet made from rabbit fur. It looked exactly like my home base, but that should''ve been impossible. I should''ve been on the fourth floor fountain, yet everything suggested that I was at the first floor fountain. Carefully, one step at a time, I got out from the fountain and checked everything to see if it wasn''t a hallucination or something. I felt like I was pressured to the point where I really would''ve started to hallucinate my home. Everything I touched seemed real. There was no indication that any of it was fake, no matter how hard I tried. But what was most important wasn''t what was inside of my home, but outside of it. My nerves had been frayed to the limit, so my steps were unsteady as I slowly made my way to the dungeon side of my home and passed through the winding hallway. At the end, I was forced to close my eyes due to how bright it got, but once I get used to the light, what spread out ahead of me was the familiar sight of the prairie maze where I spent so much time hunting. My heart was pounding in my chest as I stared. Drool started to overflow, but I didn''t have the mental capacity to do anything about it, because all I could think about was... (FOOD!) Before I knew it, was was in a mad dash, looking for prey. Three turns later, there was a wolf. The same type of brown wolf that I had spent hunting all before I entered the second floor. Without any mental capacity to slow down the slightest, I pounced on the wolf, wrapped my arms around it''s tough bristling fur, and bit down with all my might. The momentum of my leap knocked the creature down and we rolled on the ground until we came to a stop. If my fangs didn''t have a death grip on the back of it''s neck, it would''ve been a heartwarming scene. But I was too hungry to worry about such a thing, as I greedily sucked up the delicious blood that seeped from the wolf''s wound. The monster was small, and thus the quantity of blood it had was also small. I wasn''t satisfied, but being even a little satiated brought the biggest smile I could make onto my face. With the feeling of having sprouted wings, I raced around from one monster to the next until I could barely move from how bloated I felt, but the smile never left my face once. I wasn''t sure how much time I had spent, but it was a genuine struggle to get back home. My body felt heavy, and it was difficult to walk well. Though any monsters that I happened to meet were all ended swiftly with a single swipe of my claws. The drops were left where they appeared. I felt like if I reached down to get them, I wouldn''t be able to stand up again. My belly was so bloated I thought that if someone saw, they''d think I was pregnant. Though maybe they''d run screaming in terror first since in the latter half of my feeding spree I got pretty sloppy and let blood splatter and drip onto me as I fed. Now that I was so full, I didn''t even bother eating and just killed the monsters that I encountered in the easiest ways I could. Due to that, I was pretty much entirely covered in blood. The fact that the suicidal monsters kept rushing only to be split into two and burst their insides on me by my claws didn''t help. But I was a vampire. Being covered in blood wasn''t actually that bad of a feeling, though it started to get annoying once it started to dry. "...I''m the blood princess...hehehe...urp" I started to laugh at my stupid joke before it felt like I put too much pressure on my stomach and almost threw up. It wasn''t good etiquette to throw up your meals...though in a sense I''ve been playing with my food for the last bit, so it was kinda too late for that. (Someday, it would be nice to be able to have a bath of blood) There was some negative images of a certain Hungarian countess who did just that, but it felt much more appropriate for a vampire to do that. Once I got back, I had a slow soak in the fountain. My body handled the cold water surprisingly well, but a warm bath would''ve been really nice. That was something I needed to figure out. As I relaxed and digested my meal, I thought back to what had happened earlier. I was at the fourth floor fountain, then suddenly everything went dark, and when I could see again, I was at the first floor fountain. Such a thing had never happened before. I''ve bathed in the fountain quite a few times already, but there wasn''t any indication of being sent to a different fountain while doing so. The only difference was that this time it was after I visited a different fountain. Though I did bathe in both the second and third floor fountains and nothing happened. Was it unique to the fourth floor fountain? But it didn''t look any different from the others, so that theory was pretty weak. It was more likely that it worked with any fountain, rather than specific ones. Then the only thing that was different was... (I wished to come back to the first floor...?) It was a theory worth testing. "I wish I was on the fourth floor" While leaning my back against the fountain''s lip, I mumbled out those word without much thought. Sudden, everything went dark making me jerk up before the light came back a split second later. I stood up and looked around. Everything I left on the first floor was gone, but now there were the things I left behind on the fourth floor. Now that I confirmed not only that it was possible to move between fountains, but what was needed to make it happen, a smile erupted on my face. Everything I went through, all the hunger and suffering, were things that didn''t need to happen. But on the flip side, it meant that no matter what happened, no matter how the later floors were set up, I didn''t have to worry about food, since I could always come back to eat. But I did need to know more about this teleporting, so I started to play around with it, moving between different floors and trying out different commands. What I learned was that I could move between any fountain I''ve visited, so no cheating floors. I also discovered that there was a lot of leeway when it came to teleporting around. It worked as long as I was touching the fountain, and any command that was reasonably clear of my destination and intent was enough to activate it. With those discoveries packed in the back of my mind, I stored my loot back on my first floor home and continued deeper into the dungeon...after having one last bite to eat. It turned out that the golems were pretty similar to the skeletons from the floor before when it came to feeding. They were tasty, like eating lightly flavoured rock candies, but not too satisfying, also like eating rock candies. The biggest difference was that I had to suck out their essence directly from their cores inside their central body. It wasn''t possible without first opening up the hard shell. It was kinda like eating lobsters, but wasn''t as rewarding. Otherwise though, there wasn''t anything remarkable about the floor. The third floor gave me a few new skills, particularly [Bow Technique] and [Sense Presence]. The latter was kinda nice, but there wasn''t anything that actually tried to hide at this point, so it went to waste for the time being. The fourth floor gave me [Strong Arm] and [Tenacious Body]. The first raised my [Strength] and the latter [Constitution]. Golems were annoying to farm, but the passive skills were nice. In addition, I noticed that the walls often had cracks and something sparkled in between. A close examination simply revealed it to be some sort of metal in the walls, rather than a hidden room or something, so I lost interest. The golems were already dropping large stones, crystal clusters and lumps of clay. I examined each drop a little. The first was a light grey and a bit grainy in texture. The crystal was smooth and hard, and the clay was hard with very little moisture, but felt more like modelling clay rather than some ordinary clay from the ground. Out of curiosity, I tried licking them as well. The first one tasted as I imagined plaster would taste like, and lightly fizzled in my mouth as I tried to spit out the bits that came off on my tongue. The crystals tasted like salt. So much so that I desperately wiped my tongue trying to get the overpowering taste out of my mouth. The clay simply tasted like dirt. I regretted tasting the last one, but the first two were informative, so overall it was a net positive. Now I only had to find a use for them to make my suffering worth it. The same pattern continued for the most part. I''d enter a floor, feed and loot what I can and continue to the next floor. Occasionally there was a particularly interesting floor. The eleventh floor was one like that. The structure was new to me as it wasn''t maze-like in any sense. What first greeted me was a pair of monsters standing in front of gateway. The monsters themselves looked like bipedal dogs wielding crooked metal spears and wearing armour made from roughly patching hardened leather together. Kobalds, if my memory served me right. Of course, the second they noticed me, they acted in the usual manner and charged me without considering the difference in our strength. Beyond the heavy wooden door was a small empty passage with another door. Past that was a larger hall with several kobalds outfitted in various ways. At first I saw it as an easy and simple battle, but after the second monster went down, a sharp pain in my shoulder informed me that there was more than met the eye in that room. Above, instead of simply a ceiling, there was a second floor balcony overseeing the room I was fighting in, and there, there were a pair of kobalds aiming their bows at me. Once I realized that, the fight was simple, but the fact that the floor was set up in that way shook me. The rooms themselves weren''t set up like usual. They weren''t simply branching halls with side rooms that either had a treasure chest, enemies, traps, or were simply empty. All the rooms seemed to have a purpose, though there were tons of duplicate rooms, as if they were made to pad out content. What was especially interesting was the fact that the monsters that appeared in those rooms were also appropriate for those rooms. Kobalds wearing chef outfits were in the kitchens, ones in leather aprons and wielding a hammer were in the smitheries, ones in white aprons over robes were surrounded by bottles filled with mysterious liquids. But not only that, like in the second room past the initial gates, there were defensive rooms as well that contained strategically placed monsters optimized to ambush explorers like myself. Frankly, if this wasn''t in the middle of a dungeon, I''d have thought I accidentally wandered into a kobald fortress or something. Well, the layout itself didn''t make much sense, and there were too many duplicate rooms in the first place. No fortress needed seven weaving rooms and six tanneries. But while the design of this floor was unique, the most interesting part about it was the monsters themselves. It might''ve been the first time I saw kobalds, but that wasn''t what made them so unusual. It was the skills I got from them. At first there were a bunch of ones that used magic. It wasn''t the first time I got magic related skills, but the floors where they appeared, the skills were held by monsters that didn''t have even vaguely humanoid characteristics. Komodo dragon sized lizards that spat fire and rocks or floating jellyfish-like monsters that flung water and wind blades were the kind of things I encountered up until then. If I didn''t get the announcement that I had received the [Fire Magic], [Earth Magic], [Water Magic], [Wind Magic], and [Arcane Magic] skills, I would''ve thought that they were some sort of racial skills or something else entirely. But because of the nature of the monsters I received the skills from, and the lack of usage details in their descriptions, I couldn''t figure out how to activate the skills. Simply having them wasn''t enough. I needed the knowledge on how to use them to make it work. It was like the skills were taunting me. Using magic was a fantasy staple, yet while I not only had the skills, and they had reached rank three by the time I finished floor seven, I still couldn''t use them. Made worse, they even gave me rank 5 for [Astute Mind] which raised my intelligence and [Resolute Psyche] which raised my anima. It made me want to cry a little. But that all changed on this eleventh floor. This time, there were kobalds that could use magic, and while it was only earth or wind magic, I could see how they chanted and waved their arms to cast their magic. It was surreal how I could understand their chants but not their random yelling. One had real concrete meaning, but the other was considered little more than yelps and grunts according to my language comprehension skill. The chants themselves seemed a bit generic and simple. Things like ''Rocks rise up and impel into my enemy'' or ''Arrows of fire, fly through the air and strike my enemy''. Seeing real examples though had me start practising magic, though I hadn''t figured out how to get it to work by the end of the floor, no matter how close I copied the words and motions. There was probably something else that I was missing. I hoped to figure that out as I dove deeper into the dungeon, but for the meantime, I decided to spend extra time in the fountain rooms working on it on the side. In addition to the magic, the other things I found was that the strangely dressed kobalds I killed actually had skills corresponding to their perceived profession. Cook kobalds had the [Cooking] skill, tailor kobalds had the [Tailoring] skill, etc. Since this was the first time I saw such a thing, I spent extra time farming these non-combat skills in case I wouldn''t find them elsewhere. Even if I didn''t have any immediate use for any of them, it was only a matter of time until they each came in handy. With that in mind, I got the [Cooking], [Smithing], [Carpentry], [Leatherworking], [Tailoring], [Enchanting], and [Alchemy] skills, and even to rank four. While the others were self-descriptive, [Enchanting] seemed to be the skill to imbue items with magical properties, and [Alchemy] seemed to be the power to create items that inherently had magical effects. Basically [Enchanting] powered up existing objects while [Alchemy] created inherently powerful things. It was the difference between making a weapon magical and making a potion. At least that was what I got out of it, but since I didn''t know anything about the process itself, I couldn''t actually use the skills, rendering them dead skills for the meantime. It felt like this place was excessively convenient for vampires like me to get the skills I couldn''t normally get, but the monsters also dropped items that were unique to them. Each time I would get something that related to the profession the skill was related to. From those that had [Cooking], I got herbs and spices. From the ones with [Smithing], I got metal ingots. From [Carpentry], jars of sticky liquids that looked like varnishes and lacquers. From [Leatherworking], jars of some sort of cloudy liquid that might''ve been some sort of tanning agent, as well as dyes. From [Tailoring], lots of dyes. From [Enchanting], just crystals of various colours. And from [Alchemy], a wide assortment of plant and animal parts. I wasn''t sure how much I''d use that sort of thing, but just in case, I routinely returned to the floor''s fountain to drop off my loots before continuing to farm the skills. It was better to have than to have not, in my opinion, though excess was a distinct problem, I could always clean up and throw any away if I started to run out of space. In addition to that, I had also gotten and raised the [Leadership] skill. I didn''t realize it at first, but each group had a leader, like when a boss monster lead some subordinates. Oftentimes the boss was merely the strongest and the group didn''t really coordinate beyond a basic, predetermined strategy, but sometimes the boss would actually give orders. They were rare, but it seemed like these bosses had the [Leadership] skill. At least that was my theory. The skill description was that it increased the user''s ability to give orders to others, and for others to follow the user''s orders. It seemed like it was like a charisma boost for giving orders to those who acknowledged the user as their leader, and addition, if those subordinates followed those orders, they became more capable while executing those orders. The effect wasn''t strong amongst the kobalds, but I could certainly feel that they got a little weaker when I aimed to kill the groups'' leaders first. It was certainly going to be useful someday if I ever got my own allies. By the way, the kobalds reminded me of those street hot dog vendors. The boss was a kobald in a fancy outfit, imitating some sort of noble or something. He tasted a bit like a gourmet hot dog with too many toppings. After the eleventh floor, I encountered floors similar to this a few more times. Floors that were shaped like a castle, or a fortress, or some other purpose built structure, rather than simply a giant labyrinth that may or may not have the appearance of being artificially built. I didn''t forget to farm up the rare skills a bit each time, though I didn''t find any new ones past the first floor, the drops progressively increased in quality. The thirteenth floor was a dense forest with light streaming down through the breaks in the canopy lighting up the paths. This time the monsters were all plant based. There were child sized humanoid brown carrots that ran at me screaming so loud that I had to resist the urge to cover my ears. These things were annoying as all hell, though they were weak. Even a weak hit would knock them down and shut them up until they got back onto their pointed feet. Overall they were slow and weak but that screaming was difficult to deal with. Especially when they were combined with other monsters. It tasted like a ginger candy. The next was a monster that strongly resembled a sheep, but it didn''t charge at me when I first encountered it. Instead, it simply watched me as I approached it. Suddenly, it charged at me without warning. I sidestepped it then backed off, waiting for it''s next attack, but it didn''t come. It simply returned to it''s original position and just watched me. The thing was really strange. Upon closer inspection, I realized that the entire area around it was barren. There wasn''t any grass or shrubs near it in a perfect circle aside from a single large plant in the middle. From that plant, a single large vine extended and was connected to the sheep''s belly. Rather than an animal, it seemed like this was a plant-type with animal characteristics, and it was unable to reach beyond the barren area. That was why it didn''t attack until I got close. It really was an odd monster, but when I next tried, it was easy to cut down with my bare claws. I couldn''t help but think the monster tasted like a sweet roast lamb. The last monster I encountered in this floor was basically a giant closed lotus, except it was in the middle of the path. The flower pedals reached above my head, but when I got close, vines from around the base whipped at me. It was fast, a lot faster than most things I''ve fought, but it concentrated on restraining me rather than doing direct damage. Instead, the flower opened up and there was a naked woman with green skin waiting inside as I was lifted off the ground. Being the first thing I encountered that so strongly resembled a human, and an extremely shapely and naked one at that, I couldn''t help but blush. But it looked like the woman wanted to eat me, and I had no intention of reversing the usual predator/prey relations I had lived since arriving in this world. The vines weren''t too strong, making it easy to pull on my restraints and cut myself down before quickly pouncing and biting down onto the green woman''s neck. She tasted like a fruit tart. Beyond the theme, there were two things that stood out on this floor. The first was that there was a large amount of vegetation growing conspicuously on the paths made between the dense trees with thick shrubs filling the gaps. Normally I wouldn''t have given them much of a look, but some of them were small berry bushes. There were strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, and a few others I didn''t recognize. Noticing that made me curious, so I started to check out some of the other plants. To my surprise, I found lettuce, cabbage, carrots, potatoes, and a whole slew of other vegetables. The amount I saw was enough to feed a small village for a day. It was pretty unfortunate that I couldn''t eat any of it, but if I had been reborn as a normal race, I most likely would''ve starved to death far before reaching this far. Despite the drawbacks, I was glad I chose to become a vampire. The second interesting thing I found on this floor was the skill I had gotten from all of the plant-based monsters that inhabited this floor: [Solar Power]. It basically restored the user''s HP and MP while under sunlight, making the monsters here a pain to fight if I couldn''t keep take them out quickly, since it was so hard to keep them in the shade the entire fight. While I successfully got the skill and even raised it to rank five thanks to the fact that all the monsters had it, it was a racial, preventing me from using it. It was so frustrating when I checked it out, since I thought I could use it to negate my sunlight weakness. The sixteenth floor was shaped like a winding canyon, with the entrance being at the bottom of the valley. Rather than sharp bends and turns blocking the way, the walls oscillated irregularly and large boulders forced detours. Sometimes staying at the bottom beside a slow stream, sometimes climbing up the walls on narrow paths, or even through small caves that cut right through the canyon walls. The monsters I encountered were all aerial, making the fights particularly disadvantageous for me, not having many means to fight at ranged. I first relied on a bow and arrows I got by returning to an earlier floor, but it quickly became evident that the strategy wouldn''t hold up if I didn''t minimize my fights, something I didn''t want to do. Once I ran out of arrows, I abandoned my bow and instead relied on intercepting the monsters in melee. The most prevalent monsters in the open canyon areas were a bird-like monster with the head and torso of humans. Pretty blatantly harpies. They would dive down and try to scratch me with their talons or grab me to throw me around. But at the same time, since I also relied on melee strikes, countering those dives were the main, or rather, sole method I had to take them down. I''d either grab their leg and swing them into the ground before giving them a finishing blow, or simply jump up and rake my claws wherever I could, preferably their neck or wings. Despite being completely disadvantaged on an entire dimension, the harpies were stupid and continued using the same strategy even when they saw another of their kind fail their attempt and get killed. There were other birds that resembled big falcons that often showed up with the harpies, but they had the same fighting style, though they were much faster. Conversely, their speed also made them much more vulnerable, making any small scratch on them enough to ground them long enough for me to finish them off. The most difficult monsters though, surprisingly, were shaped like balloons with jellyfish-like tendrils hanging from the base. There were two varieties of them. One was pink, and the other light blue. The pink ones would swing their tendrils, which then detached and flew at me. It flew kinda like a bola, and when I got hit by it the first time due to surprise, the tendril refused to come off, sticking onto my body like it was covered in glue. It didn''t feel like glue at all, since anywhere it touched my skin stung like I had a really bad rash. The blue type would try to come close and strike me directly with it''s tendrils. These too stuck to my skin if they hit, but the combined impact of the swing caused additional damage. The balloons were a royal pain in the ass, as I had to avoid touching the tendrils even on the attack, or else they''d get stuck on my hands or arms. The monsters here gave me two interesting skills though. The first was [Flight]. It allowed flying, but only if the user had wings. It was the first time I got a skill I wasn''t allowed to use, yet wasn''t a racial. Vampires often had the ability to get wings in a lot of fictions. In fact, when I discovered the [Flight] skill, I thought of the [Alter Form] skill I had gotten so long ago, but it was a racial, shooting down my idea instantly. I still hoped that I could find a use for the skill eventually. The other skill I got was [Float]. It basically allowed me to float just like those balloons did. It was an interesting feeling, just freely floating around. The skill even let me move around a bit, though it was slow. The constant MP expenditure was annoying, but the amount decreased as I continued to rank it up. As I was relaxing in the fountain after returning to my home base from the 25th floor, I realized something I''d been neglecting this whole time: my home wasn''t really secure. There weren''t any doors or anything blocking anyone from entering my home and stealing anything or setting up an ambush for when I returned. The thought left me a little unsettled. I might not have seen anyone yet, but it didn''t mean that the possibility didn''t exist. The obvious thing to do was make a door and block off the entire dungeon from entry, but that would hardly do much. I didn''t have the knowledge or skills to make any sort of door to block off a particularly determined person, and drawing attention to myself like that would only risk even more people showing up to break down any barricade that the first group couldn''t penetrate and look for me even deeper in the dungeon. The best way to avoid unwanted attention was to hide my things deeper in the dungeon. The further I went, the less likely someone who stumbled into this dungeon would discover my things and try to steal them or harm me. As long as my belongings weren''t found, I''d have the initiative if someone else started to explore the dungeon. With my mind made up, I made some crude cleaning supplies from my random assortment of junk, went back to the 25th floor fountain, and started to clean. ''You have gained the [Cleaning 1] skill!'' A surprising announcement resounded in my head as I was dusting the walls with a rough broom made from a stick and bird feathers. It wasn''t too odd when I thought about it, considering the other skills I already had, but it was still a little unexpected. With better tools than when I dusted and washed the first floor fountain room, it didn''t take nearly as long to clean the room to my satisfaction. My next step was moving all my things over from the first floor to the 25th. One by one, I grabbed leather bags or wrapped up piles of loot and brought them all over. It took dozens of trips to make it, but none of it was too heavy and I didn''t have to move my body much despite how far the fountains were from each other. That said, it was tedious, boring work, and I ended up placing everything in pretty haphazard and random locations. Most of it was just for storage in case I needed them, rather than things I used much anyways. When I was done and was checking around to make sure I didn''t forget any loose materials, I noticed that there were dirt and dust rings around where my loot was sitting before. It was pretty unsightly, and a dead giveaway that someone lived there before. Tipping explorers off so early would be problematic for me...probably. So I continued my work, while having breaks to eat, and cleaned the first floor fountain room. Then the second, and the third, and all the way to the 24th. In the end, it was pretty obvious that a clean fountain room would be suspicious if there were dirty ones as well. Even more so if those dirty ones had footprints all over the place. On the other hand, if all the fountain rooms were clean, it did raise some suspicions, but it was also possible that people would presume that they''re normally clean until people start dirtying the place up. It was the difference between an absolute giveaway and a possible one. If that was the case, then my choice was obvious, even if I did have to do more work for it. From then on, I started to clean every fountain room I arrived in, as well as clean up any mess I made when visiting earlier floors. I also periodically moved my things to a deeper fountain to reduce the chance of anyone finding them. As an aside, my [Cleaning] skill rose to rank 3 by the end. Chapter 09 – Spiritual and Magical The twenty seventh floor was a real shock to me though. The aesthetics reminded me of a haunted house, with creaking floorboards and rotting wallpaper. It was still a labyrinth, and not like a fortress level though. I walked past the lobby, through a hallway and into a side room. There wasn''t anything around, but I could swear that there was something circling me. It was like I could sense something near me like a radar, but there wasn''t anything according to my primary senses. Scratching my head, I turned to leave the empty room when a grey, transparent figure materialized in front of me and stabbed at me with it''s claws. Instinctively, I slashed at it with my weapon while stepping back, but the metal blade simply slipped through the torn hooded robe that the figure was wearing like it wasn''t there. A sharp pain in my shoulder dulled my mind as I tried throwing a ball of acid at the monster this time, but it passed right through and splashed against a wall, and without a sound, the roughly humanoid figure disappeared. But despite that, I could feel that it was still there. The presence slowly moved around me to my back then stopped for a moment. I turned around in time to see it materialize again to strike at me. Unlike last time, I bent my body to the side to avoid the strike while stepping in and thrusting out with my claws. But against my expectation, there was no sensation beyond the air that passed in between my fingers. For some reason the phantom could attack me, but I couldn''t touch it. It was annoying, but in games, enemies like this were generally weak to magic or magical weapons. I didn''t know how to use magic yet, but I did have one last chance outside of the normal options. The monster faded and circled behind me before striking again. This time, instead of using my normal weapons, I simply lunged at it after avoiding it''s claws and bit into it''s neck, sucking out it''s essence. The sensation was even weirder than with the skeletons, as my fangs didn''t have anything solid to purchase onto, but as I held that position, I could lightly feel something tugging on them as the monster struggled, and the feeling of something misty entered my hollow fangs. It was kinda like biting into whipped cream or something, and tasted like raspberry yogourt. Like always for bloodless monsters, I felt a vague sense of fulfillment, but a serious lack of satisfaction as my stomach pulled at my mind in a mild tantrum. This trick worked, but it was risky and left me vulnerable if there was more than one monster. I wouldn''t be able to heal on this floor either if all the monsters were like this. I needed a better strategy for this floor. With that thought in mind, I picked up the black gem and a small bowl of a slimy gel the monster dropped and returned to the fountain to plan. I sat on the newly cleaned fountain lip and lightly kicked at the water while I sat with my boots and pants off. My eyes were absently gazing at the rippling water as I thought. The only monster I had confirmed was that phantom thing, but even if that was the only one that was invulnerable to physical attacks, combined with the fact that I couldn''t see it until it attacked, it would be serious trouble if I had to fight it in addition to other monsters. Multiple of those phantoms would be even worse. If my theory was right, then they would be vulnerable to magical and enchanted attacks. I didn''t know how to do either. I had the skills for both, presumably, but the [Enchanting] skill was a crafting skill that applied an enchantment to equipment, as least as far as I presumed. But I had switched over to relying on my claws as my main weapon lately. Trying to loot weapons to use from monsters were wholly unreliable and they broke too easily. Even the two times I got a weapon from treasure chests didn''t help me too much. One was a bow and the other a heavy axe. The bow wasn''t very conductive to enchanting for close combat, and the axe went counter to my current combat style. I wondered if my luck with getting weapons was bad, or if this was simply normal. I hadn''t been getting many clothes either and heavy armour had repeatedly showed up. It almost felt like the dungeon was harassing me, who currently was a speed oriented melee fighter. But due to all that, even if I figured out how to get enchanting to work, it didn''t feel like it would be too reliable. Instead, the better option was straight magic. I still didn''t have all the pieces to make it work, but I did have solid clues along with the appropriate skills. It felt like the better option by far, and it wasn''t like I was in a hurry. Spending a while trying to figure it out wasn''t a bad idea, and expanding my repertoire was always a good thing. Especially since I was so limited in ways to fight despite how many skills I had. I mustered all the knowledge I had about magic systems in various fictional stories, using them as reference as I practised my chants and motions. I was pretty certain that I was missing some element of spell casting that prevented me from actually using magic. While I questioned the importance of chanting and hand motions for casting since not all spell casting monsters used them, I didn''t think that what I was doing was inaccurate. There was the fact that I had MP, and had used it for some skills previously, though it always recovered after eating. And I did tend to eat after each fight, though my restraint had improved since the first floor. In theory, MP should''ve been the main resource used when using magic. In games, it was normally consumed in order to cast magic, but my spell casting attempts weren''t really connected with it''s usage. I just presumed that it would be used if I did the casting actions right, but maybe there was a more direct usage of MP? A lot of fictions had a magic user manipulate their internal energies in some way to create special phenomena. That was something I hadn''t been doing, and felt likely to be the problem. With that thought in my mind, I tried meditating, focusing my mind inside of my body and feel for something I wasn''t currently aware of. Quickly, almost immediately, I felt something. Excited, I felt deeper into my core and prod that feeling, trying to discover what it was. gurgle My stomach turned over, demanding my attention. I wanted to punch it so bad. I wasn''t some sort of glutton in my previous life. For that matter, I often forgot my meals, especially the last year. It was pretty absurd how much my new life was dominated by hunger. I didn''t know if it was because vampires had poor fuel economy or my new body was simply unused to resisting the feeling of hunger. Pushing the feeling to the back of my mind, I returned to feeling around for any foreign sensation. Inside of my body, there was something there. It felt like water in a cup slowly sloshing around. The feeling was difficult to grasp and solidify in my mind. It just felt so natural being there. But the fact that it was there, and not something I had before, made me able to perceive the difference. It was a natural part of my body, yet foreign to my mind with a second life''s memories. I tried touching this fluid. Poked and prodded, trying to make it move in some way aside from the normal gentle sloshing. At first, nothing happened. But as I continued trying different approaches, a small changed appeared. It felt like the fluid started to slowly spin, turning from a simple calm pond to a gentle whirlpool. As the fluid gained direction, it grew easier to manipulate, and eventually I managed to squeeze some of it outside of it''s container. But despite being outside of it''s container, I could still feel and manipulate the fluid. When I opened my eyes, I couldn''t see anything in front of me, but I could feel that something was there, moving to the left and right as I wanted. ''You have gained the [Mana Manipulation 1] skill! You have gained the [Mana Perception 1] skill!'' The two announcements resounded in my head, congratulating me for my efforts. With this, I felt like I was only a step away from actually casting my first spell. Concentrating my mind, I imagined this free floating mass of mana transforming and doing my bidding. "Arrows of fire, fly through the air and strike my enemy" With the cant and motions I memorized from the kobald mages, I tried casting magic once again. bang Startled at the sudden sound, I opened my eyes again. There was a burn mark and smoke rising from the fountain''s central pillar I had done it! For the first time ever, I had used magic! The excitement made me forget everything and I entered the water curtain and touched the burned spot. It was still warm, though the stone pillar itself hadn''t been marred in the slightest. "Yes yes! Oh my fucking god yes!" I had solved the problem. I was missing additional skills to make it work, but by learning them I was able to cast magic! But that begged the question, why hadn''t I gotten those skills, or at least [Mana Manipulation], from the previous magic using monsters? The only answer I could think of, was that those monsters didn''t need the skill. Either there was something innate that wasn''t a skill that allowed them to cast magic, or they used a different technique from what I used. It definitely felt like the latter, as the former conflicted with the way the world worked. If the technique used was different, then it was possible that I didn''t need the chant or hand motions. I pointed a finger at the wall and worked the mana inside of my body, imagining it into an arrow of fire flying out from my finger. It took a second, but a pointed flame appeared in front of my finger and flew out, exploding when it touched the wall. A grin naturally formed on my face so big that my cheeks hurt, but I didn''t care. It was a dream come true. I had used magic, and confirmed that I could repeat it. From there on, I started to experiment. I had four different magic skills. One after the next, I played around, creating one supernatural phenomena after the next. Stone bullets, wind blades, icicle javelins, various walls and big AOEs. I kept going until I felt lightheaded and was forced to stop. A quick glance at my status explained why I was feeling that way. It wasn''t some after effect of the euphoria I had been feeling, but mana depletion. My MP was almost at zero. Not only that, but my body felt tired. I had no concrete way to tell, but it seemed like I had been working at learning magic for quite some time. My shoulders were stiff and my butt was sore. In addition, my hunger had come back with a vengeance, now that I wasn''t being overwhelmed by the excitement at using magic for the first time. My hunger really was the only way for me to gauge the time, and even that felt extremely unreliable. It did make me wonder how long I had been in this world already. But once a few years passed, it probably didn''t matter, so I shrugged the thought off pretty quickly. I went back to the 23rd floor where I hunted orcs in a large walled settlement-style zone. They were big and fat, but made excellent and filling meals, like eating greasy pork cutlets. When I first finished the floor, I got tired at eating so many rich meals back to back, but now it was perfect. As a side, my [Exceptional Vitality] and [Strong Arm] passives I originally acquired on that floor had risen to rank six by the time I filled myself up. Thanks to that, my HP had broken the four digit barrier, and my strength had surpassed my agility. With a full belly, I returned to the 27th floor, but rested at the fountain for a little while rather than diving in immediately. The phantom monster I found was very different from what I had seen before, and I was eager to see what sort of skills I could get from it. On my second foray into the haunted house-like floor, I followed the same path as before. The first room I checked was empty. There wasn''t a feeling of some sort of presence there. Exiting from there, followed the hallway to a dead end. The hall had collapsed, blocking off further access in that direction, but there were doorways on either side. I picked the left one because I could sense something there. It felt a little different from the one I first encountered. Rather, instead of different, it was like I could feel a wider variety of sensations from it. The thought of it being another new monster excited me. Once inside the room, the presence drifted around behind me, then stopped. I turned around and readied to fire off a wind blade at it, but to my surprise, the monster that appeared looked identical to the one I first encountered. Not expecting that, I was late in reacting, and was unable to cleanly avoid the phantom''s attack. My shoulder was scratched and a trickle of blood ran down before the bleeding stopped. The monster faded back into nothing, but I could feel where it was, presumably thanks to [Sense Presence]. This time, I didn''t need to wait for it to appear and attack, and instead I simply launched a wind blade at it''s estimated location. With a sharp hiss, the spell cut the monster in half, and the floating apparition drifted to the ground in two pieces before settling. After a few seconds, the monster remains disappeared in a puff and left behind a black gem and a worn out piece of cloth. While I was happy to get some cloth which I could use to make clothes finally, the strange feeling of the monster stayed in the back of my mind. The feeling I had made me think that it was a different monster, yet it was the same one I first fought. As I was trying to figure out the reason, I picked up the drops to store when I noticed something. The gem and cloth gave off some sort of strange feeling. It was like they emanated some sort of energy. There was no reason to think that the black gem was any different from any of the black gems I had looted before, yet it felt different. A niggling feeling made me go back to my home base and check my stash of gems. When I got there, all of the gems gave of similar feelings, with the black ones all being identical to the new one I had found. My answer was right there. It wasn''t that I was feeling something new, but that I had learned to feel something that was already there. The only thing that had changed was that I had learned to use magic. No, rather, not just that, but I had gained two new skills that allowed me to use magic. Of the two, the only one that made sense in this context was my [Mana Perception] skill. If that was the cause, then it made everything make sense. Not only could I feel the mana in these gems, but also anything else that contained sufficient mana. And not only that, but I could feel the nature of that mana, which was why each of the gems felt different. That also meant that the ragged cloth I got as loot was filled with magical power as well. In that case, it was probably bad to recklessly use it to make clothes until I knew more about it. The discovery made me a little sad inside, but that just meant that things didn''t change on that end. I was still severely lacking clothes. For some reason, half the time when clothes appeared in the chests, they were some sort of heavy metal armour, something I just didn''t want to use with my combat style. Now that I confirmed all of that, I returned to the 27th floor and went back to exploring it. Following the same path I took, this time I encountered a new monster at the end of the collapsed hallway. It was a faint and transparent floating woman in a tattered white flowing dress. It was another ghost type. When the ghost noticed me, it raised an arm with a loud screech and a large icicle appeared in it''s hand. Without waiting for it''s attack, I quickly closed the gap, only side stepping to avoid the flying ice javelin. To test it, I first thrust out a hand and tried to rake it with my claws, but as with the phantom before, my hand simply passed through it''s body. The ghost started to fade, but I could sense it''s presence well enough that it''s actions were a waste of effort. Instead of waiting for it to reappear, I simply lunged at where it was and sank my teeth into it''s body. The moment I could taste it''s essence through my fangs, the ghost reappeared screeching. It seemed like I had bitten it''s arm, and although sucking it''s essence from there was slower than the neck, it was still more than fast enough, and it didn''t take long before the shuddering ghost lost all it''s energy and lifelessly collapsed. Or rather, it was pretty lifeless in the first place, being a ghost. Now that it was empty, I dropped the transparent husk, and it disappeared, leaving a gem and tattered magical rag which I tossed into my bag before continuing. Like before, I turned left into the room on the side. There wasn''t anything waiting there this time, but I could sense two presences through the broken wall on my right. Unlike before, this time I could vaguely feel that there were two presences. If they weren''t on opposite sides of the opening, I probably wouldn''t have been able to tell them apart. When I passed through the gap, they both started moving as if they were one. The one on my left moved to my rear, but the one on my right immediately approached me. The monster on my right was a skeleton wearing heavy black robes and wielding a scythe. The left was invisible, but unless if it was also a new monster, it was probably the same as the first phantom I fought. Since it was already visible, I concentrated first on the robed skeleton, stepping in and thrusting my claws at it as it prepared to swing it''s weapon at me. To absolutely zero surprise, right before my attack connected, the monster faded into nothing, though it''s presence suggested that it was still there. There was no sensation of touching anything despite my claws clearly going through the location I could feel the monster''s presence. It''s characteristics seemed to be a little different from the other ghost monsters, but it relied on the same principals. Rather than do something about this slow monster, I turned to face the one that was getting ready to attack my back. It had already materialized and started it''s attack. Reading the predictable trajectory, I closed in while avoiding it''s claws and bit it''s neck, draining it quickly. The other monster had moved closer before stopping. As expected, it''s attacks were slow, so I could leisurely drain the phantom as it wound up. Before any attack could connect, I swung an arm behind me and sent mana out to become an ice wall right behind me. There was a clink as metal met ice. I could see the tip of the scythe poking out from the ice wall from the corner of my eye. Immediately after, I dissolved the wall back into raw mana. With a quick back step and twist right as the first monster grew dry of essence, I bit into the skeleton''s neck and drained it as well. With that, the fight came to a quick conclusion as the skeleton convulsed before all the energy left it''s body. The fight was only as easy as it was thanks to my magic. If not, I''d have had to find a way to separate the two and deal with them individually, or deliberately taken a blow away from my vitals. The only reason why I didn''t start with an offensive spell was because I wanted to learn a little about the robed skeleton. With the fight over, the monster corpses disappeared, leaving me with more inconsequential drops. On the other hand, draining the phantom gave me [Spirit Perception]. The skill allowed me to sense the presence of spiritual entities. At rank one, [Spirit Perception] didn''t change anything for me. [Sense Presence] was a higher rank and did mostly the same thing on this floor. Since it was limited to spiritual entities, it seemed like a degraded skill, but the thought that it might work different at higher levels prevented me from completely dismissing it. I exited through the door and back to the hallway''s continuation. After a short walk and a turn, two more monsters showed up in front of me. This time it was the magic using ghost and the scythe wielding skeleton. I opened up with a fire ball at the ghost and charged at the skeleton. The fireball exploded square in the ghost''s chest, ending it instantly, while I lept at the skeleton and bit into it''s neck as it winded up it''s scythe. I sucked out it''s essence then turned to the ghost and bit into it''s remains, sucking it dry as well. It wasn''t like I was attempting to use a particularly strong spell, but it seemed like these monsters were a lot more vulnerable to magic than I thought. Maybe it was a balancing factor since they had physical immunity. Still, it being easy wasn''t a problem for me, and gave me an excuse to practice with my magic even more. And unlike a normal person, I didn''t have to worry about running out of MP here, since I fully recovered it all from just sucking out my enemies'' essence. On top of that, the ghost gave me a new skill: [Spirit Form]. My new skill''s description said that it allowed my body to become like a spirit''s temporarily, but actually trying it only allowed my body to slightly fade. It was only good enough to cosplay as a ghost if I wanted to. But it was pretty interesting, and I wanted to see what it would be like at higher ranks. A bit further in, my next encounter was against a pair of those invisible phantoms. The thought of fighting a pair of invisible monsters that kept trying to attack me from behind was annoying, so I just fired off a wind blade horizontally. The compressed air flew out, almost touching both walls, and with a flicker, cut through a pair of entities before continuing as if nothing significant had happened. As the air blade impacted some debris and dissipated, a pair of bisected ghost bodies appeared on the ground. I happily hopped over to them and sucked their essence out with the feeling of enjoying a few pieces of cotton candy. With this fight, I had acquired a third skill on this floor: [Manifest Body]. My latest skill allowed it''s user to turn a part of or whole spiritual body into a physical form. I tried it out immediately despite my low [Spirit Form] skill rank. My body first turned transparent, though only barely. Next, by activating [Manifest Body], I made one of my hands turn back into physical form, losing it''s transparent properties. Activating both skills wasn''t difficult and I admired the effects of them both working in tandem. It made me think that I could use this to simulate a similar effect as the phantoms. The thought of being an invisible assassin was quite amusing, but for me, it paled in comparison to being a mage. Then again, it wouldn''t hurt to become skilled at both. The skills on this floor were a bit unusual, and I really wanted to spend time raising them. With a bounce in my step, I continued to farm up the floor''s skills, occasionally returning to drop off my loot and go fill up on fresh blood. By the time I decided to move on to the 28th floor, my [Spirit Perception] skill reached ran 7, and my [Spirit Form] and [Manifest Body] skills reached rank 5. At rank 3, [Spirit Perception] had finally started to show features that [Sense Presence] didn''t offer. Not only had the feeling of spiritual creatures had become clearer and more precise, but I had become able to even see the ghost monsters when they would normally be invisible. At this point, they were still pretty faint to my eyes, at rank 7, it was actually getting more difficult to notice them transitioning to spirit forms. I hoped that I wouldn''t lose the ability to tell the difference at all if the skill reached max rank. At rank 5, [Spirit Form] seemed to make me virtually invisible, though by the time I got the skill that high, I was only able to confirm it by wandering around floor 26 to see if the lizardfolks noticed me or not. Any further benefits seemed to be reducing MP cost while transformed, though I suspected that there were some things that I could only do in spirit form that I hadn''t gotten my rank high enough to discover. [Manifest Body] effectively just reversed the spirit form effects more completely as long as it''s rank was equal to my rank in [Spirit Form]. The only way I was able to realize this was when I tested the skill when [Manifest Body] was a rank lower than [Spirit Form]''s. That time, my hand didn''t become completely solid. The effects were quite disturbing, and I was glad for my [Manifest Body] skill to rise soon after. In addition to the new skills, my [Mana Manipulation] and [Mana Perception] skills reached rank 2. It was nice to see my skills go up without relying on [Blood Sucking], but at the same time, I came to realize just how slow raising skills normally were. Though I couldn''t discount the possibility that vampires simply had slower skill acquisition rates. Stepping onto the 30th floor was a massive surprise. I had arrived on a beach. On one side was a sheer cliff, and the other an ocean. In between was an idyllic sandy beach, with the water softly lapping on it''s shores. There was very little to the floor beyond the beach and ocean from where I stood. No monsters, no treasure chests, no seperating walls and rooms. At the far end of the beach, I could see that the cliffs intersected the ocean, bringing an end to the beach. Behind me, the same thing happened. But otherwise there wasn''t anything there. Not even a boss, or a way to the next floor. I casually walked across the sandy beach. The almost ivory sand was soft and fine, giving away to my steps easily. It made walking a little awkward, but not too difficult. On occasion, I stepped on something hard buried in the sand. When I bent down, I found I stepped on some sort of clam as it wiggled to bury itself again. After a lengthy walk, I reached the far cliffside. There really wasn''t anything dungeon-like here. The beach was nothing more than a normal beach, but that couldn''t be the case. Every floor had a boss along with a staircase down to the next floor. It was doubtful that this was the last floor. If it wasn''t, then that meant that there was a way to the next floor. I just had to figure out where it was, and beat the boss guarding it. But I was surrounded by cliffs on three sides, and an endless ocean on the fourth. Theoretically I could scale the cliffs to see beyond them, but it didn''t feel like that was the right way. The environment itself pointed to the water instead. (The water though...) I hadn''t fought in or under water yet, so the prospect was a bit unnerving. But I did have magic to help me. I used wind magic to create a bubble of air around my head and connected it to the surface to get a continuous supply of fresh air. Then I stepped into the water, wading out until the water rose to my chest, where I dove under. With my head underwater yet paradoxically dry, I swam around, exploring this new place. The monsters weren''t as difficult as others I''ve fought, but due to the nature of the environment, the fights were much harder than the previous floor. Sharks charged at me head on, giant jellyfish would creep up from odd angles, and big squids would grab at my body with their long tentacles, making me instinctively grip my pants tightly with one hand to avoid them from being pulled off, even though they never actually attempted to. Aside from the monsters, there were tons of sea creatures swimming around or crawling on the ocean floor. No matter how I looked at them, they weren''t monsters, but instead just normal fish and shellfish. Eventually I found a small hill in the water with the usual gate for the stairs to the next floor. The boss was swimming around it like a guard. It was a giant shark that tried to swallow me whole the second I got close. I surrounded myself with ice spears, letting it impale itself. The floor was quite interesting, but it was a shame that I couldn''t enjoy the extravagant seafood buffet. I did enjoy the skills that the monsters gave me though, including [Swim], letting me move around in the water as fast as a fish by the end. What I didn''t enjoy was the thorough cleaning my clothes needed to get the salt out afterwards. Chapter 11 – Stalled Progression and Fluff A large obsidian object slammed down onto the ground where I was just at with enough force to crater the hard stone floors and send shock waves through the ground. A single hit could probably turn me into paste, but I wasn''t concerned. What concerned me was that as I slashed at the massive collection of shiny spheres that vaguely resembled a person''s body, my claws only made superficial scratches. I hadn''t encountered something this hard before, and frankly, it was frustrating. This was my fourth attempt at this monster. It was the first one of the 87th floor, and while I had defeated it three times now, the fights had taken much too long and costed me too much MP to continue trying to conquer the floor. After each attempt, I went back to lower floors and farmed up more skills, raised my level, and came up with new strategies. I had tried clawing, burning, freezing, impaling with both weapons and magic, bending it''s joints with brute force, and countless other things I came up with, but none of them worked well enough to be considered satisfying. This black golem simply took too long to beat. As far as I found, all the monsters on this floor were golems as well, and each as strong as this one, though the black one took the cake for sheer durability, the others weren''t pushovers either. Aside from this black one, there was a sparkling silver golem that was relatively fast and light, but also resisted my attacks to a surprising degree as well as an iridescent golem which negated all magical attacks. My claws could do significant damage, I had to brace my body properly or I''d only leave scratches. All three were insanely tough to fight, and took way too long to take down. At the rate I was going at, I''d starve before getting halfway to the boss. I had the option of carrying a ton of blood with me to sustain me but it was unreliable. Not only did blood gathered like that wasn''t very tasty, but it was an extremely high risk strategy that presumed that I wouldn''t take a longer than expected time both to reach the boss and to beat it. Since I hadn''t bothered to scout the floor, I didn''t know the route yet. I could just avoid the monsters and figure out the layout, but it went against my principals. It was a last resort, and one which I had been able to avoid ever since discovering that I could teleport between fountains. This floor was only tedious, not something where desperation would set in so easily. But I was getting tired of being stuck here. The floors had been taking a markedly longer amount of time to conquer since the 70th floor or so, and having my progress grind to a complete halt was annoying. A few more scratches into the black golem''s body and I backed off, then launched a stream of blue flames at the monster. It ignored my magic and charged at me, but I simply kept my distance and kept up the flames until the torso of the collection of spheres turned a bright yellow. With hardly any gap, I switched from shooting fire to sending out a large stream of water and ice at the monster. The mixture instantly evaporated as it came into contact with the monster''s body, but the cold stream quickly dulled the metal''s glow. Over the loud torrent of water flow and explosive evaporation, I could the pinging of cracks forming in the golem''s body. With my spell finished, I dashed in close to the staggering golem. The spots where I left claw marks had cracked from the expansion and compression caused by the fire and water magic combo. Tiny gaps formed in it''s armour, which I took advantage of. I dug the tips of my claws into the cracks and used all my strength to pry at them. Pinging sounds reverberated from the golem as the cracks lengthened. The golem tried to swing it''s arm to dislodge me, but I simply flipped and rotated, keeping one set of claws lodged in the slowly opening gap in it''s armour before settling in a new position and continue prying at it. Repeating this three more times, the crack finally made it''s way across the whole of the golem''s torso, separating one of it''s arms from the rest of it''s body and leaving a gaping hole for me to exploit. The hole was more than big enough for me to dive inside and bite down on the glowing blue sphere that was it''s core, and drain it of all it''s motive energy. In a scant few seconds, the golem shuddered before collapsing onto the ground. I pulled myself out from inside it''s body. "Damn" Once again the fight took way too long. Just scratching the body deep enough so that it would crack properly when I heat then cooled it''s body took up several minutes. And even after that, the MP expenditure to continuously heat it before freeze cracking the metallic shell was too high. My MP hadn''t even been restored beyond 75% after sucking out it''s essence. There was no way that this strategy was sustainable. At the very least, I''d need to take breaks after every two or three fights, and everything broke down the second more than one golem showed up at once. That latter bit was the main reason why I hadn''t gone any further than the first encounter in this floor. I was starting to reconsider the decision to ditch normal weapons and rely entirely on my claws and magic for my offence. (But even if I didn''t, it''s hard to imagine any weapon surviving contact against such tough shells) Out of ideas, I returned to my home to relax. I used water magic to transfer water from the fountain into a simple bathtub made from stone shaped with earth magic, then fire magic to heat it up. Stripping down, I lay to relax in the hot water. In a place where any luxury beyond good food and hard combat had to be made from my own hands, soaking in a bath had become one of my few alternative joys outside of what what the dungeon provided. That alone made it especially precious to me. After coming up with the idea, I couldn''t go back to simply bathing in the fountain''s water directly anymore. I picked up a bar of crude soap I had made and lathered up my hair before using water magic to rinse it. Next, I lathered up a puffy ball of spider silk and scrubbed my body. Once again, I lay my body back into the steaming water and let the strength go from my body. One of the best things about making my own bath tub was that I could decide all of the dimensions without regard to any restrictions, so I made sure that it was long enough that I could lie down in it without touching any of the sides. relying solely on buoyancy, only my face and breasts touched the air, and the rest of my body was just barely submerged under the surface. Aside from the slight coolness, being able to forget the weight that normally pulled my body down a bit was also a private pleasure of mine. Due to the perspective I couldn''t tell if I was bigger than normal or not, but the weight had become something I always had to consider as I moved. Having it gone while I relaxed only solidified my bath''s importance in my mind. While letting my body drift in the hot water, my mind was stuck on the problem I had been on for the last little while: how to progress through the 87th floor. I opened up my status to see if I could come up with any clues. ------------------------------------Name:Species: VampireSex: FemaleState: NormalLevel: 255XP: 89,187,800/100,013,800 HP: 1,892,501/1,892,501MP: 5,463,060/5,463,060STR: 89790CON: 84323AGI: 138287DEX: 116796INT: 162259ANI: 133705 Skills: Default Skills: [Local Language] Racial Skills: [Blood Sucking 7 (Vampire)] [Natural Weapons 9 (Vampire)] Primary Skills: [Superior Vitality 8] [Boundless Spirit 10] [Unyielding Arm 6] [Relentless Body 5] [Winged Feet 9] [Feather Touch 7] [Brilliant Mind 10] [Adamant Psyche 10] [Unarmed Technique 7] [Knife Mastery 3] [Sword Mastery 2] [Spear Technique 8] [Club Technique 7] [Axe Technique 8] [Stave Technique 7] [Whip Technique 6] [Bow Technique 7] [Throwing Technique 7] [Shield Technique 6] [Light Armour Technique 5] [Medium Armour Technique 4] [Heavy Armour Technique 4] [Arcane Magic 10] [Blaze Magic 8] [Terranian Magic 8] [Aqua Magic 8] [Tempest Magic 8] [Lunar Magic 4] [Solar Magic 1] [Arcane Resistance 9] [Fire Resistance 9] [Earth Resistance 9] [Water Resistance 9] [Wind Resistance 9] [Dark Resistance 9] [Mana Manipulation 6] [Mana Perception 6] [Spirit Perception 10] [Spirit Form 10] [Materialize 9] [Sneaking 9] [Suppress Presence 9] [Suppress Aura 9] [Cooking 7] [Smithing 7] [Carpentry 7] [Leatherworking 7] [Tailoring 7] [Enchanting 7] [Alchemy 7] [Leadership 7] [Float 10] [Swim 8] [Cleaning 8] [Sense Presence 9] [Rapid Regeneration 6] [Rapid Refresh 7] [Create Acid 8] [Create Poison 7] [Acid Resistance 8] [Poison Resistance 7] [Paralysis Resistance 6] [Confusion Resistance 8] [Sleep Resistance 5]------------------------------------ Aside from skills that I can''t use, or had no use for me, this was what I had at my disposal. Even taking my non-combat skills into consideration, no new strategies came to mind. I simply didn''t have what was needed to get the job done. I''d already scoured all the floors for skills and raised them quite high, some of them had even evolved into advanced skills increasing my capabilities even further. But even with that, I wasn''t strong enough to take on those golems as is. No weapons or tools I could make stood a chance against them, nor any technique, physical or magical, I could use that would be efficient and effective enough to actually use to conquer the entire floor. Simply put, I was at a standstill, and it was frustrating me. I closed the window and just went back to relaxing. Being reborn wasn''t exactly something I chose to do, but since I had done so, I strove to enjoy it the best I could. But right then, I wasn''t enjoying it. Being stuck on a difficult problem could be fun, but being stuck on it for so long was becoming difficult. I needed something different to do for a while. Now that I thought about it, I hadn''t left the dungeon once since I first entered it. While I enjoyed my time inside the dungeon, it was a shame that I hadn''t met anyone since arriving in this world. At the least, I could put in some effort for that. I didn''t have to actually go far away to find a settlement. Just a look around here and there as a change in pace. Even if I didn''t find anyone, the change in scenery would be a huge improvement on my mental health. With my mind made up, I got out of the bath, dumped the used water into the dungeon outside of the fountain room, and prepared to go out. For the most part, I didn''t need much. My usual outfit, robes, hat, boots, gloves, rabbit plush backpack, as well as my underclothes, my underwear, tank top, a new, flexible pair of pants I started wearing over my old leather ones. The material impeded my movements much less than my old leather pants, making it my new favourite. It was a little dirty, so I needed to wash it before heading out, but before that I made a dozen clay jars using magic and stored them in my bag before heading to the 78th floor. There were trolls on that floor, and an excellent source of fresh blood. A nice surprise I discovered was that things I put into my bag retained their freshness, as if time had stopped. Rather, that''s probably exactly what had happened. What that meant for me was that any blood I jarred and put in my bag wouldn''t coagulate and grow lumpy before I could drink it. While I could drink coagulated blood, it wasn''t pleasant, and even the taste went down quite a bit. It was like drinking old, lumpy milk. I filled and capped the jars, put them into my bag, then went back to wash my clothes. While I waited for them to dry, I played around with my plush backpack. Without any entertainment aside from hunting, this had become my go to way to kill time. Even I thought that this childish act was pretty pathetic, but of the toys I had made, only the stitched leather ball filled with feathers actually held my attention for more than a couple of minutes. But I wasn''t exactly a big lover of ball games, so that didn''t last long and I always ended up going back to mindlessly manipulating the doll''s arms and legs for some reason. It might''ve been because it was the closest thing to something at actually existed on Earth I had. I really craved the internet at times like this, or at least TV. But obviously I hadn''t seen even a hint of either, or even any kind of electronics in the months since I had come here. With my clothes more or less dry, I put them on and draped my hair down the left of my chest so I could raise the hood. My long hair had now grown close to my knees. Despite the hassle, I was a little proud of how long it was. Now ready, I headed out of the dungeon for the first time in who knows how long. On the first floor, I cautiously walked through the winding hall to the cave entrance, where I was greeted with blinding light. Instinctively, I stepped back and out of sight of the light. My heart was pounding in my chest and I was hyperventilating before I knew it. The trauma from so long ago still had a strong grip on me it seemed. Being scared of natural sunlight wasn''t bad, but crippling fear was a serious problem. At least I didn''t react as badly as when I first walked into the artificial sunlight of the first floor. "Hooray for progress..." Despite how quiet it was around me, I could hardly hear my own voice squeaking out. With tiny shuffling footsteps, I approached the outside once again like a shut-in with crippling anxiety problems. The light of the sun bounced off the walls, forcing my dilated pupils to contract as far as they could go. Even then the light of the sun was harsh to me as the cave opening approached and the outside world revealed itself to me. Nervously shaking, I stretched out a gloved hand to the glaring beam of sunlight that intruded the first little bit of my sanctuary. Just before my gloved fingers touched direct sunlight, memories of the intense pain from the sun on my first day, as well as all the times I had gotten roasted by light magic flashed through my mind. Despite the shaking, I managed to push through the fear and sank my hand into the blazing light. My fingers lit up, yet there wasn''t any pain. I had finally confirmed it, that clothes can protect me from my archenemy. With the slight confidence boost, I stretched my arm, bathing more and more of it in sunlight, yet no pain came. Eventually, my whole arm, both legs, and part of my torso was fully lit up, yet I hadn''t come to any harm. Swallowing hard, I raised and secured my collar and lowered my hood as far as it would go before taking the final steps outside. In an instant, I felt more vulnerable than I had ever known. All around me was that baneful sunlight, and one wrong move would wreck me in unbearable pain. One particularly bad move and I could die before having a chance to cover back up or escape. But as horrible as the thoughts that flooded my mind were, I had also been filled with the euphoria that I had a weapon that worked against my most powerful enemy. As long as nothing went wrong, I could walk around in broad daylight and not be harmed in the slightest. My hood obscured my line of sight pretty bad, but I had [Sense Presence] to make up for it. I took a few steps around, but soon went back to the cover of the cave. As good as it was to be able to overcome my greatest enemy, getting careless could end me in an instant. It was best to take cover during the day and only travel during the night. In the shadow of the cave, I sat down and waited for the sun to set while I played with my rabbit plush again. It was preferable to set out as soon as I could to get as much exploring done as possible. As I lightly played to kill time, I noticed something odd I haven''t seen before. Outside the cave, little balls of coloured light were wandering around. They were small and indistinct, but clearly moved as if they had a will of their own, chasing after each other, floating in rough formations, bumping into each other then doing a little rising twirl in the air. I had no idea what they were, but they completely got a hold of my attention. A few of them drifted to the side as I crawled to keep them in sight, and stopped above a strange coloured tendril that extended from the ground. It was wafting around like steam, but quickly dissipated into nothing. Those little fuzzy balls touched the tendril and it quickly shrank down to almost nothing before the balls lost interest and drifted to another tendril a bit away and repeated the process. Looking even more closely, those tendrils looked like concentrations of mana. As my [Mana Perception] skill ranked up, I became able to see mana itself in the air, as long as the concentrations were high enough. They cast distinct auras around the monsters in the dungeon, and did wonders in letting me predict their actions. Seeing changes in their aura signalled that they were about to act, and recognizing the specific change told me exactly what the monster intended. Of course, monsters with [Suppress Aura] made this trick particularly difficult, if not impossible depending on the rank. It seemed that these fluff balls ate mana. They were surprisingly like vampires, even if their physical traits couldn''t be any further apart from mine. If they ate mana from the environment, then couldn''t they eat mana from living beings as well? I continued to watch the groups of floating orbs, but one odd thing came to mind. Whenever I shifted my body to see a group better, that group would always shake violently before moving away as fast as they could. (Can they tell that I''m looking at them?) It''s movements didn''t make much sense. They were clearly afraid of something, most likely me, but only the ones within a certain distance from me reacted. Even when I eyeballed at a group, if they were far enough away, they didn''t react in the slightest no matter how or for how long I stared. It probably wasn''t me looking at them that made them scared, but something else. I couldn''t see what it was that was scaring them, but I did have a bunch of perception skills that might. Cycling through them, I experimented with my various skill-based senses when suddenly a dark red blot covered everything around me, extending out of the cave before ending in tentacle-like spines waving around maliciously. I fell back in surprise and fear, but for some reason the red stuff didn''t try to harm me in the slightest. It just floated there occupying all the space around me, waving around threateningly at anything that tried to approach. This thing, whatever it was, appeared when I pushed the limits of my [Mana Perception]. Looking at it more closely, it resembled the auras produced by the monsters in the dungeon, yet it was vastly, incomparably larger than even the strongest monsters I had fought. Even the way it wiggled around like it was trying to rip at its surroundings was pretty similar. (This...this is my aura) The realization hit me like a truck. Of course those soft glowing balls would be scared of such a thing. There''d be no way for me to interact with them positively as things stood, but fortunately, I had acquired a skill that should fix this right up. Focusing inside of myself, I activated my [Suppress Aura] skill, quickly ramping it up from the bottom to near max. Almost instantly the huge, threatening aura shrunk down until it became little more than an extra layer of skin around my body. Not even the violent spines were around anymore. The effect felt a bit stifling, but when I glanced outside, the fluffy balls of light spread out and approached the cave again. But they didn''t enter it. The balls always maintained a certain distance from the cave entrance no matter what. It seemed like they didn''t want to enter inside. But that was enough for me. Now that it got to this point, I could try something different. With all my extra aura suppressed, I tried extending a bit of it out from my fingers. The act was surprisingly difficult considering how easy it was for me to use magic normally. It seemed like the difference between manipulating mana inside the body compared to outside the body. It felt like trying to draw a landscape painting with a finger compared to with a long brush. The further I pushed the tendrils of my aura, the longer the brush became. My first attempt failed, with the tendril disappointing just as it reached the cave entrance. I lost a little bit of MP, but it wasn''t very significant compared to my capacity. My second attempt reached further, but failed as well. It wasn''t until my fourth attempt when I was able to reach the closest group of floating lights. A cluster of three suddenly noticed the tendril of mana that approached them and recoiled. Disappointment welled up inside of me, but I persisted, gently waving the tip of my aura back and forth, like trying to get a cat to approach so I could pet it. I desperately held a death grip on my aura to prevent it from appearing threatening like it did naturally. If they got scared, it would damage my chances of attracting any of the furry orbs in the future. And just like a group of cats, they gave in to their curiosity and cautiously approached my aura. One by one, they tried to touch the tip. At first it was just a little bop. One, two. On the second bop, a shiver ran up my spine. I was able to feel that, like with an appendage I didn''t have. In turn, I tried lightly touching the fluffball. It evaded me at first, but cautiously stayed still after a few seconds like it recognized what I was trying to do. My tendril of mana lightly brushed against the glowing orb. I could feel a warmth and softness from the strange creature. It was like petting a neighbourhood cat for the first time. The other two became even more curious, so I tried petting them as well. A warmth started to spread inside my chest. It was a bit strange, but it was the very first act of kindness I had committed since arriving in this world. To think it would''ve taken me so long. But suddenly the feeling of being being bitten interrupted my reverie and I instinctively pulled back my aura all the way back to my body. Rather than it hurting, I was surprised. The unexpected act was like a betrayal. But maybe it was more like a cat than I had thought? It might not have been a malicious act. I calmed down. Rather, it was probably that they didn''t understand what I was doing properly. I was touching them with my mana, but they ate mana. It made sense that they had problems reconciling what was a paradox to them. I honestly didn''t mind them eating my mana, but eating my aura directly was unpleasant, and it could become a bad habit for them. There had to be some other way for me to feed them. My mana was simply the natural energy from inside my body that I used to perform supernatural acts like magic. While it was a part of my body, it obviously separated when I used magic, so running off of that logic, I should be able to separate parts of my aura. If I could slightly change it at the same time, then those fluffballs would have a way to distinguish things that were okay to eat and those that weren''t. Once again, I tried extending a tendril of mana from my fingers, but instead of using it like some sort of appendage, I tried changing it''s nature. I was also a creature that could eat things like auras and essences, so I thought back to the flavours of monsters I particularly liked. There was the ghosts of the 41st floor, a sort of haunted forest. They tasted like a variety of candied fruit. Then there was the 63rd floor''s elementals, big golems that were comprised of a particular element each. They each reminded me of a sort of crepes. Though the light elemental was like a strawberry and banana crepe someone pranked with habaneros. After that was the golems of the 87th floor. I only got to eat a few, but each one was sublime, like cakes from a first rate patissier. I tried combining the feelings of each of them into the tip of my aura, then squeezed the bottom off, separating it. The little bulb changed colours from my natural dark red to a light pink and separated from the rest of my aura, floating on it''s own. Now that was done, I tried to push it around using my aura. Confirming that I could manipulate it, I brought it out to the trio of fluffballs that didn''t move from when I tried petting them. They weren''t very energetic. It was as if they were remorseful about what they did. If they could understand that much, then it was worth befriending them. Extending my aura all the way, I pushed the little pink bulb to the trio before receding my aura a little. Whatever they were thinking before, it was quickly replaced by curiosity of this new thing I had put in front of them. They cautiously bopped it as they had with my aura, but it seemed they were more careful than before. It really looked like they were learning. But no matter how many times they bumped it or touched it, the bulb didn''t react. Of course it wouldn''t, since there wasn''t any will emanating from the bulb. Eventually, one of them became courageous enough, or maybe hungry enough, to touch the mana nub properly. The ball shrunk in size a little, but otherwise didn''t react. The fluffball backed off, but then tried again when it realized nothing else happened. Seeing this, the others tried as well, and soon the bulb disappeared. Finally, I made my move, and extended my aura to lightly pat the glowing orbs. They were startled for a moment and shook, but quickly recognized my tendril and started to bob in joy. Before I knew it, a smile had crept onto my face. I made another mana bulb and the little fluffballs quickly ate it up, and in turn I pat each of them. Now they pressed their bodies into my aura like a cat trying to press their head into the hand of someone patting them. A few other little light balls noticed what was going on and curiously approached. I made more flavoured nubs for them as well. They only cost me one MP each, so it was more effort than resource limited. The others quickly ate the bulbs up then rubbed their bodies against my aura. It seemed like the first trio was teaching the new ones to not bite me, as after that first instance, the incident didn''t repeat itself. More and more fluffballs approached, filling the area directly around the cave I was in with light. Most of my concentration was filled with producing as many of the mana bulbs as I could, but over time, they were switching their attention from simply eating to rubbing their bodies on my extended aura. If that meant that they had been taking a likening to me, then I couldn''t be any happier. Before I knew it, the sun had set, eliminating any reason for me to stay cooped up in this cave. But when the thought occurred to me, I was hesitant. Would the fluffballs accept my physical body? It was reasonable to presume that I hadn''t seen them on my first two days because I couldn''t see them without the [Spirit Perception] skill, but I had no way to know if they also avoided creatures with physical bodies as well. But as much of a risk as it was, I wouldn''t find out without coming out. I just hoped that I wouldn''t scare my first friends in this world. I retracted my aura back to my body. The glowing orbs were startled at first, then it seemed like they were filled with apprehension and confusion. I gathered my courage and pulled back my hood, then stepped out into the open. The fluffballs retreated back when they saw me. A pain filled my chest at the rejection, but I continued my steps slowly. If I couldn''t befriend properly them now, it most likely wouldn''t ever work. After stepping out into the middle of the small clearing, I extended my aura from my fingers halfway to the surrounding light orb group. For a while, nothing happened and they kept their distance, but eventually one ball gathered it''s courage and slowly wandered towards the tip of my tendril. It cautiously bopped the tip, then more boldly rubbed it''s body along the extended aura, slowly sliding down it until it reached my extended finger. Cautiously, it tried to rub it''s body against my finger. It took all my willpower to stop myself from grabbing it so I could rub my cheek against it. That would definitely scare the group off for good. Soon, others followed, and before I knew it, the whole group was swarming around me, rubbing against my body or flying around in formation like flock of sparrows, dancing around. A smile had burst so big that I was a little worried that my face would permanently change shape due to it. In excitement, I produced a whole ton of mana treats and threw them up into the air. But to my surprise, while the little fluffballs did eat some of them, most of the treats went ignored and instead they concentrated on their little dances and body rubs. Despite not thinking it was possible, my smile grew even bigger at that sight. Instead of simply feeding them, I started to pet them individually my with my own hands. In return, they started to dance around even more energetically and rub themselves against me even harder. Following their lead, we went from simply rubbing against each other to playing, as I chased after them or they chased me around, or I''d join in their dances or wander around as they showed me interesting things in the surrounding land. The trees were mostly barren and instead the ground was littered with wet, dull leaves, but here and there flowers peeked between the underbrush or ferns grew tall and proud despite the chill in the air. Despite how different things were since I was last outdoors, there were still plenty of interesting things to be seen. The fluffballs even showed me a stream of mana gushing out from the ground like a tiny geyser. Just for fun, I tried biting it and sampling the flavour. It tasted like maple syrup, but was extremely thin, almost watery. But despite how much fun I was having, it was suddenly interrupted when the light in the sky grew strong enough to hurt my eyes. It took me a minute to realize what was causing it as the dark sky slowly turned red. But when I did, I froze in my tracks as my body shook in fear. The little fluffballs noticed that something had changed with me, but I didn''t have the presence of mind to think about them anymore. My life was now at stake. In a desperate hurry, I rushed back to the cave and took shelter. Way faster than the light balls, I left them behind in confusion, but they managed to follow me and catch up after a few seconds. By then I was huddling inside the cave, but just barely in view of the outside. My hood was already lowered. I could see the fluffballs gathered in worry, but going out any further than that was a risk I couldn''t afford to take unnecessarily. Instead, I extended my aura to calm them down, rubbing a few and producing a bunch of mana bulbs for them. Unlike before, they took no interest in the treats and instead rubbed my aura with their bodies. But for some reason they wouldn''t enter the cave. It seemed like something scared them. Maybe dungeons were to them like sunlight was to me? It was a frustrating thought, but I could understand it. Maybe it wasn''t the dungeon itself that was dangerous to them, but the monsters themselves? Or specifically it was the fact that they couldn''t run from any monsters that might attack them while inside a dungeon? The fact that they wouldn''t enter my home was a bit lonely, but even like this, I could play with them a bit. But this was another thing my archenemy denied me. I grit my teeth wishing that I was able to gain light resistance. It was the only skill I wanted which I hadn''t been able to get in the dungeon so far. Chapter 12 – Girl The day came and went as I absentmindedly played with the fluffballs. Some of them left elsewhere, but many more had come. (Maybe they went to get others?) If that was true, then I didn''t mind. Even if it wasn''t true, the fact that so many were around meant that it wasn''t a problem either. Rather, it would be a problem if they kept gathering without any leaving. Right now, it was like a field densely filled with fireflies. If too many more showed up, I wouldn''t be able to see beyond a wall of glowing lights. But now that the sun had hidden away, I was able to come out and play with the fluffballs directly. The newer members of the group were startled and backed off when I showed myself, but since there were plenty that had gotten used to my physical body already, I didn''t have to do anything special to convince them that I didn''t mean any harm, and they joined the group again quickly. As I chased a group, a group of the original balls of light came back. At least I thought that they were ones I had seen the night before. All the fluffballs looked identical, so I had to rely entirely on the feel they gave off to identify them. They were bouncing around trying to get my attention, but unlike when the others did it, it didn''t seem like they wanted to play. I approached the small group, but they backed off. Tilting my head in confusion, I approached them again, but they backed off once more. It didn''t feel like they did it out of fear, which could only mean that they wanted to follow them. I didn''t have any reason to refuse them, so I did just that, speeding up to match their flight. The fluffballs I was chasing flew much faster than I had ever seen. After a minute of acceleration, they were already moving as fast as a car, and with me following just as quickly thanks to my high agility stat. The wind pulled at my clothes and loudly blew into my ears. Annoyed by the effect, I erected a wind barrier to calm the air directly around myself and cut down on wind resistance. Here and there, I saw monsters of all sorts of shapes and sizes. A few I thought I recognized from the dungeon, mostly ones from past floor 50, but there were plenty I had never seen before. Even the ones I thought looked familiar, we blew past them by the time that thought even came up. We travelled for quite some time through the forest, probably three or four hours, before the fluffballs stopped and circled over a spot. There was a child huddled on the ground between two roots of a tree. She was dirty and wore thin rags that was practically a potato sack with holes cut out for her head and arms. She didn''t even have shoes. Her breathing was faint and her lips were blue. There was no doubt in my mind that she was suffering from hypothermia. But despite that, the first thought that came to mind was that she didn''t look very delicious. I quickly shook that thought out of my head. I didn''t want to eat a person, especially the first one I had found in this entire world. I thanked the fluffballs for bringing me to her, then opened my robe and pulled the child''s body against my own before closing my robes around her. Her body was icy to the point that a shiver ran through my body. She wouldn''t last long if I didn''t warm her up quickly. Not wasting any time, I ran at full tilt back to my home, leaving the fluffballs to catch up later. Careful to support the girl''s body as I ran, I got back in less than half an hour. Teleporting with the child to the 85th floor where I had made my latest home, I drew water from the fountain and filled my bathtub before heating it with magic. I stripped us both down while carefully balancing the girl in my arms and stepped into the tub, submerging the child up to her shoulders but careful to not let any of the water enter her mouth or nose. As I rubbed and washed the girl, her body warmed up. She slowly started to take deeper and deeper breaths, and her limbs relaxed. I could feel her heart pound more and more inside of her chest against my own as her core temperature returned to normal levels. Eventually her breathing reached a point that felt normal and her body entrusted itself to be supported by mine. It looked like she was now just sleeping normally, and would recover normally. But that was only on an immediate level. The girl was just skin and bones. It looked like she had been malnourished for quite a while. Was she lost in the forest for a long time, or was she treated poorly by her family? Did she even have one? Staying in the hot water any longer would have adverse effects, so I lifted her up and used some fur pelts to wipe ourselves reasonably dry before I lay on my crudely made couch, laying the girl on top of me and a large bear pelt on top of us both. It would take a while before she would wake up most likely. Until then, I had to watch her body''s condition. I softly held her body to mine, and thought what this encounter meant for me. She was the first person I had ever seen. Those fluffballs were my first friends, but I hoped I could become friends with this girl too. I couldn''t rely on her body to keep warm on it''s own in this situation, so I lay there with the intent of being her bedding for the meantime. But there wasn''t anything for me to do until she woke up. I had finally gone out of the dungeon for the first time, only to be stuck again nursing a little girl. She really was small though, probably only six or so. Her features were round and soft, but her shoulder length hair was rough and oily on top of being unevenly cut. Not only was there no fat on her body, but there wasn''t any muscles either. It made me wonder just what kind of life she had to have lived to end up like this. The rags that she wore was probably indicative of that, but I didn''t have anything to compare them to. That could''ve just been normal fashion for kids of this world for all I knew. I was a little jealous though. Despite how dirty and worn down the sack she wore was, it was still more evenly woven than my robes were, which were made from obviously better material. It would be nice if I could get my hands on a professionally built loom, or even have my clothes tailored by a pro. My skill correction could only compensate so much for my lack of knowledge or experience. I lay back, careful that if the girl moved, she wouldn''t fall off, and stared at the glowing ceiling. It didn''t take long for me to get bored, but I couldn''t get up in case the child''s body was weaker than I thought. Instead, I opened up my status and thought about the 87th floor again. One by one, I scrutinized my stats and skills, seeing if there was something I had missed. The tooltip would open, and I''d analyze the words, trying to find any hidden meaning or subtext that I had missed before. Every once in a while I discovered something new about my skills that I hadn''t noticed on a casual look, so it was worth the try at the very least. And if anything, I had plenty of time to do it right then. But the more I scrutinized the words that appeared in my head, the less confident I grew that I had missed something in the skill description. Suddenly, the girl shifted in place, turning from lying on her back to her front while adjusting her head to more completely use one of my breasts as a pillow. It was a confounding sensation, but the fact that she moved at all was a good sign. If only she wasn''t breathing across my nipple. The feeling was strangely distracting. As I did my best at ignoring the sensation, something unusual did pique my interest. At the bottom right corner of the tooltip was a small triangle built into the corner of the window. It reminded me of those resize corners used on windows in Earth''s computers, but more stylized. The boarder along with many other features of both the tooltip and the status windows were stylized in ways not commonly done on Earth, hut I simply presumed it was all decorations. But if there was a chance that it wasn''t mere decoration, then it was worth investigating. With my mind, I touched the corner of the tooltip and dragged it. As I suspected, the window changed dimensions based in how I moved the corner, automatically rearranging Tue contents to fit the best they could. But at the same time, that was all that had happened. I wasn''t particularly disappointed though, since that was the entire point of such a feature. I didn''t know what I was expecting, but not seeing anything unexpected wasn''t any particular bother. Rather, I was pleased to discover another feature of the status window. Maybe a sign of how bored I was, I amused myself by playing around with resizing the window to weird and awkward shapes, but eventually changed it to a comfortable size a little bigger than before. One last look though the text description of the skill didn''t reveal anything useful. I was about to close the skill''s description when I noticed something else odd. There was a small button in the corner near the resize dragged at the window''s corner. That button was definitely new. It read [See Source Code]. There was no way I wouldn''t check out something so interesting. With curiosity and excitement fillings my heart, I hit the button. What opened up was filled entirely with hopes and dreams beyond the imagination of people like myself. Just like what the button promised, the source code behind the skill I had selected opened up to me, naked as it was in it''s original creation. Not only that, but there was a blinking curser. Just to test it, I thought about adding a few words to one of the lines. The curser moved and added those words I had thought. For a former programmer, this was like a dream. The power I had just discovered was vastly beyond my own imagination. To have thought that the underlying system was something I could actually read and understand. Not only that, but for it to be entirely accessible. This was power. Absolute power. With this, I could do anything I wanted. No foe could possibly stand in my way if I could simply change a few parameters to suit myself. It wouldn''t be difficult for me to effectively become a god of this world if used this power properly. Nobody could stand a chance against me. Conquering this massive dungeon would be nearly effortless with this power. cough cough My train of thought was suddenly broken when the little girl laying on my body shifted with a few coughs. The coughing was a little worrying, but a soft smile rose on my lips as I was able to confirm that she was getting better. (But all of that would go against the point) As much power as being able to alter the source code of the world would be, it went counter to what I wanted. Despite the difficulty I was facing right now, I was enjoying conquering the dungeon. If I cheated and rigged the fights by altering the code, I''d go down a path I didn''t want to treat. It was one thing if I felt I didn''t have a choice, but this wasn''t a life or death struggle. Even if I never got past the 87th floor, it wouldn''t be that big of a deal. Cheating to make fights easier was something I didn''t want to do. It didn''t just cheat others, but it cheated myself. That said, it was a different story when it came to making my life better. I looked through the skills that I didn''t normally use and found one that was of a particular interest: [Solar Power]. It was a racial skill that recovered HP and MP while exposed to light. It didn''t specify that it had to be actual sunlight, and experience showed that at least the dungeon''s artificial light was good enough. Opening the source code, I quickly scanned through the text and confirmed the effects to be exactly as I suspected. It was automatically triggered by exposure to light of any form, and recovered HP and MP based on the intensity of the light. Further down, I found the bit that said that it was a racial only for plant-type creature. If I changed this one line, then I could gain this and stop fearing the sun. It would still burn me, but if I recovered my health as fast as I lost it, then it wouldn''t be a lethal problem for me anymore. Just a painful one. It wasn''t ideal, but it was a solution. I quickly commented out the line that restricted the skill to only plant-type monsters. After a quick confirmation to confirm that there shouldn''t be any problems, I went to save the data when I hesitated. (If I did this, then anyone with the skill, regardless of race, would benefit) While it was hard to imagine any ordinary creature having this skill aside from plant-type monster, the very fact that I had it meant that there was the possibility that others would have it as well. And at the top of that list would obviously be vampires as well, who would also be the biggest beneficiaries of a skill like this. Not only that, but it was likely that most other living vampires would already have the skill. In a lot of fictions, the very fact that vampires were weak to sunlight was one of the big balancing factors between the night walkers and everyone else. If I changed this skill carelessly and people found out, it could seriously disrupt the balance of the world. A world which I have yet to explore at all, and thus couldn''t even imagine how the alteration would change things. The pressure ended up being overwhelming, and I cancelled the changes. I needed a safety net for moving around during the day, but something that could adversely effect the world at large wasn''t an acceptable change until I learned more about it. I needed an alternative. Without changing anything, I started to investigate the system more deeply. From the source code window it was possible to dive deeper and check out other parts of the system. The first thing I went to was the skill list, but a cursory scan told me just how insanely huge the list was. There was tens of thousands of entries, many of the skills being things I couldn''t even imagine what they did from the name alone. (Phase alternating gizzard? What even the hell?) It was something that I needed to have a proper look at someday, but I couldn''t muster the energy to do it right now. Instead, I only checked out a couple that stood out. The first was [Light Resistance], the skill I really wanted but couldn''t get, and I discovered why. One of the lines included a list of creatures that couldn''t learn the skill, and vampires were included. (Guess it figured) I had gotten all the other major resistances already, so it was weird that I hadn''t gotten [Light Resistance] if it wasn''t for a specification like that. Not wanting to alter the specification in the worry of the damage it could cause, I simply sighed and looked elsewhere. One thing that was interesting about the skill list was despite how huge it was, it wasn''t at capacity yet. There was still unused space dedicated to the system, enough for dozens, if not hundreds of new skills. It was possible that it was in case new skills needed to be added. Rather, that was the most likely reason. Extra space like this was a little inefficient, but was necessary for future proofing a system. If there was space for new skills, then there wasn''t any reason why I couldn''t make one myself. With a quick look around, I found a button to do just that, and got an empty page for a new skill. It contained the basic information automatically to be set as the next entry in the skill list, but otherwise was empty. With this new skill, I just had to make something that dealt with my sunlight weakness, but nobody else could get. The major parts of a skill were the identifier, the acquisition conditions, acquisition restrictions, and effect. The identifier was mostly just the skill number, name, and description. The skill number was automatically included. To cover up what I was doing, I put in a dummy name and description. ([Bleeding Resistance] and [Increases one''s resistance against bleeding]. That should do it) There wasn''t any rule that the contents had to do anything with the name or description after all. A quick look also confirmed that no such skill name existed before, so there wasn''t any chance of a conflict or confusing the two. Next was the acquisition condition and restrictions. For now, I set the condition as none and restriction as all. I didn''t want chance anyone getting it until it was ready. If there was no way to learn the skill and the skill itself rejected everyone, it was a double layer of security that should be absolute. Finally was the effect. I simply copied the effect from [Light Resistance]. It was a simple and straightforward effect with few lines of code to make it work. But when I tried to save it, I got a compile error. The error descriptions pointed at almost every line of the code. Some of them were obvious, like how having no potential skill acquisition targets was an issue, but that was only described as a warning, not an actual error. But the restrictions and effects both had errors along with plenty of errors that didn''t have corresponding lines. The fact that even the part I copied had errors meant that I sorely underestimated the complexity of the skill system. Making a new skill wasn''t going to be this easy at all. As I was reading the errors in detail, the girl I picked up suddenly stirred while laying on my body. The way she was basically grinding her face into my breast as she moved her head was especially distracting, sending unfamiliar feelings through my body in addition to warming it up, especially my face. I even considered forcefully waking her up, but thought against it. It was best to let her wake up on her own, lest it adversely affect her health. Instead, I saved it as a draft and took a break. It wouldn''t be added to the actual skill list, but I''d be able to open it up later to make it work. Lifting the edge of the bear fur I was using as a blanket, I glanced at the little girl''s face. Despite how malnourished she was, she was pretty cute. It was clear that she didn''t spend much time doing hard work due to a lack of scars or callouses, so it was possible that she wasn''t treated poorly. On the other hand, there were plenty of fresh scratches, and the smell of dried blood faintly drifted from them. The scratches could be explained by her wandering around the forest, and most likely the place I found her was where she fell asleep after getting tired. But since it was cold out, she would''ve froze to death if I hadn''t been lead to her by the fluffballs. But the questions that popped up were less pleasant. Why was she all alone? Why was she in the forest in the first place? Why didn''t she have shoes? Why was her dress basically just a ragged sack with holes? The softness of her fingers with the roughness of her outfit created conflicting pictures that I couldn''t reconcile. I had to ask when she woke up, but if it risked bringing up unpleasant memories, was it right to do so? (She''s so small, yet all alone. Just what had happened?) If only those fluffballs could talk, then I could look into it without asking her, though then it was an invasion of privacy, so maybe it was best that they couldn''t? My mind meandered as one conflicting thought after another in and out of my brain, when a sudden movement caused me to divert my attention. cough cough "Mmmmmuh?" It looked like the girl''s coughing woke her up, but in a confused daze, she was startled and panicked, rising up and sitting on my thighs, preventing me from righting myself. "Don''t worry, you''re safe" "Wha...hyaa?!" She looked at me in the eyes, then patting my belly with her hands before recoiling. The girl tried to get up, but her legs got tangled with mine and she instead fell off the couch and hit the hard floor. In a panic, I leaned over to check if she was hurt, but the girl had already sat back up while holding her shoulder. "Are you alright?" "Hyaaa!" She backed off once again, shuffling on her butt as she retreated from me. "It''s okay, I don''t mean any harm" I pushed my hands out in an attempt to calm her down, but avoided moving closer and gave her space. "You...who are you? Where am I?" "I''m...I''m a person who lives in the forest, and you''re in my home, a cave in the mountainside" I had forgotten, but I didn''t have a name in this world. I regret not spending the time to come up with one in the long time I had alone. "I...I''m sorry. I cough don''t know how I got here but..." I worried about her continued coughing, but it could''ve been a symptom of hypothermia. It wasn''t something I knew much about. All I could hope for was that it would get better. "It''s okay. I found you out in the forest chilled to the bone, so I brought you back. You didn''t do anything wrong" "Really?" Finally my words had loosened her tense shoulders. The way she was acting wasn''t doing favours for my image of people in this world, but such a small sample size was hardly indicative. But still, while she was still rubbing the shoulder that she had hit the ground with, her legs were tucked close to her body and her arms were wrapped around them. She was shivering as well, but while I thought it was from fear, it might''ve been different. "Are you still cold? How about we warm up a bit?" "Ah, no. I''m fine. I couldn''t possibly..." "Kids shouldn''t be so reserved. I''m offering, so there''s no harm in taking my hand" I interrupted her. I couldn''t stand the way the conversation was going, so more force than I intended entered my voice, causing the girl to jump. The little girl raised an arm and started to wave it gently in the air. For a second I stood there confused as to what she was doing when I noticed something odd about her, beyond her actions. Her eyes weren''t properly focused. I didn''t notice since she was properly facing towards me the entire time. But at the very beginning, she didn''t even notice she was on top of me until I said something. My presumption that she was simply just in a daze might''ve not been right. A closer look revealed that her pupils were a light grey, not the pitch black that was normal. It was possible that she was blind. Not wanting to risk losing any glimpse of trust, I quickly rushed over and took the girl''s hand and pulled her to her feet. But that wasn''t enough for me, so I picked her up in my arms, holding her like the little child she was. "Hya?!" Her little shouts were starting to get a little endearing. With a smile, I brought us to the bath tub. With a little magic, I removed the top layer of water to clean it up a little before heating what remained up to a nice steam. The girl was pressing her body against mine as she shivered, her body twitching every time I did something. I removed my underwear and stepped into the bath, slowly lowered us both in. "Hya?! What is this?!" The girl started to panic as her feet entered the warm water, and she started to squirm and kick, trying to keep her body away from the hot water. If it wasn''t such a struggle to stop her from falling while it would''ve been cute. "It''s just a bath. Is the water too hot for you?" "A...bath? cough cough" "..." She stopped squirming, and I stopped at her response. "You know a bath? To bathe in?" "You mean like those that noble people use? Are you a noble lady?" I had to chuckle at that response, but it kinda made sense. Historically, only the rich could afford a proper heated bath. The most a commoner would get was a cold bath in a nearby river. Though I was pretty sure that changed during the Victorian Era, if this world was a pre-Victorian society, it would make sense that this girl had never had a bath before. "I''m not a noble lady. Just someone who goes through a lot of effort to stay clean" Technically it was hardly much effort at all, thanks to magic, but from this little girl''s perspective, it might''ve been better for her to imagine that it was. I didn''t know how common magic was in society, so it was better to let her get used to things slowly. Overwhelming her was likely to do a lot of harm, especially when I didn''t have her trust. I lowered our bodies into the hot water. The girl squirmed a little, but she bore with things the best she could as I sat her down into my lap. The bath was too deep for her without doing at least that. Fully submerged to her shoulders, I turned the girl around and pulled her back to lean against my body as we warmed up. "Is the water too hot?" "No, it''s fine" "...You don''t have to bear with it if it is you know" "I''m fine! I really am!" She panicked and turned to face me as she denied my words. I couldn''t tell if she really was fine or if she was bearing with it. "...well, it''s a bit warm for me, so I''m gonna cool it off if you don''t mind" "...okay..." With her permission, I lowered the temperature a few degrees using water magic. It was a bit too cool for me now, but I could feel the tension slowly leave the girl''s body. It felt like I made the right choice. My arms wrapped around her little body as I pulled her more closely to my body. I''d never spent much time around kids, but it felt like it was something that wasn''t as bad as I thought. Chapter 13 – Name We spent out time in the bath quietly. The girl simply relaxed in my arms as I lightly massaged her scalp with soapy fingers, but as no matter how much I scrubbed, the soap refused to lather up. It was definitely mixing in, as her hair had gotten slimy with the crude soap, but the results were confusing. It might''ve been a lack of water, so I tried dripping some onto her head before going back to massaging. "It hurts!" I froze as the girl leaned forward and started to rub her eyes. "Wait, don''t do that! It''ll make it worse!" I grabbed her hands, then rinsed one hand and wiped her forehead back, drawing the soap that ran down before tilting her head back and lightly pouring her face with water using magic, washing away as much of the suds as I could. "Sorry, is that better?" The girl nodded, but I panicked and wiped her hair back to avoid the soap from dripping into her eyes again. "Stop. Don''t do that. The soap''ll get into your eyes again. Wait a sec so I can finish washing your hair first" "Soap?! You''re using soap?!" Once again the girl was panicking for some reason. "There something wrong with that?" "It''s soap! You don''t need to use something so expensive on me!" "Is soap that expensive?" "You really aren''t a noble lady?" I really couldn''t see how the two concepts connected. From what I remembered soap had existed for quite a long time. It wasn''t hard to make either, just some fats or oils and lye. I got the fats as various monster drops in the dungeon, and the lye came from burning wood and soaking the ashes before filtering them out. I even learned it in a summer event as a kid along with rope, candles, and a few other primitive things. "I''m not. You think a noble lady would be living in a cave in the middle of a forest?" "I don''t know. There''s all sorts of nobles out there" I couldn''t refute her point. No matter how much it defied my image of nobles, theoretically it was possible. "Well, I''ve never heard of a noble that lives all by themself" If there was such a thing, then it would break my entire image of nobles. Careful to not let any suds fall across her face, I rinsed the girl''s hair then tried applying more soap. This time it lathered up a bit. It seemed like her hair was just too dirty for the soap to lather properly. I''d have to do a third run before her hair was clean. "Anyways, it doesn''t matter. I made this soap myself. Whether it''s expensive or not doesn''t matter if it''s something I made" "Amazing. You can make soap? If you went to town, you could become rich!" I looked at the dark grey lump with black specs in my hands. If I hadn''t made it myself, I wouldn''t have recognized it as actual soap. The ones I made as a kid were much better than this due to the higher quality of materials. Mine looked like it would make you dirty rather than clean if you used it, though it did work properly. "I doubt it. The soap nobles use are probably much nicer than what I can make" "But, I''ve never heard of a commoner use soap before" "There''s not much I can say about that. I don''t know anything of this world outside of this forest" "You''ve never been outside of the forest?" "I''ve never been beyond the forest and cave since I was born" It was a bit disingenuous to use the word ''born'', but I didn''t want to lie to this girl. Though it also felt a bit weird I was hiding so much from a child, becoming too careless could easily backfire. I doubted she could keep a secret from her family if I did reveal too much. "I didn''t think there could be a village in the forest" "There''s no village. I was alone when I found this cave, and it''s been just me until now" "That''s incredible! You must be so strong to be able to survive in this forest by yourself!" "Maybe a little, but is this forest that dangerous?" The dungeon certainly was, and if there weren''t so many safe zones for me to rest at, There was no way I''d have gotten as deep in it as I had. "Mmhmm. The hunters enter the edges of the forest, but they say that there are strong monsters deeper in. For you to be able to make a home where strong monsters live, that''s amazing!" The girl shot up her arms as she looked towards me. There was a sparkle in her cloudy eyes that wasn''t there before. "Wait, stay still so I can rinse the soap off" For the third time, I rinsed her hair. It was still rough, but at least it was clean. Using some magic, I levitated a jar of oil and brought it over. A girl like her should take care of her hair. That said, I was also a girl physically. I should take my own lessons to heart. As I was about to pour some oil onto my hands, the thought that just oil wouldn''t be satisfying came to mind. It would do the trick, just barely, most likely, but she''d probably like it if it was scented. I thought through what I had available and came to a decision. With a bit more magic, I remotely dug through a pile of dried herbs and spices I''d collected to trade if I ever met people and brought over a small package of leaves tied around something. Unwrapping the leaves, I took out a stalk of dried vanilla beans. With the beans in hand, I scraped out the insides, then discard the pod, leaving me with a near black lumpy paste. With the main bits of vanilla in my palm, I poured a small amount of oil into my hands and mixed the two up before spreading the infusion in my hands, after which I rubbed it into the girl''s hair as a faux conditioner. "How''s that?" "It smells nice..." grumble That reminded me, I was getting pretty hungry. But that grumble didn''t come from me. I looked down and the child in my lap was looking down with her hands over her belly. "Hungry?" "I''m fine!" She jerked straight up as she tried to put as much strength into her words as she could, but despite that... gurgle I heard it again. "Well I am getting hungry, so I''ll go get us some food. But let''s finish getting you cleaned up first. Stand up" The girl followed my instructions, and I quickly rubbed a lathered silk ball across her body before rinsing her down. When I was done, I lifted her out of the tub and dried both of our bodies using a bundle of furs before seating her on the couch with a clean fur wrapped around her body. "I''ll be back in a bit. Sit tight" "..." I couldn''t hear what she mumbled, but I didn''t have human food stored anywhere. Just some herbs and spices and nothing of actual substance. Once I put my clothes on, I walked over to the fountain and went around various floor gathering ingredients as fast as I could. If a kid like that had been wandering the forest all alone until she tired herself out and collapsed, she was probably starving. A hearty meal would go a long way, but I couldn''t cut any corners. With a nice chunk of pork, a variety of fruits and vegetables, a few extras, as well as a belly filled with fresh blood, I came back with a few ideas as what to make. "You''re back?" The girl suddenly yelled while jumping up and leaned towards me while supported by the backrest of the couch she was sitting on. Her right thumb was red for some reason. Maybe she bumped it somehow? "I...yea, I''m back. I''ll start cooking, so just wait a bit more, okay?" "Okay" She sat back down and pulled the fur around her body tightly while she followed my movements. It looked like she spent the entire time scared. I needed to pay more attention to her in the future. It was a real surprise that she noticed I came back so quickly though. I had used the fountain to teleport around. I wasn''t aware that there were any significant telltale signs that were obvious to others if they weren''t watching. But that wasn''t important right then. I pulled out some shells of various sizes, then went to the fountain and rinsed them and my hands. I made some rudimentary stands and a pot from stone using earth magic. I greased shell, then balancing it on a stone stand, I heated it up with flames using magic. Using my claws, I sliced up the meat into strips and placed them on the shell to cook. As that cooked, I skinned the potatoes and heated two pots, one of oil and the other water. I put some eggs and the whole potatoes in the water, and potatoes sliced up with my claws in the oil. I grounded up salt and pepper between the palms of my hands, then wheat in a mortar and pestle made with magic as everything cooked. I throw a handful of salt into the pot of boiling water then sprinkled salt and pepper onto the sliced steaks. After a bit I drained the excess cooked fats and added some of the crude flour and mixed them in a small jar. The cooked fries were taken out by hand and I added more, rotating as they finished, taking full advantage of the [Fire Resistance] I had. Soon, everything was cooked, and I lay out the steaks and fries on a brand new plate made from slicing some wood with my claws. On top of it all, I poured the gravy. Finally, I removed the potatoes and eggs from the boiling water, removed the shells, sliced all of it up along with some washed lettuce, added some oil, pepper, and some herbs, all in a simple stone bowl. With some magical ice to cool it all off formed on the outside, I mixed the batch up before filling the remaining space on the plate with my simple potato salad. The combination was a bit weird, but I wasn''t nearly prepared enough to make proper meals, since I couldn''t eat it anyways. It was a lesson for the future. The shell was put on a stand made with magic in front of the little girl. I could hear here swallowing a bunch for a while, and the sound of her grumbling stomach had been rapid firing the longer I made her wait. She even sucked her thumb like she was trying to distract herself from how hungry the smell was making her. It was so cute. But there was one last thing I had to do before she could eat. I grabbed an iron ingot, then using magic, separated a piece and formed it into a fork using magic. It wouldn''t have sold anywhere on Earth, but it was the best I could offer here. "Here, use this and enjoy the food" I placed the fork into the girl''s hand and stepped back. But against my expectation, she didn''t immediately dig in. Instead, she felt up the fork, but just gave a confused expression. It took me a minute before I realized my mistake. "It''s called a fork. You hold the long end and use the flat, pronged bit to pick up your food. Most of it is hot, so you might burn your fingers if you didn''t use it. I put the plate of food on a stand in front of you" Technically it was to avoid her from getting her fingers dirty, but that was a minor concern to me at this moment. The girl groped the space directly in front of her and found the stand, then the plate. Using that knowledge, she poked around to find the food using the fork, then with an unsteady movement, she shovelled a bit of it into her mouth. Just watching her made me nervous, as she had proved herself again to be completely blind, she wasn''t even aware how close she was to dropping the hot steak slice onto her lap. In a hurry, I grabbed a spare pelt and placed it into her lap just in time to catch the piece. "Ah! I''m sorry! I''m sorry! I dropped it!" "It''s okay. There''s plenty left. Don''t worry about it" "But! But I wasted...!" "It''s fine. I don''t mind. Just eat and enjoy your meal" "...But what about your meal?" "Huh?" "You didn''t make a serving for yourself" Her words made me wonder if she really was blind for a second, but when I thought about it, just because she couldn''t see didn''t mean that she wouldn''t be aware of what was going on around her. I didn''t make any attempt to hide the fact that I wasn''t making any for myself, so it wasn''t really all that difficult for her to realize that I only made enough for one. "I...I ate while I was gathering the ingredients. It wasn''t very mature, but I couldn''t help myself. I''m already full, so you don''t have to worry. It''s all for you" (It wasn''t a lie. Technically it was all true) I felt bad just from the fact that I had to justify what I had said to myself. "I...see..." Leaving behind those ironic words, the girl tried picking up a piece again, this time even more carefully. My hands were working at my next project already, mixing a new batch of extra finely ground wheat with some milk, eggs and sugar. But despite that, I was completely distracted at watching the girl take her first bite of the food I had made. Maybe I was even more nervous about it than she was. As the fork moved, she lifted the piece of pork into her mouth, then chewed. In an instant, her eyes lit up more brightly than I had ever seen, and her chewing had grown more vigorous than I thought was possible from such an emaciated child. Soon, she swallowed, and blinding smile lit up on her face. "It''s so good! Is it really fine for me to have this?!" "I made it for you, so I''d be the one in trouble if you didn''t eat it" I couldn''t actually eat any of it, so it really would go to waste if she didn''t like it. Finally knowing that she did though allowed me to release a breath I didn''t realize I was holding. "Thank you!" With those two words, she started to dig into the plate in earnest. A smile had blossomed on my own face as I watched her eat my food with such joy. I was glad someone could enjoy the food I used to like. It made all the effort of making it worth it. But I shook my head. I wasn''t done, and there was still the shining crown of the meal left to make. I had to finish it before she was done eating. I made a new stone pan and placed it on a cooking stand where I put a fire under and greased the surface. As I waited for it to heat up, I cut up some fruit into small pieces. When the stone pan reached a decent temperature, I poured the watery dough mixture onto it and spread it as thin as I could. I flipped it with a spatula, then removed it and put it onto a second plate made from wood. I spread honey over the entire surface, sprinkled sugar on top, then carefully cut it up into rough squares. Next, I lay the fruit pieces onto each slice, and finally folded the ends and wrapped it up, making something halfway between a crepe and a dessert spring roll. Originally it was going to be a regular crepe, but then I realized that it would be difficult for the girl to eat since she was blind. Cutting food on a plate, or even finding the pieces without ruining something so delicate would''ve been extremely hard. This was my solution to that problem, an easy finger food for dessert. I looked up at the girl. She was moving her fork across the plate, looking for any remaining food with an eager look on her face. It seemed like she had finished what I had made, but it wasn''t enough. I was glad she was still hungry, since it wasn''t over yet. "Here''s dessert" I swapped her empty plate with the new one while taking her fork. "This one''s eaten with our fingers" After turning towards me for a second, she lowered her hands and found the plate, then groped around before she found one of the wrapped crepes. Carefully and wearily, she brought it to her mouth and took a bite. But as the taste of sweet filling touched her tongue, she shoved the rest of it into her mouth and started to chew while pressing both hands against her lips as if she was scared that her food would jump out of her mouth mid bite. Frankly, it was pretty adorable and I couldn''t help but smile at the sight. But as I watched, tears started to fall from her cloudy eyes. "Did...did I die?" "Wha, what? What makes you think that?" (Where did such a question come from?!) I rushed over and started to pat her head as she tightly gripped her knees. "I was all alone and lost in the forest. Nobody comes back from so deep in the forest. I was cold and fell asleep. But when I woke up, everything was so warm, and I got to eat food more delicious than anything I had ever had. How couldn''t this be heaven?!" I sat down beside her and pulled her into my chest as I hugged her. "If this was heaven, then it''s a pretty lonely place. You''re the first person I''ve been able to talk to in a long time. There''s only the fluffballs and dangerous monsters around. I don''t think heaven would be such a hostile and lonely place, because if it was, nobody would want to go there, no matter how warm of a place it was or how good the food was" The girl nodded and wiped her tears before sitting up straight. "Then, I''m really alive? And this is still in the forest?" "That''s right. You''re a bit deeper in the forest right now, but you''re still alive. You''ll continue to live too. I''ll make sure of that. And all along the way, you can eat all the good food you want!" I pat her head once more. "Now then, if you''re still hungry, there''s plenty more dessert left" "Yes! Thank you!" With the brightest smile yet, she greedily devoured the plate of sweets, holding one in each hand as a happier brand of tears ran down her face this time. Once the girl finished her meal, we were sitting together on the couch. She was leaning against me and rubbing her belly. It looked like she ate too much and was in pain. From my side it looked pretty funny, but as someone who had done the same thing before, I could sympathize. I could, but chose not to and just enjoyed the thought that she liked my cooking that much. The dessert I made was almost as big as the rest of the meal. It was actually pretty surprising to see such a little child finish all that when I realized what I had done. "Next time, you don''t have to force yourself to finish everything. I can put it aside for you to have later on" "...okay..." (Was that reluctance because she wanted to finish it at all costs or something?!) With how much she was enjoying it, I couldn''t deny that possibility. While she really did need to eat so that she''d reach a healthy weight, if she kept eating to her limit every time, she''d get fat. There was no doubt whatsoever. (I''ll restrict her intake for now) "So...what do you want to do from here?" "What do you mean?" "Do you want to go home? If you tell me where it is, I can take you back" I hadn''t asked because I was worried about her circumstances, but if I didn''t ask, it was hardly better than kidnapping. "...cough" Despite being unable to see, the girl looked own at her lap. It was the answer I was worried about. "I don''t mind you staying but..." "I''ll do chores! If it''s something I can do, I''ll do it!" That answer was much more forceful than I expected, and inadvertently I pulled back. "...I know I can''t do much. I''m young and don''t have many skills...and I can''t see" Well, I knew all that. "I already said I didn''t mind you staying. And I said that knowing all that without you saying so. What I did want to say though, was ask you why you were all by yourself in the forest" "Huh? You knew I couldn''t see?" The girl turned her head towards me. The surprise was clear on her face. Rather, it was pretty interesting to see someone who was completely blind, yet knew and understand all these facial expressions. If she was blind from birth, then it was telling how much of human expressions were hard coded into our genes...their genes. I wasn''t human anymore. "I don''t think it''s the kind of thing you can hide, even for the little bit we''ve been together" "Th...then..." "I said it before, but I don''t mind. I said you can stay knowing that you can''t see. But I do want to know why I found you the way I did" "..." It was one thing if she was changing the subject, but another if she was only thinking. I had plenty of time, more than what I knew to do with. While I got bored easily, I was patient, as paradoxical as that sounded. "We were always hungry in my village, but the harvest was even worse than usual this year. We didn''t have enough food for the winter, so mama and papa said we were going to get more food from the forest. Everyone always said that the forest was dangerous, and only the hunters should go, but the hunters couldn''t bring enough food back for everyone, so I went with mama, papa, my brothers and sisters. Even though I couldn''t see and almost always stayed at home. We travelled far, mama and papa holding my hands as we walked. But they stopped. Papa said to wait while everyone looked for food. But they didn''t come back. It was getting cold, yet nobody came back. I started to worry, so I went to look for them, calling for them, but I couldn''t find anyone. When I got too cold to move well, I sat down to rest. When I woke up, I was with you" Midway through her story, I had pulled her close to me again. Just by mentioning that there was a famine was enough for me to understand, but I didn''t interrupt her story. It seemed like she understood too, despite how young she was. I understood why she sounded so desperate now, and I didn''t have the heart to abandon that hope of hers. It wasn''t like I wouldn''t profit anyways. Having to care for her wasn''t a big deal, and in return I''d get someone to talk to. The fluffballs were fun to play with, but they couldn''t talk. (Well, leaving the excuses aside...) "If that''s the case, I don''t mind. We can find something for you to do later on" "Really? I can stay?" "Yea, you can" "Thank you! Thank you thank you!" The girl hugged me with all her strength. It wasn''t much, but it filled my chest with warmth. I''ve never known such a thing for as long as I could remember. I wrapped my arms around her as I savoured the feeling. "Umm...by the way..." "Hmmm?" "Could I...could I touch your face?" "...huh?" "Because I can''t see...I don''t know what you look like. You can touch my face too" "Ah, it''s okay. Ummm...go ahead" I remembered this was a normal thing amongst blind people on Earth as well. I even heard that they''d own cast moulds of their friends and family¡¯s faces like how other people would have pictures. With her hands even smaller and softer than mine, the little girl reached up and touched my face. Her hands trembled at first, but as she continued to explore the shape of my face, she let out her tension more and more, growing confident and assertive as she explored every detail of my face, like she was burning it''s shape into her mind. Rather, that was probably exactly what she was doing. Not content with just my face, she touched my hair, my chin, neck, ears. I let her keep going until she was satisfied. "Ah!" "Hmm?" "Oh, uh...do you want to touch my face too?" "...sure" I hesitated for a second, but this was an act of trust. Not doing so might''ve given her the wrong impression. So even though I didn''t need to, I touched her cheeks. They were incredibly soft and springy, like marshmallows. Her chin was pliant, and her lips, while still sticky from her meal, might''ve been the softest things I had ever felt. I shook my head and stopped. Any more and I might''ve started to do something bad. "Thanks" "No, thank you. You can touch my face whenever you want" She looked down, and her cheeks grew visibly red. (What sort of invitation is that supposed to be?! What the hell kind of invitation am I imagining from a six year old?!) I wanted to bang my head against something hard, like the 87th floor golems. I was starting to suspect that my long bout of solitude had messed up my ability form pure and innocent connections with others. "I...like the shape of your face...ah!" "I like yours too, but what is it?" "My name is Alicia. What''s yours?" I froze. I had completely forgotten about that. Without anyone to talk to, there wasn''t any need for me to have a name, but that wasn''t true anymore. I regretted not spending any time to think about it after she first brought it up. My old name was flat out. It was a guy''s name, and even if it was unisex, there was the possibility that it wasn''t true here. I didn''t want to be some weird woman giving out a name only men had in this world. But it wasn''t like I knew what names were like in this world. This girl had a name similar to ones on Earth, but it could''ve just been a pure coincidence. No, it most likely was. The likelihood that all names were similar in general was virtually zero. I sweated in my mind as I desperately thought about my answer. "Umm...was that a bad question?" Alicia tilted her head as she brought her face close to mine. "Ah, no...uh, I just...don''t have one" My mind blanked out, and that was the best I managed. The shame burned like the noon sun, but it was too late now. "You...don''t have a name...?" "Y...yea. I never got one..." "..." (Ah...she must be disappointed in me! Who the hell would grow up without a name?! Maybe she thinks I''m lying? I worked so hard to gain her trust, but did I just lose it in one moment of stupidity?!) "...how about Scarlet?" As I secretly panicked, Alicia spoke up again. "Huh?" "Your name. If you don''t have one, what about Scarlet?" "Ah...uhh...is that ok?" "Is that a bad name?" The look of determination she had when she gave that name wavered and faded into unease. "Ah! No! It''s a good name! It''s a great name! I like it! From now on, I''ll be Scarlet!" I accepted it on a whim, but to be honest, I did kinda like it. It fit a vampire like me surprisingly well. It was almost like she had figured it out, but there was no way that was possible. Chapter 14 – Second Day with Alicia Alicia and I sat together, enjoying the warmth of each others bodies as we basked in the afterglow of coming so much closer to each other. It was such a minor thing, but for us to exchange names, even though mine was literally received from her just now, would normally be such a minor thing and the first thing done when two people met, it was a big step for us to come closer since we would be living together from then on. But that same act took a toll on Alicia''s small body. Rather, the excitement had finally dissipated and now she was openly yawning. "I guess it''s getting late. Let''s go to sleep" "Mmmm" The little girl rubbed her cloudy eyes as she drowsily nodded. I got up to make room on the couch so that she could lay down. But I felt a tug on my sleeve as I tried to go and clean up after dinner. "...can...can we sleep...together...?" Alicia''s cloudy eyes were filled with unease and worry. I didn''t even consider it before, but it was a given that being abandoned by her family, even if it was so that they wouldn''t starve, would''ve been a traumatizing experience for such a little child. "Sure. That''s not a problem. Just give me a sec" When her little fingers let go of my sleeve, I walked to the edge of the room and made a rudimentary coat hanger from the leftovers of the iron ingot I''d been using, and hung my clothes on it as I stripped down. (My clothes aren''t suitable for sleeping in. They''d just get in the way of Alicia having a restful sleep.) The couch wasn''t big enough for two people to sleep on normally, so the only way was for Alicia to lie on top of my body like before. The leather of my chest wrap and pants would be uncomfortable for her, and my robes could get tangled with her body as she slept. I could technically wear my tank top, but if Alicia drooled in her sleep, it would be another thing I had to wash, so I opted to go without it. Now that I was only in my panties, I went back to the couch, lifted Alicia''s frail body against mine, and lay down on the couch and draped the pelt she had wrapped around her body on top to keep warm. We lay both facing up, with Alicia''s head on my inflated chest like a pillow, but she immediately turned around and hugged me, burying her face in my chest. Her thin arms pulled her body as tightly against mine as they could, even though they trembled slightly. In return, I wrapped my arms around her body and slowly stroked her bare back. Alicia''s breathing slowed and shallowed, and eventually the strength left her tired body as she drifted to sleep. I on the other hand was stuck there, unable to move, only able to curse my biology for being unable to sleep. I absently wondered how many hours I''d have to keep up this position until Alicia woke up. (...I need to make her some clothes) The rags that she wore weren''t suitable for anyone outside of the most desperate of times. It only barely offered modesty, and did basically nothing to protect her body from the elements. She''d probably be cold even here in the fountain room where there''s no wind to chill her. I could make something pretty quick with the spare fur I had laying around, but a proper outfit suited her better. That meant working on the loom again. I thought back to that machine that I left on the 80th floor. I had barely touched it since making my robes, being so time consuming to make even the most basic thing. But there wasn''t any way around it. All the cloth drops in the dungeon were magical, and I still didn''t know what sort of properties they had. It was too much of a risk to use any of them, so I was stuck making them from the threads that I can loot from various monsters. So in the end, food and clothes were at the top of my priority list. I still had leftover ingredients so breakfast wasn''t a problem, but I''d have to go out to get lunch. The time and effort for me wasn''t a big deal, but I felt uneasy about leaving such a young child all alone while I went out to get ingredients. But a child didn''t belong in a dungeon, especially a blind one that wouldn''t have the means to know how and when to hide. The only way to deal with that would be to just be as quick as I could and come back, leaving Alicia alone for as little time as possible. On the other side, clothes wasn''t too much of a problem. I already had all the materials to make her several outfits. Anything after that can be left for later. There wasn''t much point in planning until we had some time to talk properly after Alicia wakes up. Shoving those thoughts to the back of my mind, I opened up my status window to examine the source code once again. Last time, I was working on making a skill to resist sunlight, but that completely fell apart. Instead, it was probably better to concentrate on understanding how the system worked first. There didn''t seem to be any sort of manual or help files, so I''ve have to decipher the syntax manually. One by one, I read through the source code on the skills I owned. Not only did doing so allowed me to learn how the coding language worked, but it also helped me to understand my skills to a deeper level. For example, [Arcane Magic] was the most ambiguous magic skill I had. Arcane was a type of magic typically, usually beside divine and maybe a few others. Normally arcane would indicate the source of magic along with the types of magic that could be cast using it, but in this world, [Arcane Magic] was actually just a synonym for ''unaspected''. Basically it covered all the magic that the other magic skills didn''t cover, which would be the six major elements of this world. But by reading the source code, I got a better understanding than simply ''miscellaneous''. I had already been using it to levitate and move objects around, but in reality it was the basis of all magic skills. It effectively functioned as a manipulation of force and energy. On Earth, energy was the currency of the universe, and that meant that if you could control energy, you could control everything. Obviously that wasn''t actually possible and was only a theory. Over here though, [Arcane Magic] was exactly that, control over energy. But the difference was that energy seemed to be more strictly defined here than on Earth. Energy seemed to include kinetic and thermal energy, as well as gravitational and electromagnetic force. But in addition to those, it included mana. From a fundamental level, it was incredibly powerful and versatile. But it wasn''t all powerful. The six elemental magic systems were much more limited in scope, but were proportionately stronger and more efficient. Just this knowledge was an incredible find. I didn''t know how much the people of this world understood how [Arcane Magic] worked, but it was hard to imagine that they knew exactly where the limits of the skill was. It was a surprising benefit to my administrator privileges. "Mmmmm" As I continued to read and analyze through my skills'' source codes, Alicia shifted in her sleep, bringing my attention to her for a second. A quick glance suggested that there wasn''t anything wrong, but I lightly rubbed her back just in case and went back to reading my skills'' code. "Mmmm...chu" "Uah!" Suddenly there was a strange feeling on my chest. It was like a pulling or sucking sensation, but the way it felt was alien as a shiver ran down my spine in time with sensation growing stronger and weaker. I lifted up the fur blanket again. Alicia had shifted a little again, but that wasn''t what was important. She was suckling in her sleep, and the feeling of it was making my body burn up. Unable to stand the feeling on my chest, I desperately tried to suppress the need to squirm, yet my knees rubbed against each other against my will. I couldn''t let her keep doing this at all, so I moved my hands to try to force her off, or at least wake her up, but instead I froze. "Ma...ma....mama...." There were tears running down Alicia''s face as she whispered that word in between sucks. In an instant, she put me between a rock and a hard place. As I was stuck there trying to debate what I should do, in the end the need to comfort this little girl won over. I squeezed her small body between my arms as I stroked her head. I needed to prevent this from occurring ever again, but for now I lost to her anxiety. My mind moved away from trying to learn about the system to trying to get Alicia to not suckle on me tomorrow night. "MMmmmmm....mmmm...?" "...morning Alicia..." "...! Ah! Ahh...good morning Scarlet...!" Finally, after suckling on and off in her sleep for who knows how many time, Alicia woke up and pushed herself upright, propping herself up with her hands pressing on my belly. She jerked up when I called her name, but calmed down after her mind cleared. I, on the other hand, was wiped out. To think that I''d be feeling so tired while doing practically nothing. I felt like being unable to sleep an entire night and being forced to go to work anyways. Well, I can''t sleep in general, but the conjured memories of that actually happening in my last life made me sigh. But my personal condition aside, for some reason Alicia stiffed up again right after she relaxed. "...Did...I do something wrong....?" "Hmm? What do you mean?" "Maybe I did something while sleeping...?" (Was that a habit she had from before?!) The prospect that this would continue no matter what I tried filled me with dread, but I did my best to play it smooth for now. "What makes you think that?" "Your body is really stiff, a lot more than when we went to sleep" Alicia bit her thumb as she nervously said. (Ah, that''s why) "Don''t worry too much about it. It''s my first time sleeping with someone" (Technically I didn''t sleep though) "cough...okay...?" Alicia tilted her head cutely after a second''s delay. "But first thing''s first. I need you to get off of me so I can make breakfast" "Ah! Right!" The little girl quickly shifted over to sit on the couch cushion so I could move. I got up and walked over to get dressed, but noticed how uncomfortable my underwear had become. My eyes flickered to Alicia for a second. She was staring right at me while pulling the furs we used as a blanket around her naked body to keep warm. Despite being well aware that she was completely blind, my face grew hot at being stared while virtually naked, also despite having both bathed together and slept mostly nude together. I removed my underwear and tossed it into the now cold water in the bathtub before reaching for my clothes. But as I grabbed for my chest wrap, the feeling of something wet sliding down my belly made me reconsider. There was saliva dripping down my body. Before letting it get onto my clothes, I levitated a pelt over and wiped myself down before getting clothed. The chest wrap and tank top went on, then I went over to wash my panties before using [Arcane Magic] to evaporate all the water off of it in a new application I just came up with. The benefits of learning the background details of my skills had already shown itself, even if it was pretty mundane. I left my hat, robes, gloves, pants, and boots for later. There wasn''t much need in putting it on until I headed out to hunt. "Okay then...breakfast..." In the corner of my eye, Alicia jerked up to my words and a faint grumble came. It looked like I''d spent more time than I should''ve. I had to get used to the fact that whenever I did anything, there was someone who would be waiting until I finished. There was a serious lack of ingredients, especially in variety, but I had to make do. I started by heating the stone pan on a magical flame and greased the surface. As that was going on, I skinned then diced up the remaining potatoes then soaked them in a bowl of water drawn from the fountain. Next, I ground up the last of the wheat in a mortar, then mixed it with some water to make a paste. On another plate, I diced up half an onion and shredded a quarter of a carrot with my claws, then after draining the potatoes, I mixed them all together in a bowl with some salt and pepper. Once the stone pan was hot enough, I poured the mixture onto it, making four small patties. While that cooked, I cut up an apple into slices and removed the seeds and put them onto a small wooden plate. Next, I shaped some stone into a cup and squeezed some oranges to fill it. As the patties cooked, I examined my work so far. It looked pretty good, but a bit unsatisfying. Thinking about it for a second, I realized I didn''t have a sauce for the potato patties. In theory I could just use the sweet sap as is on it, but I heard that was a controversial idea on Earth. Ketchup would be much more ideal. I remembered I once looked up what ketchup was made from. I did some weird things to sate my curiosity. The principal ingredients of ketchup were tomatoes, sugar, and vinegar. Then there were a bunch of things to balance out the flavours, but the details slipped my mind. Fortunately I had tomatoes from yesterday, and I could substitute sugar with the thick sap I got from treant-like monsters. Strangely, cloudy, brown vinegar came from some of the cook-like monsters in the fortress floors, along with many of my herbs and spices. At least I was pretty sure it was. The sour taste was pretty overpowering, but anything aside from blood was unpleasant tasting to the current me. In a bowl, I crushed a tomato into a watery paste, then removed the skin. Some sap and vinegar went into the bowl, about a tenth as much of both. I mixed the concoction while adding a sprinkle of salt. Once I was confident the patties were done, I transferred them to a plate and evenly spread the homemade ketchup on top, then placed everything onto a small table and brought it in front of Alicia and placed a clean fork in her hand. "Breakfast is served" The little girl leaned forward, her nose twitching like that of a little animal as she gulped repeatedly. It took me a second, but I realized something I forgot to do. With as gentle a motion as I could, I grabbed her tiny hands and touched them on each plate and cup one by one. "This is potato patties and it''s hot, so use the fork. This one is sliced fruit and is cold, so you can use your hands. This one is juice, so be careful not to spill it" Alicia nodded each time, then took a second to confirm the shape and size of each container. Using her fork, she prodded the plate of patties to confirm their shape, then speared one and unsteadily brought it up to her mouth. I made them small to portion them, but I realized while watching that I didn''t consider that she wouldn''t cut them up with her fork. I needed to make them even smaller next time to make it easier to eat. Oblivious to my thoughts, Alicia took a bite out a patty. As she chewed, her eyes lit up like Christmas lights. "It''s so good! Everything you make is so yummy!" "Haha, thanks. I''m glad you''re enjoying it" With a grin big enough to make my cheeks hurt a little, I moved on to my next project as Alicia enjoyed her meal. The little girl needed clothes, badly. There was no way I''d let her wear those course rags, so I needed to make something new. But my options were limited, since I wasn''t going to make her only wear that one fur until I made something with the loom. I collected the last of the rabbit pelts I had and cut them down into rectangles. From there, with one eye on Alicia as she ate with the force of an industrial vacuum cleaner, I estimated her size and stitched the furs together into a basic dress. It was deliberately made loose so that her movements would be impeded as little as possible, and the fur on the inside to keep her warm and prevent the tougher leather from directly touching her skin. When I lifted up the final product to admire, from the corner of my eye I saw Alicia staring at me...looking at me...facing toward me. It looked like I took longer than I expected and she was already finished with her meal. "Finished?" "Yes! It was really tasty!" For some reason Alicia was stiff as a board. This lack of trust gave me a pang in my chest, but I guess expecting us to be much closer in only a day was pretty unrealistic. "Here, let''s go clean you up" There was traces of sauce all over the little girl''s face and hands. It looked like she really enjoyed the meal, but I kinda wished she''d enjoy it without making a mess of herself. Was hoping for it too much from a girl as young as her? "Wait a sec! I''ll carry you" As I walked over to pick her up, Alicia uneasily tried to reach a foot down to reach the floor. Half worried that she''d slip and fall, half annoyed that she was doing it while putting her sauce covered hands all over the couch and furs, I rushed over and lifted her into my arms. But it was then I realized how much of an exercise of futility that was. To stabilize herself, she was forced to grab onto me, spreading the sauce onto my shirt and body. (Next time, I''ll bring a bowl of water and something to wipe with) With a quick glance, I saw that the plates and cup were completely empty. It even looked like the sauce was licked clean. (I also need to pay more attention so that she doesn''t do that) It was no wonder why her hands and mouth were covered with saliva and traces of ketchup. "Okay, sit here" I placed Alicia onto the lip of the fountain, wherein she obediently sat down as I lowered her body. "Okay, I''m going to wash your hands and face now" With my intent declared, I levitated a ball of water and directed Alicia''s sands into it, scrubbing them clean before dropping the orb. Next, I wiped her face with my wet hands until I was sure I got everything off, before finally bringing over a clean fur to dry her off. "Alright! Now you look all pretty again!" "R, really?" Alicia responded much more energetically to my offhand compliment than I expected. "Yup! And a pretty girl needs a pretty¡­dress¡­" I tried to follow through with my words, but calling the fur dress I made pretty was less disingenuous and more of a flat out lie. "Ummm¡­unfortunately I don''t have a pretty dress right now. So until I can make one, I have another one¡­at least it''s warm¡­" My words petered out as I ran out of steam. Alicia on the other hand was staring towards me with sparkling eyes. "Here. Stand up and raise your arms so I can put it on you" Those eyes full of expectation hurt badly, but it was way too late to turn back now. I levitated over the fur dress while careful to make sure Alicia didn''t slip on the fountain lip. I pulled the one-piece over her head and her arms through the arm holes before gently tugging the skirt down just above her knees. The dress seemed to fit her better than I expected. It was a bit loose overall, but not to the degree that it would unnecessarily shift on her body. The skill correction was scary. I lifted Alicia and put her down onto the ground. "How is it?" The little girl in front of me patted the front of the crude dress a bit before turning her cloudy eyes my way. "It''s amazing! It''s so soft and warm! I love it! Thank you Scarlet!" The intense sparkling I her eyes felt like the sun''s burning rays being beamed directly into my soul. The guilt riddled through my chest at this little girl being so happy about such a cheap gift. I didn''t even spend that much time on it since it was supposed to be temporary. But at this rate she might chose this crude thing over any decent dress I spend real time and effort on. Calling it too late to take it back was the understatement of the century. I had no choice but to suck it up and just deal with it. (Maybe I can make improvements to it in the future instead?) That aside though... "Alicia, let''s get you back on the couch for a minute" I grabbed her hand and guided her back to the couch. Carrying her around was easy, since she was both so light and I was so strong, but she needed to learn the lay of the room by physically moving around, since she couldn''t just look. When we got there, I helped her sit down. "Alright. Just wait a minute while I clean the place up" That said, if the place she lived in was a mess, a little blind girl like her was prone to getting hurt constantly when I wasn''t looking. A cleanup was the first thing that needed to happen here. I moved around all the things around the room, putting the cooking things on one side of the fountain, the bath on the other, and stored items that were likely to come in hand in it''s own spot against the far wall. Anything that wasn''t likely to be used anytime soon was taken to the 80th floor, which was now my designated store room. The couch was right in the middle like a centrepiece, since it was our most used item. I also took this opportunity to quickly clean everything. With everything suddenly getting busy all at once with Alicia''s arrival, I forgot to clean up the used equipment. "Alright. That''s everything" With my hands on my hips, I proudly stood while moving my eyes across the now clean room. While it couldn''t be called organized, everything was at least put together in their place, and anything potentially dangerous was made secure or out of reach of Alicia. For the most part, the room was childproof. Alicia on the other hand was sitting on the couch, kicking her legs. It wasn''t a surprise she''d be bored, but I was a bit amazed that she didn''t complain at all. I moved to her side and pat her head. "I''ve finished cleaning. It should be fine for you to move around in the room, but don''t go through either of the tunnels. There''s monsters in each direction, so it''ll be dangerous alone. I''m gonna go get dinner" As I turned to leave, a small hand pulled on my pinkie, making me freeze mid-stride. "You''re going to go away?" "..." I looked into Alicia''s grey eyes. It looked like she was trying to hold back tears. "Just for a bit. There''s not enough food for dinner, so I need to go get some" "But...coughcough" Strength left her hand as she let go of my finger, but she trembled as she faced the floor. "You wanna come with me?" "Can I?" The sorrow just now disappeared like it was a lie. If she wasn''t a kid, I''d have thought that she was doing this on purpose. (Or at least if she didn''t seem so earnest I would) I was reminded that I was a bit manipulative at times when I was a kid. But I wasn''t that subtle about it. This girl seemed a lot more honest than I was. "Yea, fine. But it''s going to be dangerous, so you have to do what I say no matter what. If you can''t do that, then you''ll have to stay" "I will! I''ll do everything you say!" Her eyes were sparkling again. But now, it was responsibility that weighed me down. "Well, first of all, we need to get you ready to for the dungeon" "Dungeon?" "Right. I never said it did I? We''re inside a dungeon right now" "!!!" (Ah, I need to clean the couch) Chapter 15 – Alicia’s First Dungeon A, a, a dungeon?!" "Yup" In the time it took Alicia to reboot, I had pretty much cleaned both her and the couch. Magic really was wonderful. "H, h, how?! Aren''t dungeons scary?!" "I...guess?" In theory, they probably were, especially if you went deeper than you could handle. If I wasn''t so good at recovering from my wounds, I might''ve been scared of actually pushing my limits, but as it was, diving in deeper was more exciting than scary. "B, but...the adventurers said that dungeons are places that lots and lots of strong monsters live!" (Oh? Adventurers?) "Well, yea. There are a ton of monsters here, and a bunch of them are pretty strong, but we''re in a safe zone. Monsters can''t get here, so don''t worry" "B, but...outside...?" "Yea. If you leave this room, then there''ll be a ton of monsters in both directions. That''s why you shouldn''t leave here without me" It looked like my words hit her harder than I intended. Alicia flailed her arms and somehow managed to grab mine before pulled herself to me. Her entire body was shaking. "Don''t worry. I''m a bit strong, and we''re not going to meet any dangerous monsters" "Really?" "Really. Monsters can''t come here, and there''s no way I''d take you somewhere I couldn''t protect you" Technically, I doubted 100% security was possible, even if there was three more of me, but it was true that I would make sure she didn''t get hurt. (But still, maybe there''s something I can do here to further keep her safe that wouldn''t be possible on Earth? There''s so many game parallels here after all. Something like ''cover'' would be idea. The ability to take a hit in the place of another party member...party?) "Alicia, have you heard of the term party?" (Please don''t ask about birthday parties) "The hunters and adventurers made parties all the time when they went out" "Ooh? Do you know how they did it?" "No. I don''t know. I''m sorry" "It''s fine. It''s not your fault. I can just figure it out" I patted her head as she dejectedly looked down. (But since parties were a real thing here, maybe it was covered by the system?) Turning internally, I focused my thoughts onto the desire of forming a party with Alicia. "Ah!" "What happened?" My concentration broke and I turned to look at her, full of expectations. "Something appeared" "What did?" "The words ''Scarlet has sent a party invite. Do you accept?'' Then it says ''Yes/No''" "Try hitting ''Yes''" Suddenly, something appeared in the top left corner of my vision. It was the name ''Alice'' and red and blue bars. It looked like it worked. "Alright. Looks like we were able to form a party properly" "Really? We''re in a party now?" "That''s right" "Wow, it''s like we''re adventurers!" Alicia hugged my arm as she jumped in joy. (Did this girl admire adventurers or something? Well, they are pretty cool) But as Alicia calmed down, she developed a frustrated look on her face. "Is something wrong?" "Umm...umm..." "Just say it. I won''t be angry" For some reason, Alicia looked down while tightening her grip on my arm. "I need to poo!" Suddenly, she looked up at me and practically yelled it out. (Ah, poo. It''s been a long time since I''ve done that. It''s actually kinda nostalgic) I looked at the ceiling as I reminisced about the bodily function I had lost. But it took a few seconds for the dots to connect properly. When they finally did, I stiffened and looked down at Alicia. "I...uh...come with me!" "Eeek!" I picked the little girl up and ran to the fountain. "First floor!" Everything went dark before the light returned, and I ran out the empty room. The sudden brightness caused me to squint, but I didn''t slow down there. Carrying Alicia in one arm, I moved to the side of the path and used the other hand to quickly dig a hole in the grassy ground. Once I was satisfied, I lowered the squirming girl over the hole, then helped her raise the skirt of her dress. "Okay, you can do it right here" Alicia squatted down, and I turned away, doing my best to ignore the sounds coming from behind me. At some point I realized that the sounds behind me stopped. I turned around, but quickly averted my eyes. She was still hunched over the hole. "Is, is something wrong? You alright?" "..." "Umm..." "I''m done but..." "But?" Did something happen? Is she sick or something? "I don''t have any leaves to wipe with" "..." Right. I forgot. "K. Gimme a sec" I had the option of giving her some of the grass from the dungeon boundary, but I didn''t know if it was too rough or something. Fortunately, I could find a good alternative pretty close by if I was quick about it. With a speedy dash, I ventured further into the dungeon, past the first monster, and to the second, a rabbit. Before it could react, I sliced it into two with my claws, then grabbed it''s drop. Fortunately it was exactly what I wanted on my first try. With my loot in hand, I rushed back to Alicia. Hopefully nothing had approached in the few seconds I was away. She was still stooping down, and there wasn''t any hint of a monster nearby. "Here, use this" I handed over my loot. "This...is it really alright to use something as nice as this?!" "It''ll actually take more time for me to get leaves. And thanks to the dungeon, I can get furs whenever I want, so that''s actually easier right now" She was reluctant, but stuck between her choices, she took the one I suggested. Once she was done, I took her hand so we could prepare to get some food for her. Back home, I sat Alicia back onto the couch so I could get us ready for a trip through the dungeon. As much as I wanted to give her armour, everything I had was way too big and heavy for her. I''d just have to shield her with my magic and my own body if need be. But that aside, there was one thing that she was missing that I could fix, namely footwear. I''d used up all the remaining rabbit pelts, but I still had the scraps from making her dress along with plenty of other leathers. I sliced up some leather from a beastial boss monster that had a lion head and goat head along with a snake tail. It was basically a Greek chimera. The leather was thick and strong, but was no match against my claws. I sewed the remaining rabbit fur to one side then attached a larger formed piece as well, then turned it inside out. I then cut a strip of leather into two cords. Finally, I put them on to Alicia and tied the cords around her ankles so the fur boots wouldn''t come off easily. "How does that feel Alicia?" I ask her as I lift her up and put her down onto the floor. "I, is it really alright for me to have these?" She lightly stomped the ground feeling out her new footwear. "Of course. That''s why I made them" "I, I...thank you! I love you Scarlet!" Suddenly, she jumped at me with a big hug and rubbed her face into my belly. I could feel the wetness from her tears and she trembled slightly. It made me worry what kind of life she lived if she was so moved about something like cheap boots like that, but I was hesitant to ask. "Mmm. I love you too Alicia" I hugged her back and stroked her soft hair. (She''s such a cute kid) "Alright, gimme a sec and we''ll be off" I quickly grabbed my usual clothes and bag and put them on before grabbing Alice''s hand. "Right. Let''s-a-go!" "Okay!" It wasn''t exactly the response I was hoping for, but it was unreasonable for her to get my reference. At least she seemed excited. A quick teleportation later to the 13th floor and we had exited to the familiar forest level. Alicia followed me in little totters as she awkwardly hung to my arm while enjoying her clothes. But as we exited the cave and the environment suddenly changed, her big smile and happy hops slowly turned into a nervous frown and uneasy steps. "You sure you wanna come? It''s safe back home even without me" "I''ll come! Don''t send me away..." "...I won''t. It''s fine for you to come" I really had no resistance to tears at all. Was that normal, or just because I was such a loner? We walked along the path together. After the first turn, that humanoid carrot monster appeared. Without even bothering to do a motion or slow my stride, I fired off an ice arrow at it, driving a hole clean through the monster. Alicia jerked at the sudden sounds of battle and hugged my arm even tighter, almost making me drag her before I slowed down to her pace. "Ah!" "Did something happen?" Did she get scared when I fired off my magic without warning? "I reached level two" "Ah, congrats" "...oh, uh, thank you?" "Why''s that a question?" "Ummm...I didn''t do anything. Is that alright?" "Ah. Well, why not? We''re a party together, and since it seems that XP is shared, isn''t it normal to be congratulated when you level up?" "I guess...but isn''t it bad to get a level without doing anything?" "It''s not like I''m losing anything by it. At floors this low, there''s basically no chance for me to level up anymore" "Really?" Was it that weird? "Yea. It''s fine as long as you can take benefit from it" "But I can''t fight since I can''t see...huh?" "What''s wrong?" "Does that mean a monster appeared already?" Alicia hugged my arm with both hands. "Yea, but it''s gone now" "It''s...gone?" She loosened her grip, but still made sure to hold my hand in both of hers. "I beat it" "Already?!" This time the little girl pulled down on my hand, hard, causing my spine to make a half arc so perfectly that would make Caesar proud. In a panic, she let go of my hand. "Sorry..." I recovered myself and picked up the monster drop and handed it to Alicia. "Yup. Here''s it''s drop" She took hold of the withered carrot-like root and traced her fingers along it. "You''re really strong, aren''t you!" Now she was beaming at me. "Well, maybe a bit?" "But you beat it so fast!" "It''s not like it was that strong of a monster" Really. Those things are easy as long as you don''t let it start screaming. The few times I did, and let it get close as I was fighting, I ended up bleeding from my ears. It''s an experience I didn''t want to have again. Especially one I didn''t want Alicia to have ever. I take off my bag and stuffed the root into it. I didn''t know what it was used for, but there wasn''t any point in throwing it away. It''s not like it would go bad. It was completely dry. But as I went to put the bag back over my shoulder, I noticed that Alicia was looking at the ground, tightly gripping her skirt in both hands. At first I thought she needed to pee, but realized there was no way she''d need to already and admonished myself for forgetting something so normal for humans. Instead, since the bag''s straps were detachable at the bottom, I stuffed the ends inside of it''s body then presented it to the trembling girl. "Alicia, do you want to carry this for me?" "Huh?" I put it into her hands and she examined it with her hands. "It''s a bag shaped a bit like an animal" "Is it okay for me to hold it?" "It is. In fact, it''ll make it easier for me to fight if I didn''t have to hold it. It''s pretty important though, so hold onto it tightly okay? It''s an important duty only you can do" "Only I can do? Really?" "Yup" "Okay!" Alicia beamed at me while hugging the plush bag tight. With her distracted from her nervousness, I took hold of her hand and we continued to farm the floor''s monster drops as well as the various foods that could be gathered all around. The monsters were all taken down in one hit before they could do anything. It was a strange feeling just how easy the fights had gotten, but it was proof that I had gotten stronger. Once in a while I found a trap, but the discolouration on the ground, unusual bumps, or strange clumps of mana made them all child''s play to avoid. At least, that''s what I was thinking when I accidentally stepped on a trap as I walked Alicia around the trigger. I felt a small, sharp pain like getting a paper cut. When I looked down, it looked like I took an arrow to the knee. Thanks to my high stats, it was stopped by the bone. When I flicked it away like a bug, the small cut healed on in a few seconds it''s own thanks to my [Rapid Regeneration] skill. My lack of sense of danger in these lower levels was problematic. I needed to be more vigilant so that no harm came to Alicia. Once I was satisfied with our loot, we moved on to other floors to get particular drops from there as well. By the time we got back, Alicia was even more downcast then she was when we left. It wasn''t like she became scared or depressed or something, but it looked like I pushed her too far without noticing it, physically that was. She had stopped announcing her levels whenever it rose, so I wasn''t quite sure where she was at anymore, but it was probably in it''s teens already. I put her onto the couch and she immediately flopped over and stopped moving. I still felt completely fine, but the differences between our bodies'' capabilities were just that immensely vast. I shouldn''t have thought that just because she was keeping up and didn''t complain that she was still feeling alright. I really should''ve known better considering her temperament she''d been displaying so far. Or at least noticed something was up when her words grew more and more quiet and less enthused, or when they stopped entirely. "Sorry about that Alicia. Next time, I want you to tell me when you''re getting tired" "...Okay...coughcough" There was hardly any life in that voice and she even coughed weakly, but at least she responded. I quickly got to work on lunch. To perk up a little girl, sweets were probably best as the stereotype went. But she was exhausted from moving her body a whole lot, so restoring her energy was pretty important as well. As my mind went through the possibilities, I took out our loot and sorted them out, putting anything that would last into magic-made containers and returned everything else to the magical bag in the hope that it would help preserve it. Looking through what we had, I made up my mind. Today''s lunch would be glazed sweet potatoes and chopped fruit. It was a bit simple, but was sweet and high in vitamins and minerals. First, I heated a stone plate and greased it before frying up some sliced sweet potatoes on it. As it cooked, I filled a bowl with assorted fruit slices. Once the potatoes were mostly done, I poured a generous amount of honey onto the pan and let the sweet potatoes soak and caramelize a bit before transferring it to a plate. Lastly, I squeezed a few oranges into a cup. "Here you go. Lunch is served. Glazed sweet potatoes and diced fruit salad and juice" Once I passed the food over to Alicia, I started work on her dessert. I mixed up some dough in a bowl, shaped some stone the form of a muffin pan then greased and filled the pan until I used up all the dough. Next, I stirred a mixture of sugar, and eggs, as well as grapes and milk after evaporating most of the water from both with magic before pouring the concoction into the filled muffin pan. Finally, I made a stone box, heated it up, then placed the pan inside before closing the box. As I let it cook, I watched Alicia eat. If I didn''t know better, it looked like she hadn''t collapsed from exhaustion just minutes before with the way she was eating. Alicia held the fork in one hand, spearing the sweet potato slices while holding a piece of diced fruit in the other, alternating between her cheeks being puffed up like a squirrel from potato and fruit. Watching her eat my food so happily made me glad about all the time I spent my last life looking up ways to make good food as cheap as possible. While I was living off only my savings, there wasn''t any way for me to eat out or buy nice premade stuff, so I resorted to finding out how to make the stuff I liked on my own. At the time, I lamented that no matter what it wasn''t actually that cheap and had to give up on most of my favourites, but that knowledge found a use in a surprising place. "So how''d you like it?" I asked the little girl as she poked around an empty plate with her fork in the hopes of finding a scrap of glazed sweet potato she missed. "It was so yummy!" "I''m glad. Here''s dessert: butter tarts" I replaced her empty dishes with a plate with two tarts. There was more, but they were insanely high calorie, so I figured I could save them for another day. I helped her pick one up, then carefully holding it with both hands, she took a bite. "Mmmm! It''s so sweet!" Her face scrunched up so tight I got a little worried, but it turned out it was unfounded as she quickly took another bite. I was glad she liked it. It seemed like these weren''t that popular among foreigners because they were so sweet. Even I admitted that they were basically diabetes in a cup, but I still liked them. It didn''t take long before she was done and was groping around the plate once more looking for a third tart that wasn''t there. "That''s it for now. You''ll get fat if you eat any more" Rather, it was probably already too much, but that thought of mine did nothing to prevent Alicia from looking a bit depressed that her extravagant meal had already ended. "Anyways. I was thinking. Maybe you could tell me stories about outside the forest? I don''t know anything beyond the trees, so maybe you could tell me about it?" Like a person suffering mood swings, Alicia quickly perked up at my words. Chapter 16 – Story Time, Trust, and… I started off preparing for Alicia''s future meals since I had the time. Chilling and skimming milk, grinding wheat, separating meat from bones and simmering scraps to make soup stock. Anything I could think of that took too much time to prepare right before making the little girl''s meals. As I was working, Alicia told me about her village. It seemed like the little girl really enjoyed being of use to me. She called it paying me back for everything I''ve done for her, but frankly, she was a little kid. She didn''t need to pay me back for anything. It was the duty of adults to look after kids after all, even if my current body was technically younger than even she was. I tried to explain that to her, but she refused to listen, saying even her younger brothers and sisters helped out once they were old enough to walk. Anyways, she first started off talking about her village. I was a bit worried since it might''ve been full of bitter memories, but it turned out not to be so bad. From what I heard, it didn''t seem like she was mistreated, but she was neglected a lot. Her village was pretty poor, so people often went around harvesting whatever they could. But Alicia was blind from birth, so she rarely helped with that and was often left alone at home. It seemed like she was as emaciated as she was because there wasn''t enough food to go around, but I couldn''t help but suspect there was more to that than she was telling me, whether she realized it or not. This seemed to be the biggest reason why she liked to help me so much. It sounded like she thought of herself as nothing but a burden, so anything she could do to help made her pretty happy. Beyond that, it seemed like her little village, while poor, was also a relatively popular staging ground for adventurers looking into hunting in the nearby forest. The forest that surrounded my home dungeon. Thanks to that, there were several successful merchants and business owners, but anything that didn''t directly connect to those adventurers did poorly, which included farmers like Alicia''s family. Not only that, but as the famine that''s been plaguing the village lately proved, even the successful businesses weren''t doing well enough to cover for when the harvests were consecutively poor. According to what she heard, the famine''s been going on for three or four years, but Alicia herself couldn''t remember a time before she was always starving. It was just a pure coincidence that I passed over a sliced apple at that point in the story. It really was. I had carved it into rabbits, but it didn''t look like she noticed. The adventurers, though, didn''t sell that much of their loot at the village and instead took most of their things with them when the left to a city further inland. What they did, however, was often spend time relaxing at the village''s branch of the adventurer''s guild to drink. The village kids would often listen to their stories when they weren''t out hunting or wasted from drinking too much. Alicia was included in this, her brothers and sisters would often guide her by hand so she could listen to the adventurers too. But it didn''t seem like the adventurers had too many stories of their own, and instead shared stories that they themselves had heard and tried to boast about. Not like it fooled even the village kids, though it probably didn''t do anything to dampen their excitement. They told stories about people climbing high mountains and fighting dragons, or taking trips on the oceans and fighting sea monsters, or going deep underground and taking on demonic monstrosities. Pretty much all the stories were about people going to exotic places and killing big monsters. It seemed there were even a bunch about a party of heroes who took on the Demon Lord''s forces that culminated in the Demon Lord''s death. Apparently this one was pretty recent. Not just the adventurers, but the whole village had been swapping stories about the heroes and the Demon Lord for years, and the day the adventurers spread the stories about the death of the demon forces'' leader had a lot of the adults spending the night drinking and partying like an impromptu festival. It was pretty cool how there were even heroes and Demon Lords in this world, like a lot of fantasy stories and games, but I was also glad that the war was over. I''d have hated to be caught in between, especially since I was a human-turned-vampire, I''d be stuck in a pretty bad spot if someone tried to recruit me. According to the adventurers'' stories though, it seemed like the allied kingdoms were hunting down the Demon Lord''s remnant forces after they scattered once their leader died, and that was causing trouble here and there, but at the same time, it was giving the adventurers a ton of extra work and money. When one of the kids asked, it seemed like the particular groups of adventurers at Alicia''s village weren''t involved in hunting the remnant demon forces because the area was so far away from the Demon Lord''s castle, nobody thought there was any point in even bothering. I was glad on that point. It was another troublesome thing I wouldn''t get involved in. It was around this point that I had started to make dinner. With the ingredients I had, I got to work on beef stew with lots of potatoes. The potatoes was to make up for the lack of bread. I was a believer that whole carbs was what made the human race strong, not tons of protein like muscle-bound gym dwellers that thought that real cave-men survived on nothing but raw meat and the occasional fruit. When she was done telling another story about the heroes apparently taking down one of the demon generals, I served the stew in a big bowl and squeezed the remainder into my bag. Despite how small it was, the mouth really stretched out a lot more than it appeared to be able to. "Here''s dinner. It''s beef and potato stew. Careful, it''s hot" I handed her a newly made spoon and helped her find the bowl and a cup of orange juice. "Ah, I''ll be right back. I need to get an ingredient for dessert" "Ah! Wai..." "It''ll only be a few seconds. I''ll be back before you know it!" Not listening to Alicia''s complaint, I quickly teleported out to get a quick bite to eat. I didn''t want to admit to her that I was a vampire. There was no telling how scared she''d be of me if she knew. A few quick kills and a full belly later, I came back home. cough couch Glancing to where Alicia sat, she was staring into her lap with her thumb firmly in her mouth. Rather, she was just facing down, since she couldn''t stare. There was no indication that she touched her dinner at all. "Umm..." "Scarlet!" Even before I could call out to her, she jumped up, tears welling in her eyes. "Hey...it''s been...like, two minutes..." It really had. In fact, it was probably less than that, but Alicia had turned into a wreak in that amount of time. "I...I...I was so...waaaahhhh!!!" "Ah! Alicia!" I literally flew over to her and tightly hugged her as she cried. I should''ve known. I should''ve known that she was traumatized by being left behind, all alone and expected to die. Despite that, I was selfish. I wilfully ignored her needs, even if it was only for a little while. "I''m sorry. I''m sorry. I''m sorry. I won''t leave you behind again" Alicia continued to cry, her tears soaked into my clothes, but I held her tightly, burying her face into my chest. "I''m sorry. I''m sorry. I''m sorry" It took a while, but eventually Alicia calmed down enough to pull away from my sticky chest. I used my sleeve wipe her face. I had to wash my entire out fit anyways. Covering even more of it with mucus wasn''t going to mean anything. "I''m sorry Alicia. Are you alright now?" The little girl nodded weakly. She was still holding onto my robes tightly as she sat on my lap. "Here. You must be thirsty" I grabbed her juice and brought it close, but she didn''t make a move to take the cup, or even look for it. I tried pressing the edge against her lips and tilted it carefully. She opened her mouth and drank as I slowly poured into her mouth. The second I pulled the empty cup away, she forced her face into my chest, ignoring the fact that it was covered in slimy goo. "Alicia, you''re getting your face dirty again" But she just shook her head and pressed her body against mine even harder. It was nice to see her express her affection for me so strongly, but my actions had depleted her trust in me in one stroke. I had no idea what I could do to restore that trust. "Here, how about we take a bath to clean up?" It took a few seconds, but she slowly nodded, shifting her personal pillow up and down along with it. "Right, then let''s get up" But she refused to make a move. If anything, her grip on me tightened a little. "Alright, then..." I picked Alicia up and walked over to the bathtub. With a few quick uses of my magic, it was filled once again with hot water, but I was stuck on the next step. "Alicia, you know we can''t wash with our clothes on, right?" She nodded slowly into my chest. "Then to take our clothes off, I need to put you down. Alright?" It took longer, but eventually she nodded again. "Alright. Here I go" I kneeled down, letting Alicia''s feet touch the ground. She staggered a little before gaining her balance and stood on her own...if alone meant that she refused to let her upper body separate from mine. "Umm...I can''t take my clothes off if you don''t let go of them you know? Here, take my hand instead" I wrapped my hand around her balled fist. She slowly let go of my robes, but quickly grabbed my hand in both of hers before taking a nervous step back. Not wasting any time, I removed my clothes the best I could with one hand, swapping the hand I used to hold Alicia''s to remove my shirt and robes. "Okay, now I''ll take your dress off too. But I need you to raise your arms to do it" My agitated bathing partner frowned, but raised her arms as I told her...without letting go of my hand. I sighed, but did the best I could to take her fur dress off as far as it could go. "I need you to let go for a second so I can take it off now Alicia" The little girl stomped her feet cutely a few times, but eventually acquiesced. She let go of my hand, and in that moment I swiftly removed her dress. But the second she confirmed it was off, Alicia flailed her arms until she managed to grab mine again, this time in a greatest death grip her little fingers could manage. "Okay, now I''m going to pick you up and we''ll take our bath now" I put an arm under her bottom and pulled her onto me. In almost one motion, I lift her up, step into the bath, and lower ourselves into the hot water. Alicia flinched for a moment when the water touched her feet, but she stayed calm after that. That is, if wrapping her stick-like arms around my neck like she''s trying to strangle me could be considered calm. "Here, it''ll be much more relaxing if you sit down properly Alicia" I shift her legs to make it as easy as possible for her to sit down, but it took her a few seconds before she actually lowered her body. But rather than sitting, she stopped at kneeling and pushed her face into my chest while wrapping her arms around my ribs. It wasn''t exactly perfect, but at this point, it was good enough. Alicia was mostly submerged up to her shoulders so she would be warm at least. I had given up the idea of a proper bath before I even suggested it. With one arm around her body, I used my other to slowly stroke her hair. It was still frayed and stiff, but it was leagues ahead of how it was when we first met. The two of us lay in the warm water in silence, just holding each other''s body, listening to each other''s breathing, feeling each other''s heartbeats. Eventually Alicia''s grip around me loosened, but I didn''t dare to pull her away from me. I wasn''t about to betray her trust a second time. Instead, I looked down. I wanted to see her expression, but it was impossible. Her head had been parked right in between my breasts, and her face buried in one of them. But rather than seeing her expression, I was forced to notice something else: her head was roughly the same size as my breasts, individually. I had known that they were big, but being unable to get a good grasp due to the different perspective, I had no way to actually confirm it. Rather, I had been deliberately avoiding any form of confirmation. It would''ve been easy if I simply made a mirror, but I rather than doing so, I actively avoided it. It seemed like a part of me probably still denied the truth of my sex change. Also the effects of my appearance settings. Thanks to the fact that all the settings were labelled in ways to be entirely gender neutral, the effects of those sliders were incredibly unpredictable. I lamented once again that there wasn''t a preview window when I was picking my settings. But in a sense, it was a blessing in disguise. If I had continued to be a man, than this situation would''ve been pretty suspicious to a third party, barring the fact that there weren''t any third parties to witness this. But it was possible that such information would leak in the future. Alternatively, if I found a boy in the woods rather than a girl, it might''ve been a different cause for concern after a while. In a sense, it was lucky, I supposed. But I quickly shook my head of those thoughts. What ifs didn''t matter. What was important was that Alicia needed my support, much more than how she was physically supporting my body right then. As I was concerned with those errant thoughts, Alicia had fallen asleep. Sleeping in a bath wasn''t good at all, but it was most likely only a problem rooted in your body heating up too much or getting chilled after the water cooled down. I lifted Alicia up and stepped out of the bath. Magically calling over some furs, I dried our bodies the best I could. It wasn''t that well done though, so I summoned a warm breeze to finish the job before I lay down on the couch with Alicia on top of me like usual. I covered our bodies with the bear fur blanket before I let my mind drift as I lightly stroked Alicia''s back. Most likely, after this event, there was no way I''d be able to go hunt in the dungeon while leaving Alicia back here. Speed didn''t matter, and sneaking out behind her back was a huge risk. As if detecting my thoughts, Alicia gripped my body more tightly in her sleep. (Yea, not gonna be able to separate from her for a while) I''d have to take her with me any time I went to hunt or gather. At least until she''d recovered from her trauma. If that was the case, I needed to increase her protection. Today I was able to avoid her getting hurt, but there were a few close calls. I''ve never been good at detecting traps, but that hadn''t been much of a problem. Most traps were the weakening type, meant to harm, but not kill it''s targets, leaving you easier for the monsters to finish you off. But things like that weren''t really a problem for me. I recovered my wounds quickly, and I generally resisted any negative status effects I''ve encountered so far, and those that I didn''t tended to not prevent me from beating my opponents before recovering. Even status that sounded serious like paralysis and sleep just made it a bit more difficult to move or made me feel drowsy thanks to my resistance skills, and a quick snack fixed those up right away. It didn''t even have to be blood, just the essence was enough to cure my status, though it didn''t recover any lost HP. But none of this applied to Alicia. Not only that, but damaging traps could be lethal to her. Using my body as a shield only worked if I was aware of the trap in the first place, rendering that tactic a bit moot. That obviously meant that I needed an alternative method. If active defence from me wouldn''t be reliable enough, then a passive defence would cover for that. It didn''t even need to be that strong, since a passive defence that I considered weak would still be sufficient as long as we avoided the lower floors of the dungeon. Of the skills I had, nothing was strictly defensive, but most skills seemed to have a wide variety of usage as long as I was creative with them. With that thought in my mind, I brought over the empty stone cup. While levitating it, I tried applying some wind magic to create a barrier just over the surface of it''s body, then fired off a weak ice arrow at it. The thin film of wind diverted the piece of ice, but didn''t stop the projectile, causing it to crack it''s surface. Undeterred, I increased the thickness and density of the air and tried again. This time the magical ice bounced right off, doing no apparent harm to the cup. As an additional test, I flicked it with a finger, using a moderate amount of strength. The cup simply wobbled in the air, but there wasn''t any indication of it being damaged. Happy with the results, I fixed the cracks and lowered the cup back down to the table. Having high stats meant that it was easy to brute force a lot of things, but the real trick of this world was to be creative. Maybe I could beat those golems if I considered some more unorthodox methods? Well, even if I did come up with something like that, I wasn''t going to risk Alicia''s life in such a place. Just the thought of going above the 50th floor with her made me nervous enough, the 87th was flat out. Instead, I turned to my continuing project from the night before. Opening up my status, I went back to examining my skills'' source code. There were a few interesting things here and there I hadn''t realized, but for the most part there wasn''t anything significant in the details of how the code itself was written. But I hadn''t given up. I had discovered the precisely because I noticed a detail that I had overlooked before. I wasn''t going to make that mistake again so easily. Not content with just reading the code, I picked a random skill and examined everything I could about it. It seemed like my diligence was rewarded, as I noticed a button I had previously overlooked on the decorative embellishment at the bottom of the source code page. It read ''View Container File.'' I pressed the button without any hesitation, and what I saw made my mind whirl. There were dozens of other things inside the container file. Aside from the source code of the skill itself, there were it''s dependencies as well, code pieces that the skill relied on to work as intended. But there were even things that I didn''t recognize. One was purely a container, and it held something inside of it. It wasn''t extra code or anything, but instead something physical? Metaphysical? My usage of terms I didn''t actually understand aside, this object definitely seemed to contain something in it though it wasn''t than the usual code, it did look important. This was definitely the reason why I couldn''t get my code to work. Or at least a part of it. The more I dove into the back end of the system that underlay the world, the more I realized how complicated it was. Making any changes to suit my needs was going to be difficult work. It would be much easier to make changes to existing code than making anything entirely new. But I had to consider the consequences of my actions as well. Any changes to existing code could easily affect the larger world, and the results would be impossible to predict. It was imperative that I took care in any changes I made. The solution to that was obvious. Simply copy an existing skill than change it so that nobody can get it. If I can make that work, then I could freely play with that skill without consequence. And if I was going to do that, then I might as well use a skill I really wanted. The question was, which one to chose. Well, no. There really wasn''t a question. If I could take any skill, it would obviously be [Light Resistance]. Technically I wanted the variant [Light Immunity] that I found in the skill list, but that was a higher grade skill built off of [Light Resistance]. I already had a few advanced skills like that. [Sword Mastery] and [Blaze Magic] were advanced versions of [Sword Technique] and [Fire Magic]. Going straight for [Light Immunity] might work, but if something went wrong, it would be harder to diagnose than for [Light Resistance]. With my mind set, I created a new skill and copied over all the code and dependency files before removing the acquisition method and changing the name to [Light Resistance Beta]. I made sure everything else was the same, including the size and capacity of the container file I made before saving it. I got the warning that there was no way to learn the skill, but that was fine. It otherwise saved and compiled without issue. The first step was done. Next, I removed all the acquisition restrictions. Saved and compiled. No new errors. Good. I had a theory about how the system worked. While I had direct access to the code for my own skills and things, what was actually important was that the code in the master database, the area where I can create new skills. I couldn''t find any ways to make any new skills as a part of my own personal list, but in the master list it was possible. But the skills in the master list were accessible by anyone if they had the means to learn them and weren''t restricted from them. One of the biggest reasons why it was so important that I was careful about how I altered or made anything. In theory, I could simply change my existing personal skills, but it was more difficult to predict how that would turn out. And I had no idea how errors would effect me. It was much safer and easier to simply work on the skills in the master database and then change the id tags on my own skills and load the data from the master files. The only question was how to make my skills load from the master files once I was ready, but without any help files, I had no choice but to just flounder around until I figured that out. As for what skill to sacrifice to get my new skill, the most reliable was to pick a skill that was most similar to it. Goodbye [Dark Resistance]. I''ll get a new copy of you in the future if this all worked out. I simply changed the container''s id tag to match that of my new skill, then closed my status windows. Without warning, an intense migraine assaulted my brain. Something was filling up my vision, but I couldn''t concentrate due to the intense pain. No, not just my head, my entire body was filled with pain, like something was trying to bite into my skin everywhere. There was only one explanation I could think of. Immediately I opened my status and changed the id tag on the new skill that had appeared, and changed it back to the old number before closing the window. A few moments later, the pain had all disappeared like it was a figment of my imagination. But my vision was filled with warning dialogue boxes, like those of the stereotypical viruses of the 90s. Each one was identical. They all read ''Skill [Light Resistance Beta] conflicts with [Vampire] racial functions [Light Weakness] and [Sunlight Weakness]. Cannot conciliate''. This...was a pretty obvious outcome now that I thought about it. Conflicts like this wouldn''t show up until execution, and were called run time errors. Since this was the problem, the only solution was to change my racial information, but that was way harder than dealing with skills, and if I did it poorly, there''d be no way to fix my mistake. It was like performing open heart surgery on myself, except with the added bonus that even if it went well, it might power up all other vampires at the same time. It was too risky. At least until I had a much better understanding of the system. But I also couldn''t wait until such a time to deal with my sunlight weakness. I needed a different solution. I closed all the warning boxes. Just in case, I peeked under the blanket to check on Alicia. She hadn''t woken up or anything from my little incident. A bit relieved, I went back to work. If resisting light wasn''t possible, then I simply had to find a workaround. Simply put, I needed the effect of avoiding light damage without actually doing so. The obvious options were to avoid light from touching my skin, to turn light that did touch my skin into something else, or to heal any damage I received from light as I took them. The first I was already doing with clothes, but I couldn''t think of how to get it to happen with a skill. The same problem applied to the second option. The third, I had already acquired a skill that fulfilled exact requirement. I simply couldn''t use it. A problem that I now knew how to fix. [Solar Power] did everything I needed, though it had it''s own drawbacks, namely that I''d still take all the damage, but in theory it would keep me alive, and that was everything I needed. Just like with [Light Resistance], I made a copy of [Solar Power], then changed the name to [Sunlight Vulnerability], and removed the acquisition method and restriction before saving it. I got the same ''no acquisition method'' warning as before, but that wasn''t an issue. Finally, I went to my own skills and found my existing copy of [Solar Power] and swapped the id tag to that of my new skill. My heart pounded as I braced myself for the possibility of that pain returning as I closed all the windows in my mind. ... Nothing happened. I opened my skill list. [Solar Power] was gone, and in it''s place was [Sunlight Vulnerability]. I breathed a sigh of relief as I opened the skill''s description up and smirked at the fact that it retained it''s old description. But it wasn''t greyed out like it was before. It even retained it''s rank. Since it worked to this degree, I had a few more changes I had in mind, and spent the next little while going through them. From rewriting the description to hide it''s real effect to changing it from a racial skill to a default skill. Constantly checking the skill every time I made a little change, I went back and forth over and over until I was satisfied. I now had [Sunlight Vulnerability 8] firmly in my default skills list. Seeing that nothing went wrong, all that was left was to actually test the skill itself. That would have to wait until after Alicia woke up. An enormous smile emerged on my face. The thought that I may have conquered the vampires'' greatest enemy was extremely pleasing. I couldn''t wait to go outside and mock the sun. Though nothing stopped it from hurting, so perhaps I wouldn''t be able to laugh while staring at the sun. Nevertheless, I couldn''t completely suppress the laughter that threatened to choke me. "...mama...chu" A familiar, yet still alien feeling assaulted my chest, causing me to freeze. I had hoped against hope that it was a one time deal, but it didn''t come to pass. I did my best to comfort the little sleeping child as my my body was wracked by a feeling that was slowly growing more and more familiar against my will. Chapter 17 – Alicia Brand Breakfast with a Side of Fluffballs Mmmm....good morning Scarlet...cough" "Ah...morning Alicia..." Finally. I was released from that unending torture. If this was where I lived in my previous life, this might''ve been illegal. I was pretty sure cruel and unusual torture was against the law. "...hah! Did I do something bad while sleeping!?" This morning as well, Alicia asked practically the same question after bolting upright. "No, nothing too bad..." "Really...?" She bit her thumb as she asked. The way she tilted her head was really cute, but I was getting distracted. "Yea, nothing you had to worry about" It wasn''t like she could control what she did at night. But I needed to find a way to make her stop, or my sanity would run out. She didn''t seem to be entirely convinced, and the fact that I sounded exhausted didn''t help. "Here, let me get up. I need to make breakfast" Alicia quickly shuffled back and got off of me. I shifted my legs and turned to get up, but something grabbed my arm before I could stand. On my right, Alicia was holding onto my arm, but she was looking away, like she was pretending she had no idea what she had done. I tried tugging my arm, but her hand was stuck onto it like it''s been spot-welded. A smirk appeared on my face as I kept tugging my arm lightly, seeing how hers kept following even to the point her her body would wobble a bit. But it quickly disappeared when I noticed that her hand was trembling ever so slightly. "Umm...here. How about you help me make breakfast this time?" "Really?" Alicia suddenly turned to me and almost yelled. "Oh, you wanna learn how to cook that bad?" "I do! I want to be helpful!" Her eyes were sparkling, though I suspected it wasn''t because she actually wanted to learn how to cook. Rather, actually teaching her enough to make something on her own was scary. "Alright, but first, we need to get dressed" I got up and floated over our clothes and magically slipped mine onto my body, only having to stop to switch hands with Alicia to put my shirt on. Magic really was a cheat. "Okay, raise your hands so I can put your dress on" "Mmmm!" But when it came to putting on her clothes, no amount of magic would stop her from pouting when she didn''t want to let go of me while getting dressed. "It''s just for a second so I can get your arms through the dress Alicia" She stomped her foot, but relented, and I managed to get her outfit on for the second she let go of me. (I need to figure out a way to make her get dressed without going through all this trouble every time) First thing''s first, I levitated the bowl of stew from the night before into my bag. It hadn''t been touched since Alicia''s little tantrum, but something like this left overnight probably wasn''t safe for a kid to eat. I needed to throw it out next time we go to the dungeon to farm. For breakfast, and something she could help with, it came to something that didn''t involve heat or knives as much as possible. The ended up being pancakes filled with berries. I''ve tried it before, but it didn''t turn out well in my last life. The reason was simple. Berries are generally bigger than pancakes, and contain water. Those two facts made mixing them into the batter troublesome. Normally you''d just use slightly dryer batter and just make the pancakes thicker, but I was a fan of thinner pancakes with a nice, crispy crust. But in this world, I didn''t have to make such concerns. I first started off putting the batter ingredients into a bowl then made a large mixing spoon out of wood, then lay the bear fur we''ve been using as a blanket down like a rug. I sat down on it and seated Alicia on my lap, then put the big bowl on Alicia''s lap, making us a weird three tiered stack. "Now, take this spoon and start mixing the batter until it''s nice and even" "Okay!" Enthused, Alicia held the spoon in both hands and started mixing while I held the bowl steady with one hand. As she worked on that, I hovered a bunch of assorted berries and sliced them into small pieces with my claws, then used my arcane magic spell to evaporate most of the moisture. "Okay, I''m adding the last ingredient. Keep mixing" "Oh...kay..." As eager as she was, mixing the batter wasn''t easy work, especially for a little girl. "You don''t have to push yourself. You can stop if you''re tired" "No...I''m fine..." She looked like she was nearing her limit but...was that alright? She might''ve been just six years or so, but she probably had her own form of pride, let alone her own needs and wants. (Well, the mixing is almost done, so let''s let her have her way) The sliced berries were added to the mixture and were quickly enveloped. At the same time, I started up a magical flame under the stone plate I''ve been using as a giant frying pan. "Okay, looks like the mixing''s done. Good work Alicia!" "Ehehe. I did it!" The little girl turned her head up and gave me a bright smile. I couldn''t help but rub her hair for that. "Alright. Now all we gotta do it just fry it up. Stand up" I levitated the bowl and took Alicia''s hand so she could get off of me. "Kay, now I''ll put you back on the couch so I can fry up the batter. It wont take long" "Mmmmm! No!" But, to nobody''s surprise, she simply stuck her body to mine instead, wrapping her arms around my waist. "It''s dangerous near the flame, and the oil''s going to splatter as I cook" But my words simply went in one ear and out the other as she shook her head, rubbing her face into my side. "sigh Alright. We''ll stick together, but you need to stay behind me just in case" "Okay! I''ll do it!" She nodded, then moved to my back, still hugging my waist. In an awkward shuffle, we moved over to the heated stone plate. Careful to make sure that Alicia was covered the best she could, I oiled the stone liberally with leftover animal fats, then poured the batter on top to make two large pancakes. It sizzled in a satisfying manner as I flattened them out with the mixing spoon, then flipped them when I thought they were ready. Banishing the flame, I transferred the hot flatbread to a plate then sent it to the table in front of the couch. At the same time, I had the last of the breakfast items sent over, squeezing some oranges into a cup along with placing a small bowl with some fruit inside. "Alright, it''s just about done. Let''s go back to the couch" I picked Alicia up and sat her on my lap as I parked myself on the couch. If she demanded constant contact, then this was the only way for her to have both hands free while she ate. I lamented how much I''ve partially turned into an accessory, but I told myself it was only until I earned her trust again. As she settled into a comfortable position on my lap, I spend those few seconds dicing up the fruit and mixing them into the bowl to create a fruit salad while I poured a generous helping of honey onto the pancakes. "Here''s your fork. Today is mixed berry pancakes, fruit salad, and juice" I helped her find all the items before leaning against the backrest so she could take her time to eat without me literally breaking over her shoulder. "Mmm! It''s really tasty!" Alicia turned around and showed me her bright smile. (Maybe this isn''t so bad after all?) "Of course it''s good. You helped make it after all" "It''s good because I helped?" "That''s right. Doesn''t it taste a little better than usual?" "Mmmm...I think so?" She flashed another smile before turning back to continue her breakfast. It wasn''t like the meal would suddenly get better just because an amateur helped, but the work she put into it would''ve most likely improved her appetite a bit. So it wasn''t like I was lying. I lightly pat Alicia''s head since I had nothing to do. She stiffed up for a moment before going back to eat. There didn''t seem to be any indication that she hated it, just that she was a bit surprised. In fact, she was leaning her head against my palm a bit now that I started to stroke her hair. Maybe it was because I''ve been patting her so much, but her hair''s gotten a lot softer than when we first met. The first time I washed it made a big difference, but thinking about it now, it had definitely gotten even silkier than before. If my petting has been having this sort of effect, then brushing it with a hair brush should make it even softer. Alicia was a girl, so she''d probably like that. Actually, I was one as well. My own feelings aside, I should probably conform to that standard a bit at least. My own hair isn''t terrible, since I''ve been keeping it clean, but it is a bit rough and stiff. (Gah! I''ve got a serious case of split ends!) My silvery long hair. There was no point in taking pride in it''s length if I didn''t take care of it. Well, if I was going to go as far as taking proper care of our hair, maybe I should do more than just that? Alicia would definitely benefit if I taught her some beauty tips. I might''ve been a man in my last life, but it was virtually impossible to get to my age without knowing a bit about women''s beauty products. The ads were simply everywhere despite targeting less than half the population. No, maybe they were targeting more then? I guess a lot of guys bought those things as gifts as well. I could also guess how often those fools got into trouble for buying the wrong ones as well. Before I knew it, Alicia''s hands had long stopped moving. I looked over her and saw that there was nothing left of her breakfast. Her eyes were closed, like she was basking in an after-meal glow. "Did you enjoy breakfast?" "It was really tasty" She nodded lazily. "Okay, then let''s get you cleaned up" It was probably going to be a common occurrence whenever there was sauce or syrup that it would get all over Alicia. Which was almost every meal. I lightly dipped a fur in the fountain and brought it over using magic, then wrung it by hand before wiping Alicia''s hands and face with it. Thinking about it, I might''ve been able to do all that with magic alone, though I didn''t trust my skill to wipe her cleanly, I might be able to at least wring the fur that way. Telekinesis could functionally be considered a form of magic, and wasn''t too much different from the levitation I''ve been doing all this time. "Alright. Now let''s get fully dressed up. I want to show you something" "cough Show me what?" "My little friends. I don''t know what they are exactly, but I made friends with some creatures that live nearby" "Wh...what kind of creatures are they?" Alicia stiffened up. It wasn''t too much of a surprise that she''d be scared of anything she didn''t know, but despite that her curiosity seemed to be pretty strong. "Hmmm...they''re kinda hard to describe. I just call them fluffballs, since that''s what they look like, glowing balls of fur. Have you heard of anything like that?" "...I don''t know" She looked disappointed that she couldn''t be helpful. "It''s fine. It''s not a problem if we don''t know what they are. It''s not like they''re harmful or anything. Rather, they''re very playful and fun to be with. I think you''ll like them" The little girl nodded nervously. We quickly put on our outerwear and headed to the first floor, then out of the cave while holding hands. "...Scarlet?" I turned to Alicia who was a step in front of me. Holding my hand, it was like she was a kid dragging their guardian out to play or something, but in reality it was because I froze on the spot. One more step and I would be out in the sunlight. Even now I was pretty scared of the real sun. I had made plenty of precautions, and half the reason why I suggested Alicia meet the fluffballs was so that I could test my new skill. But when it came to coming this far, I hesitated. There was no guarantee that the skill would work as intended. But on the off chance it didn''t, I still had my robes. They would protect me as they had days earlier when I first tested them. I had a certain amount of security now, and that leeway gave me courage. "I''m fine. It''s just pretty bright out" It was true. The light of the sun bouncing off of various surfaces was as harsh as ever on my eyes. Few things were as bright as the sun in the middle of the day, and a primarily nocturnal creature as myself would obviously find even indirect sunlight to be difficult to deal with. But Alicia wasn''t like that. She was human, which meant that she needed sunlight to survive. Vitamin D formation needed exposure to sunlight to work properly. Perhaps the artificial sunlight in the dungeon would work, but it was best to not rely on such an uncertain element. Vitamin D deficiency lead directly to a weak immune system. A kid this young was already susceptible to illness, so anything that could compound the problem was definitely out. I swallowed my saliva then lead Alicia outside. It took only a few steps out of the cave before a swarm of glowing fluff rushed us and blocked my sight in all directions. "Wha?! Wah!" I was startled at their aggressiveness, but it was a reassuring sight. "Wh, what is it Scarlet?!" On the other hand, for someone who couldn''t see what was going on, it was no doubt a terrifying experience. "Don''t worry. It''s just the friends I was telling you about earlier" The fluffballs were spinning around us like a whirlpool, flying and dancing, overall elated to see me again. "Hey, hey. Sorry for making you all wait so long. Here''s some treats" I quickly produced a bunch of mana treats and threw them into the air. They were all instantly gobbled up. "Oh yea. Thanks for your help before. Look, she''s doing well now" I pushed Alicia in front of me. The army of fluffballs danced around the little girl. "Huh? Eh?" "Oh, right. I never told you. These little guys were the ones that lead me to you. If it wasn''t for them, I''d never have found you" "What, really? Umm¡­everyone, thank you very much for saving me!" Alicia bowed her head while giving her appreciation. Responding to her earnest gratitude, the fluffballs danced around us even more vigorously. "...Ummm...." "Hmmm?" "Are they taking it well?" "Ah, I guess you really can''t see...I mean, sense them huh? Well, they seem to be pretty happy that you''re doing well" "Haaa, that''s good. If they''re happy, then I''m happy too...umm..." "Hmmm?" It felt like I hum like that a lot lately. "Maybe they''re spirits?" "They''re spirits?" "Ah, umm...I heard that there are spirits all over the world. Usually people can''t see them, but some people can sense them a bit. I also heard that like most elves can feel them as well" Oh? Another fantasy staple. "They don''t bother people usually, but on rare occasions they help few people who can sense them, or lead them to help others..." "Oh? That''s pretty nice of them. You guys are pretty famous huh?" The supposed spirits bounced around happily. "But..." "Hmmm?" It really was turning into a habit. "I think the fact that you can talk to them is even more amazing!" "Eh?" "I haven''t heard about anyone who could talk to the spirits!" Did this really qualify as talking? "Ah, erm...It''s not really that I can talk to them, it''s more like they seem to understand peoples'' words, and I can somewhat get a feel for what they''re trying to say through their actions. I''ve never actually heard anything resembling a voice from them" "Huh? But...that means you can see them?!" "...yea? I can" "Then that''s amazing too! I heard that people could only feel where they were! There was an elven adventurer who came to our village once, but even he couldn''t tell anyone more than how he could kinda feel when they were nearby!" That''s...like rank one [Spirit Perception]. It was strange to think that people who got the skill didn''t spend the time to raise it at least a bit, but the fact that I could vaguely see the transparent silhouette of the ghost monsters at rank 3 suggested that the same applied to these spirits as well. Was it just difficult to normally raise [Spirit Perception], or were these spirits just harder to see than those ghosts I fought in the dungeon? It couldn''t be that the elves just kept it a secret or something. No matter how much they made talking about the spirits taboo didn''t stop any social deviants from doing so. The only way to keep a secret was to prevent people from finding out there even was one. Worst case, limit the number of people who knew it to the absolute minimum. If either of those couldn''t be done, then it was only a matter of time before the secret got out. "Hmmm...maybe it is a bit amazing. But it''s also a bit lonely that I''m the only one who can see them. Do you want to try learning how to see these little guys?" "Really? You think I can do it too?" "I think so. It''s only a skill. In theory anyone should be able to learn it" I opened up [Spirit Perception] and glanced through the source code. As I thought, there weren''t any real restrictions as to who can learn it. The acquisition method seemed to purely be attempting to sense a spiritual entity while in the presence of one. The fact that a spirit or something similar needed to be nearby was most likely the most common problem when trying to learn this skill. "It''s going to be a lot of work though. Do you think you can do it?" "I''ll do it! I want to be able to see the spirits that saved my life! And..." "And?" "They''re also your friends, right? I want to be friends with them too" "Ahaha, you''re so cute!" I couldn''t help but hug Alicia while rubbing her cheek while mine through my hood. "Alright, in that case, we''ll come out for a bit each day to practice" "Okay!" Chapter 18 – Green Energy and Motherhood I was glad I was able to make a reason for Alicia to come regularly. Now I didn''t have to come up with some arbitrary reason to make her soak up some sunlight every day. We sat down in the middle of the small clearing in front of the cave, with Alicia in my lap. I gave her suggestions the best I could as to how to feel the spirits. Since they were all around us, there was no need to direct her senses in a particular direction. As she closed her eyes and stuck her arms out cutely like she was trying to grasp something, I scattered around a bunch of mana treats. It''s been a little while, so I figured a special service was warranted. At the very least the fluffballs were enjoying it. Aside from Alicia''s training while she basked in sunlight, I also had something I needed to do as well. Testing my new [Solar Power] derived [Sunlight Vulnerability] skill was pretty scary, but I needed to know for sure if it would work as intended. I raised an arm and took hold of my sleeve, but stopped at exposing the fingers of my gloves. Anxiety filled my heart. Even if this worked as intended, it didn''t change the fact that sunlight hurt. The skill only healed damage done while exposed under sunlight, so I''d still be receiving all the damage like normal. The more I thought about it, the more I hated this kludge of a solution. It felt like trying to treat a knife wound with pain killers. Well, it wasn''t that bad, but still... I took a deep breath, then yanked my sleeve up to my elbow. Even before I finished the movement, pain flared up my arm. It felt like I had thrust it over an open flame. But I grit my teeth and endured, opening the eyes I instinctively closed to look at the result. My forearm was bright red, like that after being seriously sunburned, but it didn''t catch on fire or turn to ash. It just stayed red even after several seconds. To be extra sure of the results, I opened up my status and glanced at my HP. The last digit was jumping all over the place, constantly going up and down faster than the eye can see, but the tens digit didn''t move once. Even before the digit could go down by even one, my skill recovered the damage I received. With my confirmation, I quickly pulled down my sleeve, letting me sigh in relief as the pain quickly subsided. My HP had returned to full and a quick touch of my arm through the sleeve confirmed that there wasn''t any trace of any injury left. "..." But while I was engrossed in my experiment, Alicia had turned around in my lap and was staring at my face. Or rather, facing me directly? "Ah...umm...something up?" "Did...something happen?" "Ah, nothing in particular?" What was she on about? "But you stiffened up all of a sudden. It seemed like you were in a lot of pain" "Ah, that..." (Damn. I didn''t want her to notice, but I guess that was impossible) "I was trying something out, but hurt myself a bit while doing so. I''m alright though. It''s already healed up" "Really? It doesn''t hurt anymore?" "Yup, I''m fine. Here" I pulled Alicia''s arm into my sleeve and let her touch my forearm. Her small fingers lightly touched my skin, but when I didn''t react to it, she more firmly stroked it, then squeezed my arm. "See? It''s all fine already" "It really is...It really doesn''t hurt?" "Not anymore. Well, we''ve been at it for a while now. Maybe you wanna go have lunch?" "!" Alicia jerked and sat straight up, stiff as a board. "I''m fine! I''m not hungry!" "Really? Are you sure?" I tried poking her in the belly, but she just stiffened up even further. Amused by this, I tried rubbing and massaging her belly through her thick dress to see how she''d respond. Alicia squirmed as I played with her thin body. This belly of hers really was more concave than flat. Supermodels might be envious of this part of her, but to me, it just seemed dangerously close to anorexia more than anything. I was glad she loved my food so much. It shouldn''t take her long to get some much needed padding to her body. "Geez!" Fed up with my playing, Alicia turned around and pounded her fists into my chest, alternating left and right. But after a few repetitions, her fists slowed down and eventually stopped. She just pressed her hands against my chest instead for a bit. "They''re so big and soft..." I was wondering what was going through her head. "Like a mama''s! But much bigger!" My body stiffened at her words. That was a comparison I wanted to wholeheartedly reject. I was way too young to be a mother...rather, such age concerns hardly mattered technically, as I was this big while physically younger than this little girl, but it was on the inside that wasn''t old enough...or rather I was old enough that my mom used to occasionally bug me about getting married and having kids...but I wasn''t ready for such a thing! My heart is still youthful! My heart was too young to have a child yet! "Eh...erm..." "They''re so big and soft...like a mama''s" Repeating her words, she jumped into my chest, rubbing her cheeks against my mounds...er...mountains? "Errr...Alicia? What do you think of me?" "Huh?" I hadn''t really thought about it until now, but now that she brought it up, I was a bit concerned. "Like, I mean or relationship. How do you see me?" "Mmmmm...?" (Was that too abstract of a question for her?) "Like a mama!" (Apparently not!) "A...a mama?" "Yup! Like a mama!" It was the worst answer I could ask for. "Ah...er...but don''t you already have a mama?" "My mama left me in the forest..." (Dammit! We came all the way back to that!) Was she trying to overwrite her memories of her biological mother with me?! Or was it just something about how I''ve been treating her that reminded her of her idea of mothers? Or was I totally off and it was something else?! Or was it that she''d been unconsciously thinking me as her mother since that first day and that was the root cause of her nightly suckling?! If it was the last one, then I really needed to get her to stop that association, or my sanity wouldn''t last! "Ah! Umm...then that means you don''t like to think about your mama much, right?" Alicia nodded weakly after a few seconds. "Well...then did you have a big sister before?" "A big sister? You mean like a bigger girl in the village?" "No, not like that. But like a bigger girl who lived with you, but wasn''t your mama. You said you had smaller brothers and sisters, but did you also have a bigger sister?" She shook her head. "Okay, then how about I be your bigger sister? I don''t think I can be a good mama, but I can be a great big sister for you!" (Please please please say yes) "Okay!" She answered enthusiastically after a minute of consideration. "Alright! That''s a good girl!" I hugged her with one arm and patted her head with the other. "Ehehe...a big sister..." It sounded like she liked the idea now that she had a chance to digest it. "Umm..." "Hmmm?" "Why do you squeeze them so much?" "Squeeze what?" "Your boobies" My body froze for the second time in that many minutes. (What''s this girl''s obsession with tits?!) "Umm...it''s because I prefer it this way" "Ehhh? But they''re so big and soft! If you squeeze them like this, they''re not as soft!" (That''s the entire point, little girl!) It wasn''t like I couldn''t understand her reasoning. I used to think that when big women complained about their chest that it was some sort of lie or an indirect way to gloat, but now I could understand that it was 100% truth. Well, at least for many of them. Tits this big was nothing but a bother, and easily got in the way of everything if you didn''t have a way to keep them from bouncing everywhere. It sucked to have to pay close attention to how they moved even when bound just so you can move around without losing your balance constantly. Sure, they gave a girl a big leg up when it came to turning a guy''s head, but frankly, I didn''t even want to think about what sort of expression a guy would make at my current body. I may have gotten used to the idea of being a woman now, but that didn''t include how guys would treat the new me. Just the thought of dating some guy gave me the shivers. Unable to give her an ''E for Everyone'' answer, Alicia puffed her cheeks and pouted cutely until an idea occurred to her. "Scarlet?" "Yea?" "Do you think I can get boobies as big as yours when I grow up?" If I was drinking something at that point, I''d have spat it out with the force of a blue whale. "Wh, why would you want such a thing?!" "Eh? But your boobies are so soft and comfortable! They''re so nice to sleep on" (That''s only true from a second person perspective!) As the less than proud owners of such flesh pillows, I had professional license to refute her argument, even if the length of my experience was pretty short. "Eh, ah...erm..." But explaining it in a family friendly manner was beyond my abilities, clearly. "Mmmm! Why do you squeeze them so tightly..." It didn''t seem like she wanted to let this topic go, but I was getting pretty desperate to run away. "Uh, hey. Are you sure you''re not hungry? We''ve been out here for a while now. If we stay too much longer, you might get sunburned as well" "Sunburn?" "It''s when you stay outside under the sun for too long. Your skin gets red and itchy, and it starts to hurt if you do it too much. So how about it? Let''s go back and have lunch!" "Mmmmm" Her resolve was wavering. (What was it about our current situation you liked so much?!) "Besides! To be a proper big sister, I need to make sure you eat properly as well! Don''t you want to be a good little sister?" "...really?" Oh? A nibble. "Yup, really. I don''t want to be a bad big sister, and I bet you don''t want to be a bad little sister, right?" "I don''t" "So let''s go back to have lunch. There''s no need for you to bear being hungry, and I don''t want you to as your big sister!" "Okay, let''s go" I sighed, relieved that she finally accepted my offer. "Umm...are the spirits going to come as well?" "Huh?" "The spirits. Are they going to come home with us?" "Ah, umm, no. They don''t like being inside caves it seems, so they''ll stay outside" "Awwww..." (Wait, was this the reason why she didn''t want to go back?) "Don''t worry. They like being around this area, so when we come back out, we can see them again" "Really?" "Really" "Umm...everyone, thank you again for saving me!" Alicia bowed her head with her heartfelt thanks. The little spirits jumped around happily, delighted at her gratitude. "We''ll be back tomorrow. See you guys" I tossed a bunch of mana treats at the happily dancing fluffballs before taking Alicia''s hand and turning back to the dungeon. Back home, I removed my outerwear and Alicia''s boots then quickly made some herbed pork stir fry and potato salad for lunch. Alicia helped make the salad once the potatoes and eggs were boiled. After that, we spent the afternoon working on some new soap and hair oil. The soap I had made before was starting to run out, so it was past time to make more. At first I was planning on working on it on my own while talking with Alicia, but she insisted on helping like usual. Since the process involved a lot of magic, she helped out by stirring the ingredients during several of the steps. This time, since it wasn''t just for me, for the soap, I added some oil made from grinding then soaking orange zest in hot water, then evaporating that water with magic and removing the zest grinds. From what I heard in my last life, essential oils seemed to evaporate at a lower temperature than water, so being able to get rid of the water with magic simplified the process quite a bit. On top of that, I crushed the beans of a yellow fruit I found a while back. When I found them, I got pretty excited, but the realization that I couldn''t eat them dampened my mood for a while. But I was glad I found them, since I spent time harvesting them with Alicia. And now came time to use them. I boiled the ground beans, removed the pulp by straining with a new spell I came up with at that moment, then evaporated all the water using magic. Once I got that far on my own, Alicia helped out by mixing the warm butter with a few drops of orange oil and some sort of oil I got from a big walking tree monster. The end result made me pretty happy. Why? Because the beans I made the butter from was most likely cocoa beans. That was why I got so depressed when I first found them, but this was a nice alternate way to use them. I thought the combination would work well, and Alicia positive response from the scent was more than enough proof for me. It was to the point that her stomach was growling at me when she took a sniff at the final product. Now, I was pretty interested how she''d respond on the day I manage to make chocolate. But for now, with our new soap and hair oil finished, we got ready for dinner. I had the leftover pot of stew from the day before. She hadn''t tried it out yesterday, so I was interested in how she''d respond. I did make sure that she was served a new bowl and not the bowl that was left overnight. That still needed to be thrown out the next time we went to explore the dungeon. Once again I squeezed some orange juice to drink, and for dessert I stirred and chilled the cream I made the day before and combined it with honey and berries to make ice cream. Alicia''s response when it came to the stew was pretty glowing. "Everything you make is so tasty!" I patted her on the head as she ate, as I was forced to let her sit on my lap since she still resisted from getting out of physical contact with me for any reason. At least I had magic to do things from a distance. If it wasn''t for that, this sort of lifestyle wouldn''t be possible. Then again, I had my doubts if continuing this sort of relationship was healthy for her, but baby steps. When she was done, Alicia turned around and hugged my body as I gently stroked her head with one arm around her back. I let her be like this for a bit to rest after her meal. Her body was weak. She probably didn''t get many chances to move around due to her blindness. That was something I had to fix. While there was a limit to how much I could get her to exercise safely, she successfully got levels from my kills. At the very least, it should give her a certain degree of protection. There were many things having high stats couldn''t do, but one of the few things it could certainly do was increase her ability to survive. If I could give her that, along with some tools to be able to get a rudimentary amount of independence, then her future wouldn''t be nearly as bleak as it currently is. I still had very little idea of how the world worked outside of this forest, but I doubted it was something that a blind person could survive. From what she''s already told me, there wasn''t much leeway to help the disabled in human lands. If that was the case, then the only way for Alicia to survive over there was to have the ability to survive without the country''s help beyond what a normal person had access to. Fortunately, skills solved a lot of those problems. I might be able to teach enough skills to her that she could find employment by the time she was an adult. If not, then at the very least, I hoped that I could teach her enough that she wouldn''t think of herself as a hindrance. "Hey Alicia, let''s go and try out our new soap and hair oil" "Yea!" Without my help, Alicia grabbed at her dress and started to pull it off. I couldn''t decide if it was because she was excited about taking a bath or because she was a bit of a nudist. I was desperately hoping it was the former. Well, that said, I was pretty interested in testing out our new products. "Alright, here we go" I lifted Alicia up after removing my top, and took off my bottom as I carried her over to the bathtub. Once again I had forgotten to drain it after using it. It was becoming a bad habit. But magic was insanely versatile! I removed all the stale water from the tub and floated it to the fountain to swap it with fresh water. But as I tried to cast a second spell to lift off a new blob of water, the first spell ended, dropping the huge amount of water into the fountain, causing it to overflow and spill all around. Fortunately I raised a new blob of water fast enough that the spillover stopped before spreading too much, but the effect was pretty unexpected. "What happened?" "Ah, erm, I spilt some of the old bath water" "Hmmm...there there" The little girl patted my head as she consoled me. My feelings were pretty mixed about being comforted by a six-year-old, but I decided to take it as is. "Mm, thanks Alicia. You''re such a good girl!" "Ehehe!" In turn she let out a delighted laugh as I rubbed my cheek against hers. I quickly filled the bathtub and heated it up before entering it with Alicia. "Fuuu...soaking in hot water is always nice" "Mmmmm, me too..." Alicia answered and leaned back into my chest. It was cute how she was just imitating me like that, but a part of me hoped that she didn''t just say that for my benefit. "Alright, let''s start washing then" "The soap!" "Yup, the soap. Now don''t move. We''ll start with your hair" "Okay!" She really was excited for that. I couldn''t help but smile at her eagerness. I took one of the bars of scented soap we made and lathered up my hands. The soap was still that muddy grey, but I had no complaints about the smell. Rather, it was pretty excellent. "It smells so good!" "It does, doesn''t it?" Full of thick lather, I rub Alicia''s hair and gave her a scalp massage as I went. Since her hair was short and wasn''t full of dirt and oil like before, it was a quick ordeal and I soon rinsed her hair before moving on to washing her face, then the rest of her body. Once I had made sure that every square centimetre of her body had been properly cleaned, I moved on to myself. "Can I help wash your hair Scarlet?" "Huh?" "Is it no good?" "Ah, er...I guess it''s fine" I didn''t expect her to ask something like that. There probably wasn''t any harm in letting her help, though it wasn''t going to be so easy with it being as long as it was. First thing first, I pulled my hair from behind over my shoulder so Alicia could properly touch it. "Wow, it''s so long!" "Yea, I guess it is" Alicia lightly pulled on my hair as she felt just how far it went. I guess I never let her feel it properly before, so she was pretty surprised about it. But my hair just kept going on and on. Since we were in the tub my hair floated on the water''s surface, making it easy for Alicia to gauge it''s length. "Wow! Is your hair longer than me?" Longer than she is tall maybe? "Hmm...I guess it is?" "That''s amazing!" (Heh, it''s my prided long hair after all) "But it''s not very soft..." I froze at her words. "Everything about you is so soft, but your hair isn''t" Children can be so cruel, even when not intending to. Rather, was I even supposed to take the first part as a compliment? I couldn''t get happy about being called soft, but the latter bit actually hurt a bit. "Th, that''s what the hair oil''s for after all! I just haven''t been able to make one I liked until now!" (What am I making excuses for?) "Your hair''s going to be really soft too then! Wow! Really long and soft!" "Exactly! Just you wait!" (Ah, what the hell kind of promise am I making?) But I couldn''t hate it. Ever since I became conscious of the poor quality of my hair, I couldn''t help but think about fixing that. With that thought in mind, Alicia helped me both lather and oil my hair up. While the bar of soap we made would last for a week or two, we only made a small saucer of hair oil, and all that was used up in one go thanks to my long hair. There was just barely enough for Alicia, but we needed to make another batch tomorrow. That said, I could feel a marked improvement just buy adding a thin layer of oil to my hair. It must''ve been a sign on just how much I''ve been neglecting it. My body was pretty amazing in many ways, but this was one place where it was hardly any different from when I was human. That said, it wasn''t like I did anything special to my hair back then, but modern shampoo was pretty amazing as well. Chapter 19 – Skills, skills, and skills That night, we were in our usual arrangement, with Alicia sleeping on top of my under a bear fur blanket. Aside from spending way more time on managing my hair than I thought was reasonable, we quickly finished up washing. After some additional soaking in the hot water, the two of us got ready for bed. Alicia had almost fallen asleep in the bath, so I pretty much had to do all the work drying our bodies as she could barely keep her eyes open by the time I noticed. In virtually no time, Alicia was lightly snoring while using my breasts as a pillow. It had started to feel like the only reason why I had these huge balls of fat was for her sake. Unlike usual, I couldn''t help but play with my hair this night. Just a single application of hair oil, and it felt so soft and silky. Before it was pretty coarse, but I didn''t pay it any mind. Hell, it had only gotten as long as it had because I didn''t really take any interest in my hair. But seeing it''s potential right there in my hands, I couldn''t help but imagine just how much nicer my hair could get if I put in actual effort on a regular basis. I was annoyed at how much time we spent on it earlier, but now it felt like the results made it worth it. But this was only the beginning. There was still plenty of things that were done on Earth regarding hair care that I could still remember. I would need to spend time implementing those ideas. But after admiring the silkiness of my hair, I went back to investigating the skill system. I was glad that my new custom skill [Sunlight Vulnerability] that did the opposite of what it was called worked exactly as intended. While sunlight was still a big proverbial and literal pain, it was theoretically no longer deadly. Looking at the details, it seemed like the effect even worked on [Light Magic], but there was a problem with relying on it to protect me from [Light Magic]. The health restored from light was on a reverse exponential curve, which meant that the more light I was exposed to at once, the less I benefited from the skill. At the levels that normal light would effect me, the healing was more effective than the damage done as I had experienced. But as the exposure increased, the damage would outstrip the healing done, and eventually the healing would hardly be noticeable. But at that point the damage would be high enough that unless if significant resistances were in play, other people would be taking quite a lot of damage from such an attack in the first place. The fact that I would be taking more wouldn''t be that noticeable if it happened in public. That said, I would still want to avoid getting hit by light magic if possible, even if it was weak enough that I could heal all the damage. I considered changing the details to deal with all degrees of light magic, but the thought ''don''t fix what ain''t broken'' came to mind. No, that was a lie. I was just worried that the skill might break if I tried to improve on it. It worked as well as it needed, so any improvement would risk breaking the code I ways I didn''t have the knowledge to predict. Instead, I simply changed the skill description to ''Skill Which Increased Susceptibility to Sunburns'', and left it like that. Next, I started to quickly scan through the skill database. There was a skill common in many fantasy stories that I wanted. If it existed, then I wanted to get it somehow. If it didn''t, then I wanted a way to make it. But my lack of knowledge about the system meant that there was no way for me to make it from scratch, so I needed to find the necessary parts. Not only that, but I needed more information about how the system worked, so that I could make the parts fit together. But my rapid scans quickly revealed a skill which held tremendous promise: [Appraisal]. From the name alone, it was the exact skill I was looking for. Knowledge was the things I lacked more than anything of this world. Normally knowledge was gathered through your connections, and on Earth, the internet and books. But here, I had none of that. Alicia was my only source of knowledge, but the information coming from a six-year-old was frankly pretty limited. At the least, I needed to be able to identify common things as well as have a way to gauge where I sat when it came to the ability hierarchy. Stats and skills most likely ruled the world, not just relationships and money. But of those things, stats and skills were pretty foreign for me, and not knowing what common people had in regards to both limited my ability to act around others when the time came. Was my level low? High? Average? It seemed high, but without a point of comparison, I might only be as strong as a typical 10 year old. No matter how much I thought that was unlikely, without being able to directly compare, I wouldn''t know for sure. The same went for skills. I could always ask Alicia, but a girl who was unable to even help with chores would be sorely lacking in both XP and skills. [Appraisal] was the doorway for me to learn what I needed...I hoped. Opening up the skill description, it read that the skill was used to identify and discover the properties of an item. So...it was only half of what I needed. I needed something that worked on people and monsters as well, not just items. I spent a while searching, but the only other skill I could find that was even remotely close was [Sense Aura Strength]. It didn''t even have the parts I wanted. There wasn''t any other option. I had to work off of [Appraisal]. But before I could move to start examining the skill''s source code, a sensation that had been rapidly getting more and more familiar as the days went by attacked me. Alicia''s nightly suckling. It was frustrating that such a thing broke my concentration so thoroughly, preventing me from working on other things. I lay back, cradling Alicia''s body so that she would fall if she moved in her sleep. But now that my concentration was diverted from work to anything that would distract me from the wet feeling on my chest, I was reminded of something. I was hungry. Pretty hungry at that. I hadn''t had anything to eat since the previous day. It''s been a while since I spent so much time between meals, and now that I was aware of that hunger, it started to overrun my mind. Thankfully, I had some blood stored inside of my bunny bag. With a few quick motions, I brought the bag over and pulled out a jar of blood. These jars were a hassle to fill up, but it was times like this that made them worth it. But as they were just large jars, it was almost impossible for me to drink from them as is. I contemplated my problem before remembering how I''d been filling the bathtub. There was no reason why the same magic wouldn''t work on blood, and thus I tried it out. A small blob of cold blood floated out of the jar and went into my salivating mouth. In an instant the delicious taste of almost fresh blood filled my mouth, and I quickly gulped it down. One after the next, I floated orbs of blood from the jar to my mouth, and before I knew it, the entire thing was empty. My hands went to extract another jar from the bag before I thought better of it. I had three more, but it was best to save them just in case. My stomach protested the unfair treatment, but I mentally squashed it like a dictator during a popular uprising. What I had was enough to last me another day. I just needed to make sure that I ate properly tomorrow. And while I was at it, fill up the jar once again. I was pretty happy that time seemed to stop inside of my bag, or else the days old blood wouldn''t have been in any condition to have been drunk. The next day, we made simple wheat tortillas with nuts crushed into a butter and chopped fruit all wrapped up into a breakfast burrito. I got another approval from Alicia when she bit into it. We spent the next few hours outside again as Alicia practised sensing the spirits while I tossed around mana treats. Eventually I tried lightly played with them by making only my arm into spirit form with the rest of my body materialized to keep the little girl in my lap happy, and tried touching the fluffballs. To my surprise, it worked. I could feel their soft bodies as they danced around. Some even rubbed their bodies against my fingers. Just to test it out, I cancelled spirit form and tried touching them, but my hand simply went through their bodies. These fluffballs were definitely some sort of non-physical entity, and this proved it. As amusing as it was, I refrained from passing my hand through their bodies after a few goes. It seemed like they didn''t like the sensation on it. "Mmmm...I couldn''t sense them again...cough" Alicia was a bit depressed that all her work hadn''t borne any fruit yet, but in my opinion, that was pretty premature. I might''ve gotten the skill quickly, but that was through the cheat known as vampirism. "Learning a new skill takes time. Don''t worry. You''ll get it eventually" My words didn''t do much to encourage her, but I didn''t know what else to say. There weren''t any real tricks beyond what she was already doing as far as I knew. As Alicia ate baked potato halves with sliced meat and eggs on top along with an egg drop soup, I asked her a question. "Do you want me to teach you some other skills?" "Yes! I do!" For what felt like the first time ever, Alicia stopped in the middle of a meal to turn around and answer my question. Her eyes glittered at the prospect without me even telling her any details. "It won''t be easy, and it''ll probably be a bit scary, but you alright with that?" "Yes! If it means I''ll be useful!" That earnestness really put me on the back foot. This inferiority complex of hers was really tough to deal with for me. If I didn''t care as much for her well being or if I was more manipulative, then it wouldn''t be an issue, but I wasn''t like that. At least I didn''t think of myself like that. But the source of her inferiority complex was her blindness. Because of that, she wasn''t able to do much as she grew up and felt helpless all the time. Looking at her eyes, it felt like it was because light wasn''t entering her eyes properly. Whatever was the cause of that milky white look in her pupils was most likely the cause, but I had no way to confirm it. For all I knew, it was merely a symptom, or even unrelated. My own knowledge of medicine and biology wasn''t much more than high school level back on Earth, so any form of surgery was out. Could it be a skill? I hadn''t seen any negative skills, but my lack of knowledge couldn''t discount that. But I didn''t have any means to actually check it yet. For that matter, was it even something that came from the system, or was even interferable by the system? It was something I needed to keep an eye out for as I looked deeper into the system. (But until I know more, I''ll go for a method that didn''t rely on my admin authority) "A, alright. I''ll try to teach you some useful skills, but first you need to finish lunch. You''ll need the energy" "Okay!" With that, she vacuumed up her meal with even more vigour than I thought possible. "Alright. I want you to spread out your senses and try to feel the aura of the monsters here" I instructed Alicia once we reached the third floor. The skills most useful for her were detection skills. If she could learn [Sense Presence] or [Mana Perception], then she''d be able to sense enemies around her. If she could learn both, then it would be that much better. It wouldn''t be perfect, but it would be enough to be able to put up a rudimentary level of defence on her own. "Okay..." "I''m going to put on a defensive spell on you for protection. Don''t worry about the enemy attacks, I''ll make sure that they won''t hit" "...okay!" The trembling in her little hands mostly subsided and she tightly gripped my hand as she strongly nodded as an invisible field of condensed air surrounded her body. I was careful to make sure that the barrier wouldn''t hinder anything important, like moving or breathing. An oversight like that would be pretty stupid after all. In a short while, a skeleton appeared in front of us. Alerted to our presence, it quickly approached our way, raising it''s poorly made sword along the way. The undead clattered as it walked, and swung it''s weapon down at me the moment it got within range. But for me, who had experience fighting all the way up to the 87th floor, the attack was pitifully slow and weak. The arc it drew wasn''t even very clean as it wavered back and forth as if the monster was hesitating somehow. I raised my empty hand and pinched the blade between my thumb and forefinger. The skeleton tried to push the blade that stopped in midair, but it didn''t budge even a millimetre. With that failing, it tried to pull, but nothing changed. Once again, it tried to push, but the result stayed the same. Being an an unintelligent creature with a capacity to think on the level of pocket calculator, the skeleton continued these fruitless movements over and over, unable to understand that there wasn''t any point to them. Beside me though, Alicia had pressed her body against mine and held my left hand in both of hers. "Alicia, concentrate" "Ah! Yes!" I lightly admonished the little girl. She quickly closed her eyes and tried to concentrate. "Now, all creatures give off some sort of presence. It''s something that anyone should be able to feel. All you have to do is tune yourself so that you are sensitive to the presence that the monster is giving off. That''s how to learn [Sense Presence]. The same goes for [Mana Perception]. You just have to feel the energy that''s radiating out of the monster" Alicia continued to push out her senses, but after a few minutes, I simply bit into the skeleton and sucked it''s essence out. The bundle of bones clattered more loudly before collapsing into a pile. "Ah..." "I think trying solely on a single monster might not be the best, so we''ll move around and practice against a variety, alright?" "Okay" Well, the real reason was because I was getting bored. That, and I needed to move on so that I could get something to eat. And if we were doing that, then we might as well gather more resources. The food we had wasn''t going to last forever, and there were a few special things I wanted. Alicia responded pretty well to the ice cream I had made before, so I wanted to get more milk. The quantity of milk needed to make just one bowl of ice cream was pretty huge, so to continue making more, I needed lots of milk. But aside from all that, there was the further reason that Alicia might continue to try singlemindedly until she exhausted herself. She needed to be made to take proper breaks, and the time between each monster encounter was perfect for that. So as to pace ourselves, I deliberately walked slowly, even though the hand gripping Alicia''s hand was silently pulled on, urging me to speed up. Clank! "Huh?" I looked beside me. Alicia was looking down. Rather turned her face down. The sound of metal on something hard resounded through the stone hallway. On the ground, there was a spiked bear trap trying to bite down on Alicia''s leg, but the wind barrier I put around her had magnificently stopped the teeth from even coming close to touching her silky skin. Even still, my back was covered in cold sweat. I was glad that the barrier had worked as intended, but I hadn''t noticed the trigger for the trap at all. (Was I getting careless?) Not sure what had just happened, the little girl beside me simply resumed her stride, the trap yielding to the barrier before clanging shut after she had cleared it. She pause again, trying to figure out what the sound was. "Did something happen Scarlet?" "Eh? Ah, umm...no. Nothing worth mentioning" A quick inspection of the magical signature of the barrier confirmed that it hadn''t even weakened by any appreciable amount due to the trap. It would last quite a while when it came to traps of that level, and was most likely capable of handling traps of a significantly higher level without being breached. That said, I wasn''t going to test it''s limits, not with Alicia being the one protected by it after all. "Baaaa~!" Turning the corner, a brown goat charged at us full tilt. But when I raised a hand and grabbed one of it''s thick horns, the entire monster buckled and it''s rear lifted off of the ground before it''s hind legs clattered on the stone ground. It tried to turn it''s head and twist it''s horns out of my hand, but neither it''s head nor my hand budged in any way that was visible to me. The monster tried to pull and push as well, but to the same results. It''s cries were strained as if it was trying to move a mountain, but from my perspective, it was just a bit cute. But I couldn''t help but wonder what was with this world. The goat wasn''t too big, but the force it put into it''s charge would''ve been enough to knock me clear off of my feet. But I didn''t budge at all. Rather, the impact itself felt weak to me, and almost no force was transmitted to my body. (Stats are scary) That was all I could think of that could explain this phenomena. Stats in this world overcame physics. Not just when it came to things like physical power, but also when it came to offsetting the effects of it. Most likely, if my stats were high enough, I could take an ICBM to the face and not move a milimeter. Alicia on the other hand jumped a little when the breeze of it''s charge reached her, but otherwise she held her ground. A slight tremble transmitted through my hand, as she slowly let out a breath and started to concentrate on trying to sense the monster. The goats of the 28th floor were a bit bigger than the ones on Earth. Their heads reached only a bit above Alicia''s. There were large horned, small horned, and unhorned varieties. The large horned ones had thick, wide-swept horns that stuck out from the top and curved back. The small horned ones simply had small nubs that could just barely be considered horns sticking out forward from their heads. The large horned goats were obviously male, but I quickly noticed that the other two weren''t from their characteristic udders. But despite that, all three gave virtually the same drops. Sheets of moderately soft leather, big chunks of meat, and large jars of milk. The first time I got a jar of milk from a male goat, I was pretty hesitant in actually checking it. But a cautious sniff then a lick confirmed that it was merely ordinary goat milk, despite the source. A minute of struggling later, I removed the monster''s head from it''s body using some wind magic, then used a new original spell to draw out the blood from it''s now still body and pooled it into an orb in the air. When the monster was fully drained, I extended a rope of blood from the orb into my mouth and consumed it all in one go. I called the spell ''Blood Manipulation'', though such names didn''t have any meaning beyond sounding cool. That aside, it was a difficult spell that required a lot of concentration, since I needed to make sure that I only moved blood and not other fluids out of a complex and confined space of the insides of a monster. Considering all that, I did want a skill to make the process easier. It was something to research for the future. "Okay, hold out the bag for me" Responding to my instructions, Alicia held out the white bunny plush magical bag and opened it''s mouth. Using one hand to stretch the mouth a bit, I used magic to bring over the jar of milk that the monster left behind when it''s corpse disappeared. "Alright. Thanks, good job Alicia" I pet her on the head as she closed the bag''s mouth with one hand and hugged it against her chest. When I withdrew my hand, she looked up at me and gave me a full-teethed smile. (Geez, she''s too cute) I scratched my cheek and looked away from the radiance beside me. "Here, let''s get going" "Okay!" In a few dozen steps, the next monster appeared: a hornless goat. It charged at us with a cry, but I simply gave it a claw vice grip on it''s cranium, and the cycle continued. In the end, I was carrying Alicia in my arms as we arrived home at the 85th floor fountain room. I misjudged her stamina again, thinking that our regular breaks would improve things, but Alicia herself was my clock. I had no good way to actually tell the time with any accuracy on my own, so when she pushed herself without me noticing, my own sense of time was completely shattered. "C''mon, we''re back now" "Mmmmm..." I lightly pinched her cheek, but all I got as a moan and her flopping backward as she tried to right herself. A little bit of rebalancing made her flop back onto my chest. The act, though, made me feel like puking. I had overindulged after spending a day hungry, and now I could swear that my belly was bulging to the point that it helped support Alicia''s weight. Fortunately, I made sure to fill up a few jars of blood, so my supply should last even if I didn''t get many chances to hunt for a while. The blood of the lower level monsters weren''t that tasty anymore. After experiencing the taste of the upper level monsters, it was hard to consider the lower level ones to be anything but bland and watery, so I was compelled to make up for it with quantity, and this was the result. That said, I couldn''t shirk my duties at Alicia''s guardian. "Alright, let''s take a bath now" "Mmmmm..." Her response didn''t change, but her mind worked well enough for her to raise her arms. With a bit of juggling, I managed to pull her dress off. From there, I managed to remove my own clothes. I felt like I deserved an applause for managing to strip down while carrying a child in my arms. From there, I refilled the bathtub and heated the water before entering it to soak together. I sat Alicia onto my lap with her back to me, but as I lathered up my hands with the scented soap, she turned around and pressed her face against my chest. (Why does she like that position so much?) Was it instinctive? Was it something she felt was missing from her life? Was she actually gay and too young to understand? I had no idea if any of those were even close to the mark, so I shut the thoughts from my mind and started to carefully wash her starting from the top as she slipped in and out of sleep. I needed to take special care while washing her face, but fortunately her eyes were already shut. Once done, I took my time to wash myself as well while being careful of Alicia. Every time I moved away a little, she''s grab onto me and press her face into my chest, making washing my front exceedingly difficult. She really had some sort of obsession there. Was this really normal? Once all of the lather had been rinsed away, I lay there with Alicia hugging my chest and soaked in the water. But as I lightly stroked the hugging monster''s hair, a realization came to me: we ran out of hair oil. The saucer of experimental hair oil had been used up because of my long hair the day before, and I had forgotten to make more. It wasn''t possible to make the same thing quickly. Simple oils that I got as a drop was really all I had, but I didn''t like the idea of using that after the experience of the nice oil we made. The only option was to make a new hair oil that didn''t take nearly as long to make. Thinking back, there was one type of lotion that was popular which I had easy access to: milk and honey. Those two alone wouldn''t work as hair oil, but as the main ingredients of a hair oil might work. I brought over the magical bag and took out a jar of goat milk, and called over jars of vegetable oil and honey. A bit of magic to make a new jar, I poured in equal amounts of milk and honey, then double that of oil, then heated it up while stirring with a simple whisk made of cutting up a piece of wood. As the concoction mixed up and thickened up due to the extra air that got introduced while I whisked it, I occasionally checked the feel by rubbing some on my arm, then changing the ratio of ingredients by adding small amounts. The end result was more a white cream, but I was happy with the scent, and went to apply it to my own hair to test it. A dollop onto the top of my head and knead, knead, knead. Another dollop to the back of my head a rub, rub, rub. My hair pulled over my shoulder and one more dollop there, wipe, wipe, wipe. Pull my hair out of the water and a dollop, squeeze, squeeze, squeeze. Pull more hair out of the water and another dollop, pat, pat, pat. Once more pull hair out of the water and another dollop, wipe wipe wipe. Finally the last of my hair out of the water and one final dollop, smear, smear, smear. With all of my hair finally covered in hair oil, I comb the entire length with my fingers to help it soak in. The work was tedious and monotonous, but I strangely enjoyed it as I imagined how it would turn out. Would it glisten? Would it shine? Would it become smooth? Silky? What about the smell? Would it continue to smell the same, or would it change? How would it change? It felt like I could understand a bit why women put in so much money and effort into their hair products. Once I was satisfied, I thoroughly rinsed the whole length of my hair to remove the excess. Unlike the previous hair oil, this one had ingredients that would go bad easily if simply left in. The preview I got when I removed it all looked promising, so I applied it to Alicia''s hair. The only problem was that she was leaning against me the entire time and a bunch of it got onto my chest, which promptly got smeared onto her face when I tried to rub the oil in all the way. After letting it set in for a bit, I rinsed her head off as well. The results looked good. However there was still more of the hair oil smeared around, so carefully wiped it off of her face and my chest. But as I did that, I noticed how the skin glistened underneath. Unexpectedly, the oil worked pretty well as a lotion as well. It wasn''t really a surprise, since lotions were pretty much by definition just oils used on the skin. My curiosity was piqued. I wanted to see what a full treatment with this oil would be like, so I carefully rubbed it across both of our bodies and let it set for a bit before rinsing off the excess. The results were pretty good. My skin had always been soft and unblemished, but it felt like the oil treatment had worked as an enhancer to that quality. People would normally call it rejuvenation, but my skin was as healthy as it was when my body was first created not long ago, so rejuvenation wouldn''t have done much at all. Looking at Alicia, the results were equally as good. No, even better, as her body had dealt with the harshness of her abandonment. I lifted up Alicia''s limp body and rubbed her glistening cheek with my own. The softness had increased by 20, no 30%. It felt like such a drastic change was impossible, but it really felt like it. With everything done, I got out of the bath, threw out the water, and dried our bodies. As I moved to put all the things I used away, my eyes was drawn to the virtually empty bowl of lotion I had just made. It was a little annoying that I had already used up the larger than normal portion I had made, but the results made me happy. I needed to make more tomorrow along with some new recipes. For now, I put it all away and went to the couch to give Alicia a proper place to sleep. Chapter 20 – Truth of the Night With Alicia securely sleeping on top of my body and the bear fur blanket covering us, my mind went back to researching the skill system. There was the [Appraisal] skill I had found before. Learning it for myself was nice, but I wanted something more, that could be used for more than just regular objects. The skill itself could be used as a basis for a skill that fit my desires better. So, with that in mind, I scanned through the skill''s source code and figure out how it roughly worked. [Appraisal] worked through several steps. The first was to target an object. Next was to collate the user''s experience in regards to similar objects. After that was to compare it against the world database and add some more detailed information. The final step was to display the information to the user. It seemed like it worked based on the user''s ability to identify and examine the targeted object, then supplemented that information based on the user''s knowledge and the rank of the skill. All four steps of the skill were useful for me, but the part that needed the biggest change was the script that referenced the world database. The skill itself only accessed the database for items, and didn''t specify the databases for anything else. I couldn''t find the information for those other databases yet, and without the names of them, I couldn''t access them using a modified version of this skill. It wasn''t enough, but it was a good start. I made a copy then removed the acquisition method before saving the draft. Next was to find skills that accessed other databases. But this was the hard part, since the skill list was so massive. There were over a hundred skills in just the ''A'' section, and many of them had nonsensical names. It was virtually impossible what their purpose was without looking into the source code, and it was difficult to imagine that many of them were even used. Quite a lot of the skills that had more reasonable names had quite dubious purposes. On one hand they felt like padding, but on another, they might''ve had a reasonable reason to exist. Or perhaps they once had a purpose, but now lost that purpose? Scrolling through the skills, occasionally checking the source code, I continued through that night until a familiar sensation disturbed my concentration. I glanced at Alicia from under the blanket and wondered what would happen if by body reacted and started to produce because of this little girl''s unconscious nightly activities? (Maybe I wouldn''t have to feed her as much during the day?) I let off a wry smile at the thought, then worked at distracting myself as I gently held Alicia''s body. "Mmmm...Scarlet..." (Just what kinda dream are you having to be suckling while calling out my name?!) "Mmmm....good morning Scarlet...ha?!" It seemed like this too had become a part of our daily routine. The moment Alicia''s min reached a certain degree of consciousness, she always reacted that way. I wondered if it was because she was aware she had some bad sleeping habits, or because she noticed something about me when she first woke up. I didn''t think I was acting in any way aside from normal in the first few seconds of her waking up though. "Did...did I do something strange...?" "Hmmm...how about I ask if you had an interesting dream or not?" As cute as ever, Alicia tilted her head to the side, forcing a smile onto my face. But a second later she quickly turned her head to the side as if she was trying to hide her expression. "N, n, nothing! I didn''t have any dreams last night!" "Really? You wouldn''t lie to me, would you?" "Mmm..." "You wouldn''t, would you? Because you''re a good girl?" "Mmmmm!" "You are a good girl, my cute little sister Alicia" "..." She put up a valiant effort, but in the end I successfully guilted her into telling me the truth. "I dreamt..." "Mmmhmmm?" "You were carrying me, and I was hugging you forever..." "..." Alicia''s face had turned red to her ears, but if felt like my own face was hot enough to boil water. "Have you had dreams like that every night since we met?" "cough" That heat only intensified as Alicia slowly nodded. Or rather, was I the cause for her nightly suckling?! Was I fated to suffer that until she was old enough to be independent?! Rather, she was already supposed to be old enough for a bit of autonomy, yet she wasn''t, so would it be pushed even further back than that?! "Did...you do anything...else in your dreams?" The little girl''s eyes turned into saucers as she covered her mouth with both hands. But I saw how she pursed her lips right before she covered them. It was all connected. She hadn''t been responding to my situation each time, but she''d been worried that she''d been acting out her dreams while asleep. The evidence that she found on my chest when she woke up was dubious, but to someone who dreamt such a thing, it only looked like proof. "If...if you had been doing something strange in your dreams...then it''s best to try to stop it. Just because it''s in your dreams, doesn''t mean that it won''t effect your real life" My face was hot enough to melt steel, and I couldn''t look directly at the little girl sitting on my pelvis anymore. Even my words were starting to lose coherence. "Umm...umm...do I have to?" (Did she want to that badly?!) If I was perfectly honest with myself, if she didn''t sleep suckle, I had no problems with whatever she happened to do in her dreams. But the fact that there was physical results due to her dreaming was the real issue. "You...you know that nothing comes out, don''t you?" "?" From the corner of my eyes, Alicia tilted her head in confusion. "From my breasts. No matter what you do, nothing comes out. You realize that right?" "...really?" "Yes really! Nothing''s ever come out of them before!" I was exasperated by her tenacity. "...Scarlet really is a good girl, right?" (Why was she so suspicious like that?!) "That''s right! I''m not lying...because I''m a good girl" "..." (Why was she hesitant?!) "Here! I''ll prove it! Try sucking on them right now!" I pushed up my breasts towards her with my hands the best I could, but their size made it holding them that way awkward and difficult. "I''m not a baby! I don''t need to suck milk!" But contrary to my expectation, she turned her head away and pouted. "It''s okay. I''m giving you my permission to do it this one time. Babies might be the only ones who suck milk every day, but there are times when even adults might suck milk" I left it locked up inside that people who did that were typically known a perverts though. "Really?" "Really. I''m a good girl, aren''t I?" "That''s right. Scarlet''s a good girl" Strongly nodding, Alicia finally agreed with me, and took a firm hold of one of my breasts. Being held in this way was stimulating in all the wrong ways, but it was for the sake of a peaceful night. I could suck up any amount of short term pain or difficulty if it was for that sake. Timidly and cautiously, Alicia lowered her head to my chest, and tried to suck on my nipple. But as it should be, nothing happened. She tried sucking again, and even lightly bit it, but no matter how much she tried, no matter how many different ways she tried it, nothing came out. Rather, if something really did come out, I was worried for what my life from that point would be like. "Milk really didn''t come out" For some reason, Alicia seemed to be really surprised about that fact. "Why did you even think that something like that would come out?" "It comes out for all women?" "..." "Scarlet is still a little girl?" "..." (How did she come up with that sort of conclusion?) I thought for a moment before answering. "I''m...I don''t know if I could be considered a little girl, but that''s not the reason why milk doesn''t come out" Unsurprisingly, Alicia cocked her head cutely again. "Women only start to give out milk when they have a baby. Until they get close to having their first baby, milk won''t come out" "So...milk will come out when you have a baby?" "Yup, that''s how it is" "How do you have a baby?" My whole body froze stiff. "Scarlet?" My mind blanked out and didn''t register what Alicia was saying. My body rocked back and forth as she tried to get a response from me, but at the time I didn''t notice. It took a while, but my mind rebooted enough to give her a single line. "...I''ll tell you when you get older" "...?" After we got up, the two of us made breakfast together and Alicia sat on my lap while she ate. Today''s breakfast was oatmeal with plenty of cut fruit and honey. As Alicia ate, I absentmindedly played with my hair. There was a noticeable improvement to it''s quality compared to how it was a few days ago, and the scent the hair oil left was still going strong. I couldn''t help but enjoy the scent as I lightly brushed it''s length. Before I knew it, there was a pair of cloudy eyes staring at my hair. Rather, they weren''t staring, but the little girl''s actions was akin to that. "..." When I paused for a moment, Alicia brought her face closer and took a sniff. "It smells nice Scarlet" For some reason she looked a bit envious. "I applied it to your hair as well you know" The moment those words left my mouth, Alicia grabbed a lock of her hair and took a sniff. "Wow, you''re right!" "What? Did you think I was lying?" "Nuh uh. Because Scarlet''s a good girl!" She violently shook her head before answering, then rubbed her hands on her head before sniffing them with a smile. Her actions kinda reminded of a cat grooming itself, but more roughly. "So, which one do you prefer? This one, or the last one?" "Hmmm...the last one" Despite her answer, Alicia continued to sniff her palms. But I had to agree wither her. Milk and honey wasn''t bad, but it felt like it was better for the skin than hair. Fruit oils suited Alicia, but for myself, it felt a bit too childish. I wanted to spend time experimenting with different scents. Once we cleaned up after breakfast, the two of us went outside for Alicia''s [Spirit Perception] training and my own playing with the fluffballs. I lightly played with the floating spirits by only keeping my arms in [Spirit Form] while also scattering mana treats around as I sat with an unmoving doll in my lap. To be exact she was moving, but only to the level of light breathing. Her concentration was pretty impressive, beyond what I myself could manage at least. As we played, I got better and better at controlling both [Spirit Form] and [Materialize]. The floating spirits were pretty smart, and noticed what I was doing. I shifted the parts that were physical and spiritual so that any parts of my body that the fluffballs would rub or bounce against were properly in spirit form and could fully interact with their bodies. I wasn''t always successful, but overall it worked well for a while. Unfortunately, more and more spirits caught on to what was going on and they eventually swarmed me, trying to rub my body all over the place. I would''ve indulged them if I was alone, but with Alicia here, that would''ve only lead to trouble, so with a big yell, I threw a whole bunch of mana treats around to give me space, then completely dropped [Spirit Form] and called it a day. Alicia still hadn''t learned [Spirit Perception] so she was pretty much unaware about why I yelled when I did, and thus I was forced to calm her down and convince her that she wasn''t at fault. After a lunch of deep fried fish cutlets and potato slices, I tried out something a little new. We''ve been constantly running out of hair oil, but the main reason was because our production runs were tiny. Yesterday''s oil was decent, but I couldn''t help but think it was better as a soap or lotion rather than a hair oil. For hair oil, we needed ingredients that worked for it, and thus I wanted to be able to produce them. The way I made the orange essential oil was decent, but there was a much better way, which was further improved thanks to magic. That was the steam extraction method. With that in mind, I quickly made a simple legged still by reshaping a copper ingot. Together with Alicia''s help, I added lavender we had picked the day before. The quantity wasn''t very sufficient, but it was good enough for a trial run. With some water added, I sealed the pot and placed a stone jar under the nozzle and heated the still with a magical flame. While that was working, we extracted more conventional oils from various things we had while occasionally refilling the still with something new. I used my evaporation spell to remove the remaining water from the essential oils produced by the still. Once I felt like we''ve made as many oils as we could, the two of us started work on the mixes themselves. We sniffed the scents from a variety of essential oils and base oils and came up with our own recipes. The one I came up with to try was a combination of lavender and lemon oil using cream from goat milk and a yellow waxy substance I had gotten from a sheep-like monster at the 56th floor as a base. Since it was animal based, I''d have to go the extra step to rinse it off after letting it soak, but I liked the scent combination. A soft floral scent and a refreshing note that sticks to the nose for a few seconds after sniffing. That was what I came up with. The wax itself was to help stabilize the mixture as well as add protective properties to the oil. A small dab and rub in my hair gave the impression that it worked as intended. Alicia''s concoction on the other hand was based on orange essential oil combined with cocoa butter. It seemed like in the end she liked that combination a lot, but I managed to get her to add an unscented oil so it would be a liquid in room temperature. The mix really suited her quite well. It was energetic and sweet smelling, yet leaving a soothing note at the end. It was exactly the sort of thing she could only get away with thanks to her age. Smelling it again, it made me glad when I first came up with this sort of oil that Alicia was the only one to witness it. In the end, we had made a ton of hair oils. First was the various samples each of us had made testing out different ideas. While they were rejected in the end, I hoped that they''d all be used at some point. Most weren''t that bad at all. Next was the main oils we had chosen. Since they were our favourites, we had made a bunch of each. Quite a ton for me in fact, due to the length of my hair. Alicia was fine with a bottle that was as big as both of my hands together. That should last her weeks even if we used them every day. For me though, I filled five bottles of the same size. Alicia even helped me make some since I had to make so much. And yet I was worried that I''d need to make more before Alicia ran out. My excessively long hair really was a huge pain, but the results of taking care of it properly made it worth it. Then, after we finished with the hair oils and everything was put away, we got to work on dinner. Alicia''s stomach alarm had gone off and I didn''t want her to keep waiting. With some quick work, we made herbed beef cubes with potato quarters and onion soup. As Alicia ate, I worked on one last thing: a hair brush. I considered making a comb, but I wanted a brush. A brush felt more like really taking care of my hair, rather than a comb feeling like a cheap cop-out. Whether that was true or not, I had no idea, but it just felt like it. I''ve only seen brushes made out of plastic, but such a material didn''t exist in the dungeon as far as I''ve seen. Perhaps it doesn''t exist in the entire world? With that said, I had to make do with what I had, but my selection was limited for anything that seemed similar to the bristles of a brush. Most fur and thread was just too soft to be useful. I needed something that was hard, yet reasonably flexible. The result of my searching through a pile of random crap was a sheet of boar hide. Specifically it''s hair. Strangely, it was really tough and hard, yet it flexed reasonably well. With my material chosen, I shaved off a bunch of the hair, then implanted them into a thick wooden board filled with holes. Finally I used copper to fill in the gaps to hold the stiff hairs in place. It was a technique that was only possible thanks to magic. Once I checked to make sure everything looked good, I used a claw to quickly slice the uneven bristles for a nice, clean finish. And thus, around the time Alicia finished eating, I had finished a brush. "Hey Alicia, hold still for a sec" "?" I tried brushing her hair a bit with the new brush. "How does that feel?" "Nice..." When I leaned a bit to the side, I saw that Alicia''s eyes were half closed, and she gave off a relaxed feel. It seemed like she wasn''t just being polite. I continued to brush her hair until static electricity started to build up and her hair wouldn''t stay down. I overdid it. "Okay, let''s go have a bath now" "...what about you?" "Huh? What about me?" "That thing you made. You aren''t going to use it on yourself?" "I...huh..." I had forgotten about that. But it would be a pain for her to brush my hair since it was so long. "I''ll do it later, since it''s so long" "Nuh uh. I can do it" Without waiting for me to answer, Alicia somehow got a hold of the brush and crawled out of my lap and got behind me. She awkwardly traced my hair with her hands, then pushed the brush down from the top of my scalp, following my hair. Since it was so long, she continued to push the brush down all along my back. But my hair still continued as Alicia reached the cushion I was sitting on. The little girl paused for a moment before lightly taking hold of my hair and pulled it through the bristles until the brush escaped the full length of my hair. I could only put on a wry smile with the amount of effort it took to brush the length of my hair even once. Even for me it would be a bit of a pain, but feeling how soft my hair had gotten made me happy. Having my hair combed by Alicia made me really happy. I was willing to sit there and let her take all the time in the world to comb my hair. Once again, she stood up and placed the brush on my crown before tracing it down the length of my hair, ending by pulling the last of my hair through the brush with her hands. "Is it good?" "It''s very good. You''re like a pro at this" "A pro?" "Professional. It means that you''re an expert" "Heheh, an expert" We kept this up for a while, but eventually I had her stop. Over brushing most likely wasn''t good for one''s hair. It was best to take it slow and do a little at a time. I had to consciously make sure I didn''t over brush Alicia''s hair either. The two of us took a bath and enjoyed the hair oil we had made before cleaning up and going to sleep. Chapter 21 – Perceiving Gifts and Gifts of Perceiving That night, Alicia had continued to suckle on me like ever, but it seemed a bit less forceful than usual. I couldn''t help but think that my lecture had made an impact. Our days continued with a similar pattern for a while. Between training [Spirit Perception], [Sense Presence], and [Mana Perception], as well as general hunting/gathering and making all sorts of things on a whim, we used up the days together. At night, I continued to investigate the back end system to the world as well as worked on my own custom skills. That was, until Alicia''s dreams came into play. But after a few nights, her suckling had reduced in duration, and in two weeks, she barely did it anymore. She didn''t quite stop doing it though. It was as if she didn''t want my nipples to be lonely. I didn''t need such a consideration! It didn''t take long during my nightly system investigation that I discovered that the system kept track of your age. The surprise was a one-two punch to me. The first was the discovery of the feature in general, and the second was discovering how old I already was. 2.1 years old, it said. I was over two years old when I discovered the age tracking feature. I knew I had completely lost track of time while exploring this dungeon, but I didn''t think it was this bad. I figured I''d spent maybe two or three months here at most, not two years. My age wasn''t particularly distressing, just disturbing how badly I messed up my timekeeping. There didn''t seem to be some sort of clock or calendar though. The system merely kept track of people''s age. I couldn''t even find out what the year was, presuming that there was some sort of standard. But the discovery made me confront how long I had been with Alicia at this point. By using her sleep cycle as a yard stick, I counted off the days. It had been two weeks since we had met. It hadn''t been very long, but at the same time there were things I had been neglecting for far too long. I wanted Alicia to grow up with proper manners and habits befitting a proper girl to the best of my male-minded abilities. Her baseline appearance was good, so I wanted her to not be at a disadvantage in the future. She deserved to find happiness with a man. ... (For some reason it feels like my chest is being crushed by a trash compactor) ... I shook my head at that thought and wiped the tears from the corner of my eyes before I settled my suddenly ragged breath. Regardless of the future, it was important for her to dress the part of a cute girl. This applied even when there wasn''t anyone else to see. Her habits now would dictate her habits when she was around other people. Lifting up the fur blanket, I glanced at Alicia''s sleeping figure. She was still wearing that quickly made fur dress. I needed to make something better for her. "No!" "But it''s better!" "I don''t wanna!" I was exasperated. The day after I decided to make her a proper dress, I started to get to work on just that. It took a few days, but I weaved a bunch more silk over the next few days, then took that and turned it into a dress. Alicia helped me work on the loom by pulling on the comb. Her arms weren''t long enough to reach it properly, so I attached a rope to it that she could pull. I''d send the shuttle across, then tell her to pull, change the thread positions and tell her to pull again, then send the shuttle back through the threads. I was pretty impressed at the ease she was able to draw the comb. It wasn''t that heavy, but she was still a small girl. Maybe it was thanks to her level? It took more time to do it together like this, but unlike the first time, it was much more enjoyable. Then I sewed her dress up while she was eating or asleep, putting my usual skill research aside for the meantime. But when I presented the finished dress, this was the result. "Why don''t you want it? It''s a nice, new dress, much nicer than the quick, scrappy one you''re wearing right now" "No! No means no! cough" I didn''t get it. Why was she having a tantrum over something like this? She hadn''t even felt the finished dress yet, so she had no idea what it''s shape was. Yet she leaned away from me, hugging her body like she was guarding it against me. Frankly, as cute as her actions were, it kinda hurt. This sort of fierce rejection wasn''t like her at all, and I was perplexed. "Why are you so against it? This new dress is much nicer than your old one" "...then I''d have to wear the new one..." "...yea, that''s the idea..." "...then...I can''t wear the old one anymore...coughcough" "Well, I guess, since it was just a rush job. This newer one suits you much better" "I don''t wanna! This, this dress, it''s the first gift you gave me! I don''t want to lose it!" I was stunned. Her argument was completely sound, yet I hadn''t foreseen it at all. I was too preoccupied about the thought that she deserved something better and didn''t consider her feelings about it. Of course she''d be attached to the things I gave her, not least of which one of the very first things I gave her. "I see...here, come over Alicia" I stretched out my arms and pulled her into my chest. "I''m sorry. I didn''t consider how you felt about it before making this new dress. You love your usual dress don''t you?" She fiercely nodded her head against my chest. "I won''t mention replacing it anymore. But how about this?" Alicia turned her face up towards mine. "Instead of a new dress, how about I add new parts to your current dress?" "Ummm...huh?" The little girl in my arms cutely tilted her head to the side. "What I mean is, your dress doesn''t have sleeves. How about I add them, as well as a proper collar, and maybe extend the skirt, clean up some of the rough parts, and overall make your current dress nicer? It''ll be like filling it out to reflect how big and strong our relationship has grown to. Are you still against that?" Alicia buried her face into my chest and stopped moving. I gave her time to think. As much time as she wanted. There was no need to hurry to do anything here. After a little while, she looked up at me again. "Okay!" She gave me a million volt smile. So, over the next few days, we gathered materials and fixed up her dress. In the end, it was something I thought was pretty presentable. A knee length one-piece with long sleeves, the trims were covered with outward facing fur, the seams hidden under ribbons made from taking apart the silk dress and dyed a girly pink. The leather was dyed black to match my own clothes. Even if she couldn''t see all details, it wouldn''t be something we''d be ashamed of showing off to others. But that wasn''t really enough for me. There was something missing aside from the dress. That was underwear. "What''s this?" "They''re called panties, and they''re something any proper girl should wear" "You wear panties too?" "I do, here" I took Alicia''s hand and slid it across my thigh to reveal the side strap underneath the hot pants I was wearing. "See? So let me help you put them on" "Okay" I quickly slipped the pair on, but for some reason Alicia squirmed around uncomfortably. "Is this really right?" "As best as I can make it at least" I wasn''t a professional tailor after all. "Just try getting used to it. If it still feels bad, then I''ll make some adjustments" But to my relief, there didn''t seem to be much of a problem. Maybe she just never had any panties before? She certainly wasn''t wearing any when we first met. "..." "What''s wrong?" "Do good girls wear the top part too?" After her squirming died down while sitting on my lap, she touched the side of my chest wrap. "Ah, erm, only after you get older. You don''t need it right now" "..." "What is it?" For some reason Alicia faced my side while lightly playing with my hair, tracing it''s strands, holding locks together and dropping them. "Is there any more of of this?" She pointed at her hips. "Ah, panties? I only made one for now" But she shook her head. "Not panties. The cloth. Is there more?" "Ah, yea. There''s still some left" Rather, there was a decent amount left. I made more than enough for an entire dress, but only a portion of that ended up being used since Alicia refused to part with her fur dress. I cut off a single, large sheet of silk from the remains of the dress, the biggest I could manage, and handed it to Alicia. "...can you cut it like this?" Her hands traced a simple elongated rectangle across the sheet. "You mean you want it like a ribbon?" She nodded. "In that case, I''ll cut it a bit bigger, then we''d be able to fold the ends to secure it with thread" "Can I do that part?" Her eyes sparkled at the thought. There wasn''t any way for me to refuse her when she was like that. "Sure. That''s not a problem" I quickly snipped the ribbon shape from the sheet, then handed Alicia a needle with some thread through it''s eye. I guided her hands through the first few stitches. Once she got the hang of it, I only held the ribbon in place as she did all the work, only passing the needle to me when the thread ran short. It was a lot of stitching, so it took quite a while. In the end, her hands looked sore, but there was a luster to her expression that suggested she didn''t even notice that."Okay. Hold still Scarlet!" Alicia got up from my lap and went behind me. She then combed my hair with her fingers, drawing it all back behind me. I stayed still, but I really wanted to look behind me. The only thing holding my curiosity back was the expectation of what sort of expression Alicia would make once she was done whatever she was doing. She continued to tug at my hair, but eventually she stopped and lifted it up, bringing it over my shoulder. Near the end, she tied the pink ribbon into a big bow. "Huh? This is..." I was dumbfounded. I figured she wanted something, but not this at all. "I thought, you make so many wonderful things for me, I could make something for you..." Her face was red as she squirmed, holding the ribbon in both hands as she showed me the result of her work. "Is it no good?" I looked at her, then the ribbon, and the hair that it was tied around, then back to her. "You cute little...!" "Eeek!" Once the pieces connected in my brain, I couldn''t hold back anymore and pulled Alicia to me, kissing her cheek as I hugged her. "I love it! Thank you Alicia!" "Ehehe, thank you too Scarlet" I lifted up the end of my hair, and stared at the ribbon she had made for me. It was the first gift she had ever given me, and it was wonderful. "Muuu...you need to take it off" "No. Never. I won''t ever take it off!" I was resolute. There was no way I''d remove my precious. "You can''t wash your hair if you don''t take it off!" "It''s fine. It''s more important than washing my hair" "That''s no good! You''re a good girl Scarlet! And...I like it when your hair is soft and nice smelling" Urgh. She got me there. We were taking our nightly bath, and I was refusing to remove the ribbon. But it wasn''t possible to wash my hair properly if I didn''t take it off. I didn''t want to. Alicia even tied it on with so much care, so why should I take it off? But she hit me where it hurt, and I was forced to swallow my tears and remove it so I can properly take care of my hair. The second it dried though, I got Alicia to put it back on for me. This became a new addition to our nightly routine. "Uah!" "What happened?!" "Something...something''s there!" "What''s there?" Alicia had shouted out from my side. I had immobilized a monster like I always had for the sake of Alicia''s skill practice, but she had noticed something unusual, and was unnerved by it. "Umm...something...it''s strange. It''s hard to feel...but kinda soft...?" "Feel? You mean you feel something, rather than hear it?" "Not hear. But...it''s not really feel either...it''s there...something soft? Like it''s not quite there...? cough" "Not quite there?" Alicia had pointed straight at the monster I was holding on to, it still tried to thrash against me impotently. "Did you learn a skill?" "Ah! I did! I learned [Mana Perception]!" "Ah, grats Alicia. That thing you''re feeling is probably that then. The skill lets you see and sense mana around you" "See...? This is seeing then?" Her eyes sparkled as she ''looked'' at me. It was no surprise that the thought that she was now capable of seeing, even if in a partial form, excited her. "Erm...kinda? What you''re sensing is probably extremely vague and won''t clear up until you raise the rank a bit, but yea, technically that is a form of sight" "Sight. I can finally see how you look now" I wanted to correct her, but that gentle smile she had as she stared right at me killed my will to do so. It was close enough, and once she got the skill to a decent level, at least when it came to things with mana, she would have legitimate sight. "Well, keep practising and you''ll be able to see mana a lot more clearer in time" "Right! I''ll practice lots!" "Ah, but don''t forget to take breaks as well. I''ll be paying close attention to make sure you don''t push yourself too hard" "Muuu..." Alicia puffed her cheeks out, but she didn''t look away from me once that entire day. It didn''t take much longer before Alicia had learned [Sense Presence] as well, but she hadn''t found as much use to it as [Mana Perception]. In the end what she valued the most was the fact that she had a form of pseudo sight. For me as well, it was good enough. But she couldn''t yet sense the spirits with those two skills, so she continued to try to learn [Spirit Perception]. It took almost two months of nearly daily practice before she had learned it, but when she did, it was entirely magical. "cough I...I did it...I got [Spirit Perception]!" I was distracted while playing with the spirits, so her words took me off guard. No, it wasn''t just because of that. I was losing confidence in my theory that anyone could learn the skill if they just practised it in the right conditions. Alicia had been working hard on learning the skill, and it was taking several times longer than to learn [Mana Perception]. And yet, mostly all I could do was continue to encourage the little girl. There wasn''t any tips or tricks I could impart, nor anything I could help with beyond what I had already done. All I could do was expose her as much as I could to the spirits and keep her moral up as much as I could. But she had done it. Unlike the time when she learned [Mana Perception], Alicia was staring at the spirits in wonder. "What do you see?" I already had a high rank in [Spirit Perception] when I saw my first spirit, so I was a bit curious as to what she could see. "I...I don''t really see them, but I think I can feel that they''re here, everywhere. Lots and lots of presences, all around. A lot of them are touching you too Scarlet" She turned around to look at me, but not quite. She was looking around me. "Well, yea. They do that to people they like" I had gotten used to them doing stuff like this, so it felt natural that it would happen every time I left the dungeon. "Do you think they''ll like me?" "I guarantee it" I gave the nervous little girl a firm pat on the head, and she rewarded me with a toothy smile. Chapter 22 – Author Message Due to the cliffhangers starting in chapter 22, I am doing a bulk release over this weekend. However, if you are having a bad day or are otherwise emotionally compromised, then I suggest holding off reading the continuation until a better day has arrived. The next chapter is a bit different from everything up until now, but the fluff will return by the end of this chapter burst, I promise. Chapter 22 – Scanning and Altering It was another week before I finally finished a modified version of [Appraisal] that wasn''t entirely broken. I called it [Scan], and it let me recall and display the database information of anything I used it on. To do this, I needed parts from several other skills. Since [Appraisal] only covered physical items, I needed the IDs to other databases to get access on information about other things. Skills like [Project Status]. Using them as reference, I gathered the bits and pieces needed, then modified [Appraisal] as a base to create the new skill. From there, I converted the skill [Intimidation] into [Scan]. It wasn''t a skill I liked very much despite being able to use it. It was only effective against living enemies, and it''s effectiveness was pretty limited on those at the deeper levels of the dungeon. But more importantly, I didn''t like using it in the first place. It just wasn''t a fun skill. So I got rid of it. [Scan] was much more appropriate for me. The conversion was successful and I had gotten the new skill without problems. Since it was night and Alicia was using me as a bed, I was limited to testing it on things in our home. I looked over and targeted Alicia''s stone cup with [Scan]. Suddenly, my head was wracked with pain as information windows filled my eyes. They continued to open one after another until I looked away from the cup, but by then, I couldn''t see anything but the same large dialogue box overlapping one another. Each box was the same as the next, with nothing to differentiate them. Once again, I had made a fundamental error in designing my skill. This time, the skill had no condition to prevent reactivation, so it just continued to display the information that the skill was accessing over and over until I stopped using it. Frankly, it was a pretty pathetic newbie programmer mistake. A few additional lines of code, and I fixed the problem. Now then, I tried the skill out again on the cup. This time, only one dialogue window appeared, giving me detailed information about the stone cup. It was very much excessive, but it worked. ''A simple stone cup made through use of earth magic by Scarlet for Alicia''s personal use. The lack of embellishments shows either the creator''s lack of artistic talent or amateurishness'' (...screw you) Aside from the insulting description, there were pages upon pages of detailed information about the materials, dimensions, and things I couldn''t even guess at. Next, I tried scanning Alicia as she slept. ------------------------------------[Name: Alicia][Species: Human][Sex: Female]State:Level: 32XP: 12288/16384 HP: 2017/2017MP: 2284/2284STR: 117CON: 98AGI: 123DEX: 135INT: 142ANI: 153 Skills:Basic Skills:[Spirit Perception 1][Sense Presence 2][Mana Perception 2][Cooking 3][Cleaning 2]------------------------------------ There was much more information, but it was harder to make out the meaning of. All sorts of detailed settings that covered every little thing from her state to her location. Her stat page really was the only bit I could understand, and it was buried 17 pages deep. I had removed the limits to the information since the entire point was to get detailed information about things I didn''t know, but the result was this giant mess of information overload. After these two tests, I could only say that [Scan] was only barely passable, but only usable on a limited level. I needed to refine it so that it would only give me the information I wanted, but that in turn was actually much more difficult than what I had managed already. While on the surface, at least for people and creatures, just seeing the stat page seemed like enough, but a closer examination on Alicia''s data revealed a lot of little things that were important, but weren''t revealed on the stats page. One was a link to her memories. It seemed like the system maintained a copy of a person''s memories at all times. The only reason I could think of was in case of brain damage, any healing done to the brain needed a reference to properly restore the broken synapses. Another was a whole assortment of skills that didn''t show up on the stat page. They seemed to be various things that normally wouldn''t be visible, but necessary to live in this world. In particular, all of them connected to various things, from parts of her body to the skills that were visible. These invisible skills seemed extremely important, but it was difficult to understand how. I needed to spend time looking into them later on. In particular, there was one that connected to her vision. I couldn''t help but wonder if I made some changes there, Alicia might be able to gain sight. But at the same time, I was hesitant to. Letting her see sounded good on the surface, but was it really right? Would she really benefit from that? As a person who never had any bigger vision problems than needing glasses, my answer was an automatic yes for myself, but for someone who never experienced sight before? Wouldn''t it be like suddenly getting more limbs? Wouldn''t it become overwhelming? Alicia already got pretty overwhelmed by learning [Mana Perception], but wouldn''t this be a hundred times bigger? But even more importantly, wasn''t the process itself extremely difficult? It was like digital surgery. One wrong move and I could do irreparable damage. The thought of it was terrifying. Maybe it was better to just pretend I never saw it? Or maybe it would be better to discuss it with her and get her opinion? But Alicia was still a child. On Earth, she wouldn''t have been allowed to make such a life changing decision on her own. A quick check confirmed that she was still only 6.4 years old. She was much too young to make such a decision. (...From a physical standpoint, she was triple my age, making my opinion of the matter that much more irrelevant from a legal standpoint) For now, I decided to shelve the issue. I wanted to see how things would work out with by just ranking up her current skills. There was also the issue that the hidden skill regarding her eyes wasn''t actually the reason why she was blind. It was best to take my time to investigate, and only when I was sure and still felt that her perception skills weren''t enough, would I bring it up. While those two things were the major ones to consider, there was also a link to something called her core. The container file it was connected to was massive and constantly changed. The data itself was incomprehensible. No, rather, it didn''t quite look like data in itself, but more a representation of something else? Like trying to translate something that wasn''t originally digital into a digital format? Similar to looking at the raw data coming from a digital camera. (This...this is very important) I couldn''t help but feel that. The fact that it was labelled core emphasized that even more. To compare, I scanned a few other things in the room, but none of them had any labels resembling the core in Alicia. Then, I scanned myself, and saw the same label. But this time the contents was much bigger than hers. The difference was similar to the difference in size to the memory link. That relationship most likely wasn''t a coincidence at all. In fact, it was most likely directly related. But something that was the core of a person, but also directly related to memories? There really was only one thing I could think of, and that was the soul, or whatever it was that gets reincarnated when we die. Once my understanding reached that level, I knew that it was the one thing I should never touch. That was something which I could feel even from an instinctive level. Making [Scan] work as intended wasn''t working out well. No matter what I did, I couldn''t reduce the information displayed to a point that it could be used on the fly. Rather than that, I kept adding to the skill. Things like pointing out elemental affinities, weak and strong points on something''s body, I just kept adding to them, and the skill quickly grew into a useless mess. As I internally debated whether I should just separate the components into many different skills or keep trying to streamline the displayed information in an easily accessible manner, I just threw up my arms and gave up for the time being. Not literally though, since Alicia was sleeping at the time and such an action would wake her up. I parsed through the skills I had at the moment, looking for some inspiration. It was possible that as I got more experience working on making and modifying skills that I''d eventually figure out what I needed to make [Scan] work as intended. There was the skill [Flight] I had gotten a while back. I couldn''t use it because it was restricted to those that had wings. It was possible that I could remove that restriction and be able to fly around, but there was the issue that it might make it difficult to control my flight without them. Half-assing a skill like that didn''t feel good, especially when I had an alternate solution that seemed pretty perfect, which was combining it with the [Alter Form] skill. [Alter Form] was a skill that allowed one to change their body shape into something else, but it was a racial I had gotten from slimes on the first floor of the dungeon. Due to that restriction, I had never used it, but it was an easy thing to fix. Simply put, I just needed to do the exact same thing as I did to get the [Solar Power] skill. With my plan established, I quickly made a copy of [Alter Form] and removed both the acquisition method and the racial restriction so that I could use it, but there was no way to actually get the skill normally. Then, I simply swapped the ID tag from my own version of the skill with the modified version, then changed the name to [Alter Silhouette]. [Alter Silhouette] successfully lost it''s greyed out state, signalling that I could use it. First thing''s first, was to test it by itself. If I could make that work, then I just needed to test the two skills together later on when I had the chance. I wanted to avoid any big changes, so I started off with my left index finger. Imagining that my finger had doubled in length, I activated the skill. "!!!!!" I covered my mouth with my right hand, desperately trying to hold back a scream. (It hurts! It hurts! It hurts!) Tears streamed down from my eyes as intense pain lit up from my finger. It had successfully lengthened as I imagined, but for some reason it hurt almost as much as the time my arm was sliced in half, lengthwise. No, in a sense that hurt less, since I had a whole ton of adrenaline pumping through my body at the time. But my finger felt like it was both forcibly crushed and stretched at the same time. I quickly cancelled the skill and my finger returned to normal, but it took several minutes before the pain finally faded away in it''s entirety. That failure was pretty unexpected, but I did have an idea as to what caused it. Simply put, [Alter Silhouette] was a skill made for slimes. Specifically, creatures that didn''t have definite shapes. The best I knew, slimes were basically just living water balloons with a core. That made them extremely malleable, so it wasn''t a surprise that they could change their shape in big ways without any consequence. On the other hand, my own body was made of relatively rigid series of cell structures designed to only change shape at the smallest levels. Forcibly making those cells change shape would obviously hurt like all hell. In fact, it was a bit amazing that I didn''t lose any HP for that. Maybe there was a deeper reason for that? But that said, [Alter Silhouette] was definitely not a solution to my problem. At least not as is. The fundamental problem was that it altered something that had no capacity to be altered in such a way. I tried activating the skill again, but this time to just reshape my finger in tiny ways, squishing the flesh or making parts bulge out in tiny ways. This was completely successful, and there wasn''t any hint of pain. But I could feel every bit of those movements. Changing my body this way wasn''t going to work at all. But it was possible to change it without pain. I just needed to find a different approach. In theory, I could just add a pain suppression feature, but that might actually be pretty dangerous. Not being able to feel pain meant that I wouldn''t be aware if something went wrong. The alternative was to apply the skill to a part of my body that could change in shape without problems normally. The obvious choices for that was my hair and nails. There weren''t any nerve endings on either, so altering their shape might be viable. But I didn''t like it. I''ve been taking good care of my hair lately, so changing that could undo all my hard work. My nails on the other hand, while I didn''t really do much with them, didn''t feel like good choices either. The problem was that I wouldn''t be able to use my arms while they were altered for anything but flight. It sounded like a nitpicky issue, but it precluded my ability to carry anything that didn''t fit on my back, and catching anything I dropped would be extremely difficult if not impossible. I wanted to be able to fly together with Alicia, but if I changed my nails into pseudo wings, then it would be too dangerous to do so. It wasn''t a viable solution, so it was discarded. Instead, I thought about what else I could use. Something that wasn''t limited by the shape of flesh... It was a long shot, but I had one more idea. I raised my left hand and activated two other skills at the same time: [Spirit Form] and [Materialize]. I kept most of my body physical so as to not disrupt Alicia''s sleeping, and only made my raised arm into spirit form. From there, I tried to change the shape of my finger, slowly. I could feel the sensation of my finger being squished and skewed, but as there wasn''t any pain, I continued lengthening it. Longer, longer, longer. Until my index finger was double the length of normal. While in spirit form, it didn''t hurt at all, yet I could manipulate the finger without any problems. But here was the real test. I applied [Materialize] to the rest of my arm, quickly shooting it up and changing the spiritualized part of my body into physical form. Yet despite the change, there still wasn''t any pain. Not only that, but my finger was still twice it''s normal length, and I could move it like normal. It worked! I had a solution! Excited, I receded the materialization, then changed my hand into the shape of a bat wing. It worked, even including the wing membranes and colour. Once again, I materialized the hand, and there wasn''t any problems at all! I could move my wing hand like it was always a part of me. It was amazing! I had discovered something radically new! And combined with the flight skill, I could now fly! I just had to apply this to a different part of my body, like my back. There wasn''t any reason why I couldn''t have limbs in ways that didn''t conform to any natural logic. To confirm that, I receded the materialization and duplicated my hand, so that it was two sets of wings joined at the wrist, operating independently. Actually getting them to move the way I wanted was extremely difficult, but they did move. There wasn''t any serious problems, and that was doubly confirmed by completing the materialization. I wanted to jump for joy. I felt like I had made the discovery of the century, though it didn''t really count since I did it by changing the rules. But that didn''t change the fact that I was over the moon, but I cancelled all my skills before I accidentally did something to wake Alicia up. "!!!!!" My hand went back over my mouth as I desperately suppressed a scream. Tears ran down my face like a waterfall, as the most excruciating pain I had ever experienced bolted up from my hand. It was like I had thrust my hand into an industrial blender set on max power, and I was somehow healing as fast as my hand was being shredded. sob sob I was such a moron. If I didn''t get so excited and forget myself, I wouldn''t have had to go through that experience as [Alter Silhouette] cancelled it''s changes to my hand after [Spirit Form] was cancelled. The sound of my sobs echoed through the room, but fortunately, there wasn''t any evidence that Alicia had woken up. For the next few weeks, I practised [Alter Silhouette] to create wings and manipulating them around while Alicia was busy eating or working in raising her perception skills. I played around with their style, shape, dimensions, and even location. First of all, since I was a vampire, it was a given that I''d make them bat wings. I tried bird wings, but it just didn''t feel right. They were also a pain to make, since I had to [Alter Silhouette] every feather. A pair of simple bat wings were much easier to handle, and I felt like the dexterity was much higher. For shape and dimensions, I went with something close to orthodox, but a bit thinner and longer, with the wingspan being double my own height. Even that felt way too small to be useful, but I hoped that the [Flight] skill could make up for it. If not, then there was the fact that I could double it up with [Float]. The mana consumption between the two would be a pain, but I had so much MP that it might not be so bad. Actually, I had never used [Flight] yet, so I didn''t know how much MP it used up. The location was something I had problems deciding. The orthodox location was on my shoulder blades, but it didn''t seem like a good place in regards to balance. I tried out several spots, but without a strong anchor, my wings wouldn''t be able to support my weight very well. In theory at least. This made directly attaching them to my spine a no go, but my shoulders were too high, and my hips too low. In the end, I went the extra step to extend a pair of bone extension from my lower spine to anchor the wings onto. The exact location hadn''t been decided yet, and was subject to change depending on actual tests, but I was happy with the end result. I even modified my robes so that there were covered slits in the back for my wings to pass through when in use, but stay closed to protect me when not. There was only one problem though. When I tried practising outside while Alicia was doing [Spirit Perception] training, intense pain made me stop immediately. It seemed like the properties of my own body extended to the extra limbs created with [Alter Silhouette]. I quickly stopped and hid the wings again, swearing to avoid trying to form up wings during the day while outside. The fact was a bit of a surprise, since when I use [Spirit Form], my clothes also dematerialize along with my body. I had thought that maybe while in spirit form, I lost my sunlight vulnerability, but it seemed like I was wrong. Raising my spiritualized arm and pulling up the sleeve to reveal my wrist flashed it with pain. It seemed like there wasn''t any doubt about it. The way some things interacted was a bit odd and unpredictable here and there, but maybe it was simply because I still wasn''t completely used to a world with a skill system? Or one with magic? Whichever the case, it meant that there was still a mountain of things for me to learn. Actually manipulating the wings took even more time. It was one thing to manipulate a body part that was altered, but similar in bone and muscle count, but the wings were entirely new limbs. Even if how they moved was similar to arms and hands, actually getting my brain to make them work as intended was pretty difficult and time consuming. "...?" In the middle of dinner, Alicia turned around with a confused look on her face. For a glutton like her, it was strange of her to stop in the middle of her meals. Especially today, since dessert was her favourite, ice cream. Today was strawberry ice cream with chocolate swirls, and she lit up like a million volts on her first bite. But despite that, she had stopped before finishing. Alicia looked at my face. Ever since she had learned [Mana Perception], she had started to do that much more often and with greater precision. As her ranks in it increased, she said that she could make out my face a little, and mentioned that it looked just like how she imagined it with a red face. That said, it was probably only because I''ve gotten used to leaving [Suppress Aura] on all the time, so my aura hardly stood out from my body. Normally, that would mean that even with [Mana Perception] people would barely be able to see my aura, or it would look incredibly weak, but for a blind person like Alicia, it meant that my aura replaced the normal sight of me. But Alicia turned her head from looking at my face to my side, and stared at something behind me. "What...coughcough is that...?" She slowly tried to extend her arm past my side. (Shit!) I quickly retracted my wings and returned my back to normal. Alicia twitched at the sudden movement, but slowly turned to look back at me. "Ah, erm...I was practising a new skill" "Really? What kind?" Her eyes started to sparkle at my words. "Ah er...umm...it''s a secret" "You...don''t want to tell me?" Those sparkling eyes immediately grew dim as she lowered her gaze. "No! That''s not it. It''s just...it''s a surprise! That''s it! It''s a secret for now until I master the new skill, then I was going to show you" "Really?" She looked at me with upturned eyes. (Gah! My heart!) Even though I''ve had very little sugar intake since becoming a vampire, it felt like I was quickly on track to getting diagnosed with type two diabetes. "Really! It''s a promise! So for now, can you hold off your curiosity until then?" "Mmmmm! ...fine" The little girl in my lap puffed her cheeks and turned forward again, but it seemed like she quickly forgot it in a daze as she enjoyed the rest of her ice cream. After that, I was pretty limited in how I could practice with my wings. Flapping them was out of the question, as it would tip Alicia off as to what I was planning on surprising her with. Thoughts of flying in the night sky together prevented me from stopping my practice until I could flexibly move my wings like they were any other limb. Alicia''s continued work at practising her perception skills was bearing fruit. Not only had she gotten the three main ones, but [Spirit Perception] and [Sense Presence] had reached rank three, and [Mana Perception] had even reached rank four. As her skill ranks went up, she spent more and more time just staring at me. Whenever I looked at her back, she''d just beam me a grin and go back to whatever she was doing before. I wasn''t sure if she just wanted some of my attention or what, but it was kinda cute. During the weeks and months she had been raising her skills, I had also been busy expanding our home. The kitchen was expanded with several stone boxes I could use as an oven or ice box, depending on what I was making, in addition to a barbecue grill that could double as a proper stove top. The bath tub was expanded with a second basin connected to wash in so that soap suds wouldn''t cling to our bodies as we soaked in it. In addition, I added stairs and hand rails so that Alicia could get in and out on her own. But after teaching her that, she had yet to actually use them once. I finally made a proper bed as well. It was made from a wooden frame and a series of leather sheets were sewn together to create the mattress, which was filled with the feathers of some of the bird monsters on the 16th floor. Unlike the couch though, I went through some more effort and made some bed sheets and blankets out of felt, made from pressed wool from sheep-like monsters on the 52nd floor. I made it nice and big so that we wouldn''t have to squeeze our bodies onto that narrow couch. Unfortunately, Alicia refused to use it properly and continued to use my body as a mattress and my chest as a pillow. At least the felt bed sheets didn''t stick to my body whenever there was even a bit of moisture left behind after a bath...or when Alicia''s drool streamed down my ribs to collect on my back. The higher her perception skills got, the less time we spent concentrating exclusively on them and more time finding ways to enjoy ourselves. Since I had a stack of those mana infused rags, I tried wrapping my leather ball with them so Alicia and I could play with it. At first we played by rolling the ball across the ground. But as her [Mana Perception] got better, she was better able to distinguish it''s location faster and more accurately, so we advanced to bouncing the ball across to throwing it lightly. Alicia loved it, as it was a way for her to play that was impossible for her before we met. Also perhaps thanks to it, I had been able to spend a few minutes at a time separated from her, though she always came over to stick to me after a bit. At least she didn''t look upset about it. Rather, when she slowly walked over, she''d just hug me and give me a bright smile. I was happy that she didn''t mind playing on her own anymore, but I didn''t dare let her out of my sight. Even turning my back on her for more than a few seconds made me anxious. If she was moving around on her own now, then there was the danger of her walking into something she couldn''t see and getting hurt. To make up for that, I tried placing those magical rags around on anything that she could bump into and scattered those coloured stones around the base of the walls. Thankfully she hadn''t gotten hurt as of yet. In fact, sometimes I caught her deliberately walking to a specific piece of furniture to climb on to or to the walls to bounce her ball against. Whenever we went outside, since her [Spirit Perception] had reached the point where she could faintly see the little fluffballs, she learned to start playing with them. We''d chase after groups together, or be chased by them. We''d dance together to soundless tunes, or just take a stroll in a group. As I promised her, Alicia quickly became friends with the spirits. Seeing her grow a bit independent made me smile, but I couldn''t help but worry she might get hurt at the same time. I did my best to keep an eye out for her at all times. I started to notice a disturbing trend: Alicia''s coughing was growing more frequent. I had originally dismissed it as a symptom of her hypothermia, or her malnutrition, or something along those lines, but while it got better at first, her coughing slowly progressed and became more frequent and more severe after a few months. No matter what sort of checks I tried, both physical and system based, I couldn''t figure out the cause. All I could do was try to get her to eat as healthily as possible while trying to get her rest as much as possible. In place of practising skills and playing with the ball, I told her stories from Earth, altered in ways that she could better understand them. I wasn''t too familiar with fairy tales aside from the most well known ones, but when it came to shows and games, I knew a ton. While she enjoyed story time and didn''t complain about the food getting filled more and more with vegetables, she did pout about not going to the dungeon and help me get various resources. "Uuu...you''re holding back, aren''t you Scarlet?" "I''m not doing such a thing. We have enough until you get better" I was holding Alicia in my arms as we lay on the bed. If I didn''t go that far during the day, then she''d be up and refusing to rest. "I don''t feel that bad, and we really don''t, do we?" "We''re not that bad off" "But that''s only coughcoughhackcough" "Look, you''re sick. Just rest like a good girl. We can gather everything we need when you get better" "Muuu...that''s cheap" "It''s the truth" I stroked her head as I held her close to my chest. At first she was putting on meat at a good pace, but lately, despite her growing taller, it didn''t feel like she was gaining any weight anymore. Instead, it was like my chest was getting constricted by the amount she should''ve been gaining. Even more recently, I could even smell blood faintly on her breath. ================= "So, what is it you wanted to talk to me about?" In a pearl white room, two men with very different builds wearing distinctly different togas were talking. One was a wiry man who looked like he had spent too many sleepless nights. He was sitting behind a desk as white as the surrounding walls, lightly decorated with a single crystal ball and various knickknacks. The other was a large, muscular man, built as if his sole existence was to oppress others. He was sitting opposite to the thin man in the guest seat. "Do you think there''s a chance that...a soul may have gone missing?" "...What are you insinuating?" The muscular man in front of the desk narrowed his eyes as he glared at the one behind the desk. The man''s head receded slightly, as if he was trying to imitate a turtle, but he straitened his posture after a moment. His hand reached down into a drawer and returned with a torn piece of paper. "This is?" "Something I found" The man pushed the paper towards the front of the desk. The other cautiously raised an eyebrow before taking a glance. "When did you find this?" "Right after I came back from my vacation" "It''s been a while since then. What have you been doing this entire time?" "I was trying to get more clues on my own, but I''m at my limit" "..." "This realm. These 250 realms. The security for their reincarnation offices are your jurisdiction" The giant of a man narrowed his eyes again and crossed his arms, his fingers biting into his biceps as he strained to keep his emotions in check. "What do you want?" After a minute, he asked in a low voice. "Give me a champion" Chapter 23 – Alicia It was a bit over a year after we met when it happened. "Coughcoughhackcoughhackcoughcoughwheezecough" It came all of the sudden while we were having a warm soak in the bath together. Alicia seemed like she was a bit better that day, but out of nowhere she suddenly had the worst coughing fit I''ve ever seen. She tried to bury her face into my chest as if she was trying desperately to suppress it, but instead I could feel my chest being splattered with something wet. "Alicia! You alright? How do you feel!?" I held the sick girl a little back so I could see her face. She was in a bit of a daze, but I could smell it. It was blood, and not like the usual amount. It was the scent of a bleeding wound. There was even a bit of blood on her lips. I had the worst feeling as my stomach rolled end over end. My hand went to my chest and touched the spot Alicia coughed into. It was wet with something sticky and a bit thick. I brought my hand up and saw. This time, she had coughed up blood. A lot of it. In a hurry, I jumped out of the bath and dried our bodies with magic before pressing her body against mine and I lay onto the bed as gently as I could before covering ourselves in every blanket I had. After all this time, it was natural to sleep this way, and I had already lay down on the bed before I realized what I was doing. That said, since we were used to sleeping like this, not doing so would needlessly make Alicia anxious, making it more difficult for her to rest and heal. I levitated over a scrap of leather to wipe Alicia''s mouth and my chest. If what was making her sick was also in these clumps of blood, then I needed to keep them away from her. Immediately after, I used [Scan] on her and started going through the endless pages of her data. There was so much information here, there must be something that said what was wrong. But perhaps because I couldn''t understand what was written well enough, just like the dozens the other times I''ve opened her data, I couldn''t figure out what was wrong. I bit my lip, barely aware that my fang tore right through it. Whatever was causing this, it wasn''t a status ailment, at least not the sort that the system would recognized as. If that was the case, then must''ve been something that the system didn''t cover. But what would that be? The system did properly show things like poison or paralysis. I confirmed such things when I suffered various status ailments while I was alone in the dungeon. Any time I wasn''t feeling well, I was easily able to confirm it in my own status, so why couldn''t I see what was making Alicia suffer through hers? I opened my own data and compared the information, but quickly gave up. They were too different. We weren''t even the same species, so even the things that were fine would be drastically different. It was useless as a point of reference. I bit my already healed lip in frustration, but I hardly noticed the pain of tearing right though it once more. "Uuu..." "Alicia! Alicia, how are you feeling" "S, Scarlet?" "That''s right. I''m here. How are you feeling?" Her breathing was laboured and unsteady. I can hear faint wheezing with each breath, along with the strong scent of blood. "I...coughhackcoughcough" Specks of blood splattered onto my chest. Her face looked pale. No, not just her face, her whole body was almost as pale as my own. For me, that was just how I was, but for a human like her, that was a terrible omen. "I''m, I''m just tired. I''ll be good again in the morning" Alicia smiled weakly as she looked into my eyes. It was only then I had realized it. That smile. That smile was the same one she had been giving me for the last few months whenever I showed concern over her health. This wasn''t something new. I knew that much, but Alicia had been aware that she had been growing more and more sick. I bit though my lip for the third time today, then swallowed my emotions like they were pieces of chalk in my mouth. "Okay, then rest. I''ll be here the entire time, so sleep and rest. We can play when you get better Alicia" She weakly nodded before closing her eyes. I wrapped my arms around her body as tightly as I dared. I couldn''t stop them from shaking, but Alicia didn''t react to it. No, she pretended not to notice. Tears ran down my face as I desperately tried to come up with any ideas as to what was happening to Alicia''s body or what I could do about it, but the night passed without a single idea solidifying inside of me. "Mmmm..." "!" Alicia stirred, and slowly opened her eyes. "Good morning Scarlet" "Good morning Alicia" "I''m feeling better...!" "No you''re not. You''re still sick. I''m not letting you out of bed today" Alicia tried to push herself up, but I stubbornly pulled her back into my chest. She had regained a bit of colour, and her eyes focused better than they did the night before, but I wasn''t under any illusions. There was no way she had recovered in a single night what had been bringing her down slowly over months. No, perhaps even years. "Muuu" "I won''t yield. You''re going to rest, and you''re going to get better. I won''t allow any objections" Perhaps seeing the determination in my eyes, Alicia gave up without complaining, but I didn''t miss how her lips curled up at the ends a bit as she tried to hide her face. "But first, I''m going to do a full examination. We can''t beat this illness if we don''t know more about it" I rolled to my side, and gently lowered Alicia directly to the mattress. The little girl shot her arms around my neck as I tried to pull away. "Muuuuu!" "I need to examine your body. There''s no way I can do that while you''re lying on top of me" "Uuuu..." She let go of me, but she was oozing with dissatisfaction. To make up for it, I held her hand. Her expression got a little better, but she didn''t let go of that frown. As Alicia lay there on her back, I got a full view of her body, and I was shocked. Her body had gotten as thin as when we had first met. Even this morning she was eating more than ever, yet it didn''t reflect on her body in the slightest. It was like something was sucking all the nutrients out of her food before her body could use it. Both her ribs and her pelvis were clearly visible, and her limbs had almost no muscle or fat on them. (How had I not noticed this?) I clenched my teeth. I had become careless. If I didn''t fix this immediately, I''d never be able to make up for my mistake. My hand touched her forehead, throat, chest, and belly, checking for any abnormalities I could detect. But I wasn''t a doctor of any kind. I couldn''t tell if there were any issues where I touched. There weren''t any problems with her aura either, as far as I could tell. It was as thick and strong as ever, though not as energetic as it used to be. I moved over Alicia and pressed my ear against her chest. Her heartbeats were regular, though not very strong. Her breathing on the other hand was very rough. The airflow sounded like it was extremely turbulent, like her breathing was partially blocked somewhere and the air was forced to flow through a narrow passage that wasn''t supposed to be like that. At least, that''s what it sounded like to me. "Alicia, could you take a deep breath?" Her small chest rose a bit, but quickly deflated. "Did you take as big of a breath as you could?" "I did" Was that normal? It definitely felt small, but her body was smaller than mine, so she obviously couldn''t take as big of a breath as I could. But even then, it felt small. I was reasonably sure that the problem lay with her lungs, but what could it be? "Coughcoughhackwheezecoughcough" As Alicia started to cough again, I wrapped an arm around the back of her head and held her to my chest. Until I could figure out what to do to fix her, all I could was comfort her the best I could. I could feel my chest grow wet, but I ignored it and held on to Alicia tightly until she calmed down again. "I...I''m sorry" "There''s nothing for you to be sorry about Alicia" She was sick. It wasn''t her fault. None of this was her fault. She shouldn''t have had to suffer any of this, but it seemed like this world was pretty unfair like my last. Was it trying to correct the fact that she was supposed to die a year ago? I refused such a reasoning. Nobody should be fated to die, especially someone innocent like Alicia. I''d overturn any logic if it was to save Alicia. I was at my limit when it came to figuring out anything from Alicia''s body. No inspection or examination told me more than what I already knew, which was that there was probably something wrong with her lungs. If I could see inside, then maybe I could figure out more, but x-ray machines didn''t exist in this world the best I could tell, nor did I have the skill for x-ray vision. And it wasn''t like I could make such a skill. The logic behind such an ability was completely arbitrary and dubious, made entirely of convenient movie logic and nothing more. It was the same as infrared vision somehow being able to see through solid walls. It was nothing more than a convenient plot device that ignored any logic beyond ''it''s how it works in this fictional world.'' I couldn''t understand her data, any surface inspection gave me virtually no useful information, and I couldn''t see inside without doing serious harm to her body. I was at my wit''s end, and all I could do was lay Alicia''s body on top of my own and hug her in comfort. But who was I kidding? It was only for my own comfort, and the fact that she quietly lay there as we hugged each other was proof of that. No matter how sick she was, she was still a seven year old child. She was probably bored whenever she wasn''t asleep. Every time she noticed I was staring at her, Alicia would raise her head and give me the biggest smile she could, but otherwise kept quiet. She even kept her breathing shallow to avoid wheezing and coughing as much as possible. "Coughcoughhackcoughwheeze" I''ve lost count of how many times blood had splattered onto my chest as Alicia coughed, but once again I retrieved a clean piece of leather I had shredded to make cleaning rags and wiped myself and Alicia so that she had at least a clean place to rest on. (If only I could see inside of Alicia, maybe I could get a clue as to what''s wrong) I had also lost count of how many times I had thought this. With how often Alicia had coughed up blood, she might be getting pretty low on it. Was her body producing enough to make up for the loss? At least her appetite hadn''t suffered from all of this. The amount of blood on the rag wasn''t really significant. Maybe just a handful of drops, but it''s happened so many times, it''s gotta add up. If only I could give her a transfusion or something, but never mind the lack of quality needles and tubing, I didn''t even know if my blood would be compatible. Forget blood type, we weren''t even the same species. The effects could be disastrous. I bit my lip in frustration for who knows how many times already. As I moved to throw the rag into the pile of used rags, something wet dripped onto my closed hand. I wasn''t really concerned with my hand getting dirty, there were more important things than that, but the rag was already in that hand. When I tried to wipe it off before tossing the rag, I noticed that the thing that dripped wasn''t just blood, but it was lumpy. At first I was going to dismiss it as just a coagulation, but then I noticed that there were white bits inside of the red. Curious, I tried poking the lump, and found it was soft, and it''s form was weak, like it wasn''t really a solid mass with a specific shape. If anything, it was like a piece of an organ. Excited at the clue, I levitated over the entire pile of rags and searched through them. There were other lumps in other pieces of leather as well. I couldn''t quite tell what it was from simply examining it normally, so I used [Scan] to figure out more. ''A piece of flesh discharged through Alicia''s regular coughing. Most likely a piece of her lung'' The words weren''t very encouraging, but the information that went with it was. It was definitely a piece of lung tissue, but some of them were a little different. Some pieces had slightly different information compared to the others. I couldn''t understand the details of the specifications, but it did give me one idea. It was probably lung cancer, and it had progressed to the point that parts of it had torn from Alicia''s violent coughing fit. Sometimes the piece was cancerous tissue, and others it was normal lung tissue after it had been displaced and weakened by the tumour. But it wasn''t like that revelation helped me in the slightest. Rather, all it did was do a murder stroke to the little hope I had. The only way to cure cancer I could think of was through normal healing of the body. Magic had no cure I could think of. Any kind of healing magic would only strengthen the tumour, and anything else was nothing more than amateur surgery. It was more likely to kill Alicia outright than actually save her. Not only that, but it would be in an excruciating manner, as I had no anaesthesia, nor knowledge of any magic that could replace it. I couldn''t do that to her. Not without a significant chance of success at least. The only alternative I could think of was chemo therapy, but that required radioactive materials. There was no such thing I could find in the dungeon, and I doubted the outside world, which looked pre-Victorian, would have discovered any either. All I could do was hug Alicia and do my best to not let her notice I was crying. In the days since her big coughing fit, Alicia''s condition had rapidly worsened. Day by day, she grew weaker and weaker. Her limbs had grown a little thinner, yet her belly had started to bulge a little. Likely her organs had been displaced a bit by the tumour. At first, I had to keep reminding her to rest to recover, but rather than gaining energy, she had simply lost it. Now she couldn''t even get up on her own, and I helped her in everything, from carrying her to bathe to feeding her directly. She hated it at first, especially not helping to cook, nor being fed like a baby, but I practically begged her to rest and concentrate on recovering. She had stopped complaining entirely after then. I felt bad about it. Alicia loved to move her body, to not feel helpless, but I was directly taking away her agency. But I couldn''t stop. Anything that could improve her chances, anything that would bring relief to her, I had to do. The two of us became entirely inseparable, as I stuck my body to hers the entire time, skin to skin. I couldn''t help but worry that she might lose the ability to properly regulate her temperature at any time like when we had first met, so I refused to allow any burden on to her body if I could help it. But in the corner of my mind, I knew. At the very best, I was only pushing back the inevitable a little. Alicia wasn''t getting better. There was no signs that it would get better. I neither had the knowledge or ability to fix what was happening to her. All I could do was keep her as comfortable as possible, but due to my own selfishness, I also stopped her from doing anything she liked, as it would strain her weak body. I hated myself for that, and every time Alicia weakly smiled when she looked at me, I could feel my chest be torn to shreds. I wasn''t comforting her, but she was comforting me instead. This was wrong. Everything about it was wrong. I hated it. I didn''t want this to happen. Why did Alicia have to suffer? "...Scarlet?" Alicia''s tiny hand was touching my cheek. "I''m sorry. I''m sorry. I''m sorry" I''ve been nothing but a wreck for a while now. I spent more time crying than doing anything else as I held Alicia''s frail body as tightly as I dared. "I keep cough saying you don''t...need to be..." "But still. If only I was stronger, or more knowledgeable. I''d be able to save you" "You...already did. I keep saying cough that" She had. These last few days she had been doing nothing but trying to convince me of that. But in turn that was how my tear ducts broke entirely. Alicia''s hand was soaked with my tears as they refused to stop flowing down my cheeks. "I want..." "Want? Want what? I''ll do anything for you!" (Was it ice cream? I''ll make as much as you want! Was it to go see the spirits? I''d endure the sunlight so you could see them!) "I want...you to..." "Yes?" "Eat me" I froze. My mind was completely unable to process what she had asked. "...what?" "Scarlet...I want...to be together...forever...so...drink my...blood..." Alicia brute forced her way through the broken gears of my head, as she wheezed while pushing out those words. "What? But...what? How did you...?" (Know) What she was saying. Her line of words should''ve meant for me to to eat her flesh so we''d be one, but she specifically said blood. "The adventurers told me...a long time...ago...a person travelled...all alone...met many other...helped them...saved them...but she was always alone...in the end..." I remembered that story. For some reason, it was Alicia''s favourite story from the ones the adventurers had told her. More than the recent ones about the heroes against the demon lord, more than the ones about other legendary figures who fought to protect the world. It was a story about a sole woman who travelled around and helped people, doing good everywhere she went, but she never got close to anyone. She was an odd person who rarely let anyone see her beauty, but became famous as the ''lone stranger.'' Her exploits ranged from helping the sick to saving the poor from monsters. It was as if there wasn''t anything she could do, but nobody knew where she came from. In the end, she was slain by someone who had mistaken her for someone else. Some hero found her near a group of demons and thought she was a part of their group, and so slew her. He only found out who she was after describing her beauty when someone who happened to have seen her face heard of the story. It was a nice tale, but had such a sad ending. I patiently listened as Alicia told the story again for who knows how many times, her telling slowed down by the shallowness of her breath. "So the people mourned...that their saviour...couldn''t be saved...but...there''s a part...I never said..." (Huh? There''s more?) "They said...she was a person...from the...red moon..." "The red moon?" (An alien or something?) Alicia nodded to my question. "The legends said...people came...from the moon...as red as their eyes..." Red eyes? People thought she came from the red moon because her eyes were red? "Because...of that...they called her...Scarlet" (Huh? But...that''s the name she gave me) "You saved...me...so you''re the same...as her..." "I, I didn''t do anything. I haven''t saved you. You''re still sick, and I can''t do anything about it!" I shook my head, a river flowed from my eyes. "No...you''re the same...my life was always dark...I couldn''t play with others... I couldn''t help others... I was a burden... I could only...listen to people''s stories...or stay out of...the way" Alicia''s expression darkened as she recalled her old memories, but as quick as the shadow fell, it was blasted away and she gave me the brightest smile I had seen in weeks. "But then you...appeared...like the red moon...in the darkest night...just like she did...in the stories" The pieces were coming together in my head, but there were still too many missing for me to grasp what exactly she was talking about, and how it all connected. "They said...the people of...the red moon...were called that...because they were...rejected by...the sun...and she was...the same" (Re...rejected? But that''s...isn''t that basically describing sunlight weakness?) And there weren''t any creatures more famous for that weakness than that one. "But, then she was..." Alicia weakly nodded. "And they said...her people...gained strength...from the...blood of others" There was no doubt to what she was saying. No, not just that, but what she knew from the day we met. Her eyes were clouded over and she couldn''t see, yet somehow she could see better than I with my super human eyes. "I don''t...want to keep...being a burden...let me...be your strength...please Scarlet" Those words. I didn''t want to hear those words. She didn''t need to become my feed. I didn''t need to pad out my status page with her life. Having her beside me gave me more strength than any amount of stats and skills I could possibly gain from consuming her life. "No...I...I can''t. I won''t. I''ll find a way. I can save you. Just...just wait a bit. I''ll figure it out. I can do it. You''ll get better. I can save you" "I said...you already have...Scarlet...you''re a good girl...don''t let me...become a bad girl..." I kept blinking away the tears, but they wouldn''t go away. There must be a way I could save her. Somehow, someway. But...but that''s... "That''s cheap..." Alicia smiled wryly, but her fingers still wiped the tears from my face even as more flowed out. "Please...before it''s...too late..." The little girl in my arms gave me her last will, no matter how much it hurt to even speak. No matter how much it hurt to hear her say it. Chapter 24 – Slumber Alicia''s pushed herself past the edge just to finish delivering those words to me. Her hand dropped from my face. In a panic, I checked her breathing and her pulse, but they didn''t stop. She was just sleeping. I sighed in relief, but I couldn''t relax. Her last words were driven home. She wanted to become a part of me, to support me in however small way she could. She no longer had the ability to do so at my side, so she came up with this alternative. I hated it. I hated it so much, but I couldn''t deny it. Alicia really was a good girl. Much better than me. I understood the logic of her words, and under normal circumstances, it was the pretty ideal, even if it was a bit cruel. No, it was very cruel. But it didn''t stop being the most optimal solution. But that was, only if circumstances were normal. Maybe, just maybe, I could figure out some other solution. I had powers that didn''t normally exist in this world. My administrative privileges were something that weren''t supposed to exist in the hands of a normal person as best as I could tell. I immediately used [Scan] once again on Alicia and confirmed the two links I had discovered before. Her [Memory] and [Core]. If I could somehow extract those two things, then maybe, just maybe, even after her body wasn''t able to support her anymore, I could preserve these two bits, then someday I could restore her life. Maybe even make a new body and insert these core elements of her into it so she could live once more. The clues I had were extremely limited though. This method of saving someone was obviously something wasn''t supposed to exist within the system. I had never seen any skills that even hinted at it''s possibility. Or rather, not one that was supposed to be used in even the most remotely similar way. I already had a single skill that actually fulfilled a similar effect: [Blood Suck]. Looking into the source code again, it was an incredibly complex skill, beyond any other which I had. Even the basic outline was complex. Draw, separate, store, filter, and integrate. The first step was to draw the blood from the target''s body. This was obviously the sucking part of the skill. While it was obvious, even that was actually very complex. Drawing didn''t just draw the target''s blood, but it''s data. It directly accessed the database and drew on the data of the target. It was frankly a terrifying discovery. Next, separate was to divide the blood into two streams. The first was the physical part, which was used to nourish my body. The second was to extract the essence out of the blood. This step did nothing if the target didn''t have blood in the first place. The third was to temporarily store the essence in a container to be processed. The skill itself had it''s own sub-container that worked to store the essence to prevent overloading the next step. Filter was literally filtering out the unwanted bits of the essence. This was separating anything that the skill wouldn''t use, but was an integral part of an essence. Basically it stripped out and discarded anything that wasn''t pure mana, XP material, or skill components. The final step was integration. Mana was integrated to fill my MP, XP materials to give me XP towards levelling up, and skill components to learn and rank up my skills. If I stopped the skill at the third step, then maybe, just maybe, I could preserve Alicia''s soul. If I had that, then I could take my time to save her. If that works. Will it work? I didn''t know, but it was better than facing certain death. Unlike amateur hour in the surgery ward, I''d say that this had a much higher chance of working, and it shouldn''t be too painful either. This was it. There was no hope other than this. I couldn''t save Alicia''s body, but if I could save her soul, then she had a chance. Without any time to lose, I quickly opened up the skill list and made a copy of [Blood Sucking], then removed all the unnecessary parts. The new version would draw out everything with the target''s blood, separate the blood from the mana and personal data, then store that mana and data into a container. I removed all parts of the skill that would do any sort of processing to the data itself and instead added code to ensure the preservation of the stored data and to prevent any leakage. I renamed the skill to [Soul Siphon] and removed the description and acquisition method. After a bit of back and forth, I managed to save the skill with only the missing acquisition method and description warnings, then swapped my skill [Breeding (Orc)] with it. There were no obvious problems with the skill, but I needed to test it. The ramification of making a mistake would likely crush me. I gently moved Alicia off of me so I could get up. "Mmmmm..." A dissatisfied expression rose up on her face as she weakly groped around in her sleep. I put the bunny plush bag into her her hand. The little sleeping girl quickly pulled the doll to her chest and her expression softened a bit. I tucked her in under the blanket properly before heading outside. The exact nature of what the monsters in the dungeon were was still a mystery. Whether they were really alive or not wasn''t something I knew for sure. As long as I didn''t know, they wouldn''t be good test subjects. The moment I took a step into the blinding light of the daytime sun, my view was quickly blocked by a massive swarm of glowing balls of fluff. "Wha, wha?! You guys!" It must''ve been because it''s been quite a few days since I last came out of the dungeon. The little fluffballs must''ve been worried. "Hey, you guys. It''s been a while" I activated [Spirit Form] and they took turns to rub my body like a swarm of cats. Their joy and happiness clearly transmitted to me and helped lift my spirits a bit. But after a little while, they backed off. In place of pure joy, there was something darker. At least, that''s what it felt like. "She...she''s not doing well" I fell to my knees. I couldn''t stop the tears from dropping. The little spirits lowered themselves and rubbed themselves against my body gently. My sides, my back, the top of my head. "Thanks. I''ve got an idea. It might not...save her in the conventional sense...but I''m hoping that we won''t lose her at least" But I hoped that it wasn''t a devil''s bargain either. If things didn''t work how I hoped, then I might be condemning Alicia to something worse than death. "It''s going to take a bit more time. Try to be patient for a bit longer everyone" The fluffballs swirled around like a vortex, rising up and up as one, until they reached the apex and separated. It was like fireworks. "I...I''ll definitely save her. I promise that. And I''ll give you guys the chance to show that to her as well!" I rubbed my face with my sleeve and gave the little spirits a big, toothy grin before running off to find a target to test my new skill on. "I''ll be back! I promise! Just wait a bit!" As I started to run, I threw a whole bunch of mana treats into the air before turning forward again. Quickly past tree after tree, I held the rim of my hood to avoid it from being blown back. Soon, my [Sense Presence] skill detected a group of three. They were small and huddled together. Most likely goblins. The perfect target. Without taking the time to slow down, I leapt into the air and gave a flying kick to two of them. The two goblins'' heads exploded on impact, splattering me with blood, but I ignored it. I only did it because they''d get in the way, and no other reason. Cockroaches get no rights. The third goblin stood there stunned, and did nothing as I quickly approached it and bit it in the neck. But against all my instincts, instead of simply sucking out it''s blood and letting my body do the rest of the work, I deliberately activated my new skill [Soul Siphon], and let it do the work of drawing in the goblin''s blood. The blood tasted foul, like dirty water. I was amazed how I used to crave such things when I first arrived in this world. It must really be a sign as to how much my tastes have refined since then. As I sucked the monster''s blood, I activated [Scan] and had a look. The results the skill gave me was quite a bit different from what I was used to. There wasn''t as much information as for Alicia or myself, which entire parts missing. I checked the [Memory] and [Core]. They were just as I had expected, but the files were even smaller than Alicia''s. Maybe this goblin was even younger than her? Ah, I found the age. This one''s only 1.8 years old. It''s even younger than me. I continued to suck it''s blood, but suddenly I started to get a plethora of warnings. They read that the essence tank was at maximum capacity. Immediately, I stopped sucking and let the goblin drop. Clearing out the warnings, I opened up the source code for my skill. In it, I found the container file for essence storage and opened it up. Inside, I could see the goblin''s data, but parts of it were missing. I even found the [Memory] and [Core] links, but the file inside of [Memory] was much smaller than the one I looked at on the goblin itself and the [Core] file was entirely empty. My eyes went to the crumpled green body. It was twitching, but otherwise lay still. It seemed to still be alive, but it''s consciousness wasn''t present. Or at least, it wasn''t capable of coherent movement. With a quick use of [Scan], I saw how most of it''s data was now missing. [Memory] was almost entirely empty, but more importantly the [Core] file was still present in it''s entirety. My attention returned to the source code for [Soul Siphon] and checked to see what had happened. The warning stated that the essence tank was full, and when I checked it, it really was. The tank was at maximum capacity. Of course it wouldn''t be able to fit any more data. I was instantly relieved that I had tested this out on a goblin first. If I had used it on Alicia without first confirming it worked, it could''ve done irreparable damage to her. Since the data wouldn''t fit into the container file, all I had to do was increase it''s size. Changing the size of an existing skill wasn''t possible, but it was easy to just make a new skill with a larger size, and that''s what I did. I created a blank skill with the greatest size I could, then copied over [Soul Siphon]''s code and files to the new skill and increased the size of the container file to it''s limit. It easily became over twenty times larger. Finally, I changed the ID tag on my local skill to the new one I had just made, and in a second the new master skill overwrote my local skill. Fortunately, the data on the goblin was also transferred, so I could continue my experiment. I grabbed the green monster and sucked out the last drop of it''s blood using my new skill. No new warnings appeared, and when I used [Scan] on it, nothing showed up. Just a blank window with no data. The empty green husk fell limply to the ground as I let go of it and checked my own data. Inside of the skill, the container file was filled to 15% capacity, and all the data of the goblin was present, including the [Memory] and [Core] files. I had succeeded without issue. Since I had confirmed that, I altered the master file to purge the essence tank, and my skill automatically did so. Once I confirmed that it was empty, I changed the skill back, and started to go around testing the skill further. A single goblin was hardly anything more than a basic test. I needed more samples before I was sure that it was safe for Alicia. In the end, I returned after using the skill on another twelve monsters. Ten goblins and two large rabbits. I even tested the capacity and it had no problems holding six goblins at the same time before I purged the data. I was as confident as I could be that this would work. In a flash, I rushed back to Alicia, giving a short greeting and apology to the little spirits as I passed by them. Thankfully, she hadn''t woken up while I was out, so I carefully slipped back into bed and lay her on top of my body. Despite my best efforts though, Alicia''s expression did end up changing as she slept. Even while asleep, a smile sprouted on her lips when she got back into her usual position, resting on my oversized breast like a pillow. Everything had been prepared, to the best of my ability. I had no ideas better than this one, but it was the only one that would buy me the time to figure out a way to let Alicia survive this. Maybe there were skills I hadn''t found yet through the master database. There were so many and a lot of them had incomprehensible names. But betting on an unknown like that was too risky. For now, I had a solid chance. But there was still one thing left I needed to do. Until I could do that, I returned to scanning through the skill list on the off chance that I get lucky and find a proper solution to our problem. "Mmmmm..." Alicia quietly stirred as I was in the middle of stroking her hair. "Scarlet?" The little girl rubbed her eyes and yawned before going into a coughing fit. In a panic, I sat up and held her close to me as I rubbed her back. Eventually she calmed down, entrusting the weight of her body to me. The little girl''s arms snaked around me and did their best to held her even closer to me as their feeble strength could manage. "...Scarlet?" "Yes?" "My...request..." I stiffened at her words. I hated it. I hated it so much. But I didn''t want to deny her. And on top of that, my new invention was most likely her best chance at surviving. But if it didn''t work, we would lose whatever time we had left together. But if I waited until the last second, then I might lose my chance. I wanted to savour every last bit of time we had together before I executed my plan. But doing so risked losing everything. More than me, Alicia understood that. And so, I hated it. "Please...Scarlet" The strength in her arms increased ever so slightly, but it was likely the most she was now capable of. "Alicia..." My words caught in my throat. Tears streamed down my cheeks again. "Scarlet?" Alicia''s upturned eyes pierced right through me. I was supposed to be the older one. I was supposed to be the one with a big body and a high level. But why was it that it was her eyes that looked so strong? Her eyes that couldn''t see a thing only a year ago, and even now light failed to penetrate. I took a deep breath. "I...I have a special power. One that nobody else in the world has, most likely" As I started my speech, the frail girl in my arms simply stared into my eyes. I felt like I was about to be swallowed whole by those big eyes. "One of the things I can do with it is...to make new skills. Ones that never existed before" I grit my teeth as regret filled me. If only I could better use this power. The authority I stole when I reincarnated. If I was a better person, a stronger person, a smarter person, I could''ve fixed Alicia. I could''ve prevented her from suffering in the first place. "But, I''m not that good at using this power, so I can''t save you" I couldn''t do it. This was my limit. "Instead, I came up with an idea. I found a way to take you inside of my body and let you sleep until I figure out a way to properly save you. Do you..." My words got stuck in my throat. (What if she refused?) "Do you...want to try it?" "I can...sleep inside of...you...and wake up...if you..." "When! When I figure out a way to properly save you!" "Scarlet. Only bad girls...make promises...they can''t...keep" "I...I..." I wanted to refute her. I wanted to say I would definitely do it. But there were no assurances. No guarantees. As far as I knew, it was completely unprecedented. I didn''t even know if it was possible. Not without the tools that I found in the white rooms back when I died. But I understood. My words weren''t a reassurance for Alicia. They were for me. I couldn''t face the possibility that this wouldn''t work. I clenched my teeth as rivers of tears flowed from my eyes. "If that''s...what you...came up with...I''ll do it...I trust you...Scarlet" Finally, the last barrier to enacting my plan had eroded away. Nothing stopped me from using my new skill on Alicia anymore. But I hesitated. In a sense, Alicia would die when I used the skill. I may preserve what made her her, but in return, her body would become an empty husk. Not only that, but I''d have no way to talk to Alicia. No way to hear her voice. No way to see her smile. It wasn''t true death, but it was very close. And it would come at my own hands. "Coughhackcoughwheezehackcoughcoughwheezecoughcoughcoughhackhackcough" Alicia entered the worst coughing fit I had seen. All I could do was keep holding her close as I rubbed her back. Her time was getting close. "Scarlet...please...do it..." I could feel it in my heart as well that if I waited much longer, then I''d lose my only chance. With all the willpower I could muster, I pushed back the tears that kept overflowing, and gently lay Alicia on to her back beside me. Then I straddled over her body. My eyes went to the carotid artery in her neck. I didn''t want to eat her. (To think I''d return to my first thought of her) "Umm...I just remembered" "...?" "How did you figure out what I was?" Alicia''s eyes looked at me with surprise. Of course they did. What a weird question to ask at the moment of truth. But despite all that, a weak, stick-like arm reached out and touched my ear. "Because of...this..." "Huh?" It was related to my ear? How? "They say...vampires have...eyes like the...red moon...and skin that...has never known...the sun..." (Well, that does describe me, but how could a blind child figure it out with that?) "And ears...sharp like elves..." "But then..." "And your breath...always smelt...like blood" (So that was the real reason) To have though it was as simple as that. She figured it out with only two simple clues. It might not be enough for others, but it was for her. "I see..." Alicia smiled like a little prankster. "Well...happy dreams Alicia. I promise I''ll do my best to wake you up" "It''ll definitely...be happy. Because...I''ll always...be with...you...Scarlet" My lower lip quivered as she gave me a gentle smile. I steeled myself and bit into the little girl''s neck while activating [Soul Siphon] at the same time. The skill drew in Alicia''s blood through my fangs. I could feel her enter my body. I repeated activated [Scan] as I watched the progress. Little by little, her data disappeared from her body as I was filled by her entire being. As I sucked her blood, Alicia''s body stiffened, her teeth clenched in obvious pain. But as much as I wanted to stop, if I did, then I risked causing irreparable damage. Tears freely flowed down my cheeks, and I closed my eyes. I couldn''t bear to watch the pain I was inflicting on Alicia. But something soft and warm touched my cheek. When I opened my eyes, I saw Alicia looking directly at me. My hand reached for my cheek, and my fingers brushed even smaller fingers. Alicia was in pain which I couldn''t even imagine, she could hardly even breath, yet, she gave me a small smile as her hand gently stroked my cheek. It wasn''t fair. It wasn''t fair at all. Why did she have to suffer through all of this? Why did a useless person like me get a second chance when such a strong, courageous child like her not even get her first? Why was the world so cruel? Why was it so unreasonable? But still, she continued to smile. She smiled, for my sake. She smiled, so that I wouldn''t break. She smiled, so I''d continue to be a good girl. Even as the light in her eyes faded, Alicia smiled. Chapter 25 – Remembering Happiness I cried. I don''t know for how long, but I cried openly, my tears flowing freely without anything to hold them back. There was a great warmth in my chest, but my mind was on the cooling body in my arms as my eyes swelled from crying and my throat grew hoarse with my wails. I held the limp body tightly against my chest, as if I was trying to prevent it from escaping, but on a certain level, what I wanted most was already gone. Everything that truly made up Alicia was no longer inside of this body. If I were to use [Scan], nothing but an empty dialogue box would show up. But I was too afraid to even do so. The fear of confirming what I already knew stopped me. So I cried. I cried that I could no longer hear Alicia''s voice. I cried that I could no longer feel Alicia''s warmth. I cried that I could no longer see Alicia''s smile. And so I cried. Quite some time had passed. By the time I realized that, my body already felt weak. My stomach had shrivelled to almost nothing in my gut. In my arms, the softness of Alicia''s body had already started to fade as some of the moisture had left it, as if following after her warmth. There was also a smell in the room that wasn''t there before. Something that I didn''t quite recognize, but seemed a bit familiar. If anything, it was probably noticing this smell that spurred me to move, even though I wanted to just sit there and continue to hold Alicia''s cold body. The thought of Alicia scolding me, telling me that just staying here, wasting away as I grieved, would make me a bad girl was what finally made me move from that spot. I bent my legs as my knees creaked, my joints popped as I forced them to articulate after sitting still for so long. Holding Alicia''s body, I rose up from the bed. In the corner of my mind, I noticed that the sheets had discoloured slightly. The spot I was sitting at was barely darker than the rest of the sheets. As I stepped away, my feet left faint foot prints on the floor. There was a thin film of dust on everything. The revelation was a surprise, but it hardly moved me. My heart was little more than a cold stone in my chest. With monotonous movements, I used magic to create a stone bed, and gently lay Alicia''s body on it. Alicia deserved a proper ceremony, but there were limits to what I could do alone. I could bury her outside, but she almost froze to death there. I didn''t want to subject her body to that a second time. She deserved to be laid to rest somewhere warm, but I couldn''t provide that at all. This room, without her, was so cold. So very cold. But none of the other rooms would be better, and the dungeon would simply swallow her body. I didn''t want that. I had no choice. Even if it was temporary, I would warm her body myself and consume it with fire. But I needed to prepare it the best I could. She deserved the most dignified cremation I could provide. So I gathered her things. I rubbed her hair with the orange and cocoa butter hair oil she loved most. I massaged in the honey and goat milk lotion she enjoyed. I wrapped her body with the fur clothes that she loved. I placed her ball that she loved to play with. Then, I tore my eyes away from her body and went searching through the dungeon, bringing back armful after armful of flowers of all sorts. Anemone, edelweiss, hibiscus, peony, violet, azalea, camellia, bluebells, lily of the valley, pansy, lotus, and finally, sweet pea. I filled every space millimetre of the stone bed with the flowers before I stood there, holding back the tears that threatened to overflow like a broken dam. With a sharp intake of air, I quelled my thoughts and feelings, then spread out my mana, as if to embrace Alicia''s body one last time, filling it and the flowers with my own aura. Then with a single thought, it ignited into a white flame, incinerating everything on the stone bed in a flash. The light was so bright that it burned my retinas and singed my skin, but I didn''t pay any heed to that, and instead focused on the ceremony. In a mere handful of seconds, the fires extinguished. Nothing remained on the stone bed. The only evidence there had been anything was the fact that the top had melted a bit. Having served it''s purpose, I got rid of the stone bed, then prepared to leave. This room, filled with memories of Alicia was too painful for me to continue using. The first thing I did was enter the dungeon to feed. I had stayed with Alicia''s body for so long that my legs wobbled as I walked, and it took the blood of quite a few monsters before I felt I was at full strength. Just in case, I filled a few large jars with more blood in case I ran out without any prey nearby before I returned. One last time, I washed myself in the bath. Lathering up my hands with with scented soap, I reached for Alicia''s hair, now down to her shoulder blades as she wanted to copy my hair style, before I stopped. She wasn''t there with me. Emotions threatened to burst out from my chest, but utilizing all the willpower I had, I swallowed it all down and went to wash my own hair instead, then my body. Once I had rinsed the last of the suds off from my hair and body, I entered the bath to soak. After a few minutes, I took Alicia''s favourite hair oil rather than my own this time, in a vain attempt to touch a part of her. My hands moved to rub her hair before they stopped. There wasn''t anything there to rub. I clenched my teeth before rubbing a generous portion of the oil in my hair, making sure to override any leftover scent from my usual oil. When I finished, I got out and dried both my hair and body before applying the honey and goat milk lotion on my skin before getting dressed. I went around and collected all the loose items, and stuffed them inside the white bunny plush magical bag. If I wasn''t going to stay here, there wasn''t any point in leaving behind anything I could use outside. The furniture and other large items stayed. With one last check to confirm I hadn''t forgotten anything, I put on my gloves, boots, hat, and robe, then slung my arms through the bunny bag''s loops and headed outside. The ground was dark, but I could see the three moons clearly as they hung high overhead. I stood and stared at them as they slowly moved across the starry sky when suddenly my view was obstructed by a mass of bright, multi-coloured balls of fluff. Almost immediately, I activated [Spirit Form] to better interact with them. I smiled as they swarmed me, rubbing their bodies against mine. "Hey, I..." But my words refused to come out. The little spirits were worried about something, but it didn''t seem to be about themselves, as they furiously danced around or rubbed against me. They were filled with concern. I...I... The dams inside me broke and I fell to my hands and knees. Once again, I cried. I wailed. Eventually, I managed to gather myself. I stood up as I rubbed my face with my sleeve. I took a step back in surprise. The spirits were hovering extremely close to me. "I...umm...sorry. I''m better now" But unconvinced by my words, the little fluffballs rubbed their bodies against mine, lightly tugging at my hair, filling my hood with their bodies. Those that couldn''t touch me directly due to their numbers danced around me, trying to lift my spirits. Well, it worked. I cracked a small smile at their warmth. That was right. I couldn''t touch or talk to Alicia anymore, but I wasn''t alone. "Thanks everyone. You''re really the best" Seeing my mood improve, they all started to dance around energetically. And since it''s been a while, I threw handfuls of mana treats into the air, more than enough for all of them. The little spirits eagerly ate them up as they happily flew around and rubbed themselves against my body. "Haha, I get it. I love you guys too" Somehow, the little fluffballs ended up being even more energetic after my words, leaving me with an awkward smile. For the first time in a long time, I ended up playing with them a bit, dancing along with them, chased after them, or being chased by them, but generally ending up with being in a big dogpile on the green grass by them. It felt good to enjoy myself, to move my body, to just not worry about anything. It was even like the warmth that had taken root inside my chest felt a little gentler and warmer. Maybe Alicia was having a particularly good dream right about then. It would''ve been nice if that was true. I got so absorbed with enjoying myself with the little fluffballs that I completely lost track of time, only noticing that fact when the ground in front of me suddenly lit it with blinding red light. For a moment I thought the forest around had suddenly burst into flames, but without the characteristic crackles of burning wood, my mind was able to reorient itself and I realized what had happened. The morning sunlight had burst through the canopy. My hands trembled, but I grit my teeth and steadied them. Sunlight wasn''t something for me to fear anymore. I wouldn''t die from being exposed to it anymore. I had my [Sunlight Vulnerability] skill which contrary to it''s name, let me recover all the damage sunlight caused me. Not only that, but I was armoured from head to toe. As long as I wasn''t careless, I was fully protected. Sunlight didn''t stand a chance. Suddenly my vision was completely blocked by much softer light. The fluffy spirits huddled in front of me in worry, as my mood suddenly changed. "It''s okay. I''m fine. Hey, do you guys wanna go on a trip?" I couldn''t stay there. There was no point in just fooling around in one place. Enjoying myself was nice, but Alicia wouldn''t be happy with my escapism if I didn''t do more with my life. I needed to do something, even if it wasn''t particularly productive. Fortunately, the little fluffs were pretty receptive to my idea, so many of them gathered around as I headed off. As for a direction, I decided I''d go the same way to which I first found Alicia: east. It was a decent distance, but near where I found her should be the village where she was born. I had no other clues as to where to find civilization, and looking for people would be better than just wandering the wilderness randomly. That would be little better than just staying put around the dungeon. Managing a quick jog, we travelled through the forest. On occasion we''d meet a monster, but they were quickly dispatched. Giant bears with razor sharp claws, deer with antlers that ended in spikes, even trees and giant flowers that suddenly started to attack when I got too close. It seemed like the monsters quickly got stronger as I moved away from the dungeon, but that was only relative to the big rabbits and goblins near my home. A single ice lance, earth spike, or wind blade quickly dispatched the monsters, and I fed from a few of them to fill up my belly. Around the time the sun had just set, I recognized a particular tree. It was a bit bigger than the others around it, but what as especially notable was how high it''s roots grew at the base. On one side, there was a hardly remarkable tight space between two roots. It was where I had originally found Alicia. To think I''d just randomly stumble across it. But now that I had, I wanted to do something. It was the place Alicia and I had first met, though she wasn''t conscious at the time. I could remember it like it was only yesterday, her small, frail body, cold to the touch, and beyond even shivering. It was possible if I was even a few second slower, she might not have ever woken up again. That thought really made me understand just how lucky I was to have met Alicia. Not only was the chances of her being around one of the few times I had happened to have gone outside after secluding myself inside the dungeon extremely low, but if the spirits hadn''t reached me so quickly after discovering her, or if I hadn''t followed them as quickly as I had, then the two of us might have never come together. I was the type to believe in probability, not fate, which made such an event that much more extraordinary. I was thankful. Despite how difficult the last little while had been, I was so thankful that I had met Alicia here, and that I wasn''t too late in saving her then, even if ultimately I hadn''t saved her life yet. In memory of all that, I wanted to do something to commemorate it. I couldn''t consider myself particularly skilled when it came to moving my hands, but maybe I could manage something with magic? To test that theory out, I drew out particles from the surrounding dirt and gathered them where I found Alicia. Compressing them, solidifying them, and shaping them. The particles, the most inert parts of dirt, came together and formed a stone in the image I had imagined. A stone 1:1 scale in the form of a six year old girl, huddled in the tiny space between the roots as if trying to shield herself from the cold. Then, I plucked a nearby flower and placed it in her hand by her face. It wasn''t much, but this was the memorial I had made to commemorate our original meeting. Maybe it was due to my high rank in [Terranian Magic], but the stone statue was incredibly life-like. If it was painted, even I''d have trouble telling the difference between the real thing. With the memorial in place, I continued jogging east as the spirits followed, a few staying to have a look at the statue before catching up. Together with a small army of spirits, we continued at a brisk pace. As we made our way, the trees became smaller and smaller, from the overly large ones further in to more normal sized ones. Along with that, the monsters grew weaker and weaker. Even at our relatively ordinary pace, we were fast enough that any monsters we did encounter didn''t bother to chase us more than a few dozen steps, giving up as we pulled away. There was no reason to bother killing them if they wouldn''t get in our way. Aside from goblins. I killed every one I saw. The very thought of their racial skill gave me the shivers. Maybe near midnight, the trees suddenly opened up to a large clearing, and I could see a wide wooden wall in poor repair. The very sight of it moved me. Finally, after over three years, I had found civilization. I wanted to enter the small village as soon as possible, but the lack of lights anywhere but one point on top where there was a small roof where someone was sitting under made me second guess myself. It would be suspicious as all hell if I suddenly appeared in poorly made robes in the middle of the night. For the sake of not making the absolute worst first impression and be barred from entering right off the bat, I went for option number two. The light of the morning sun as it crested over the horizon blinded me for a few seconds. I had been playing around with the little fluffballs as I killed time. There weren''t as many of them as when I first set out. It seemed like a bunch of them got bored and went to do other things, but in turn, a few new ones showed up as we played. It felt like these guys were everywhere. But even then, I did hope that a few from home would stay by me as I travelled. If not even one of them decided to stay with me for long, it would be a bit lonely. It was strange. I was always quite a loner. In my last life, I was an only child. I had friends, but I wasn''t that close to many of them, and quickly moved on if we lost touch. Even the few good friends I had, if staying in contact became inconvenient, then I stopped. I had no long term attachments in my previous life. But being in this world, having gotten to know true companionship, even if it was in a weird way, I''ve come to crave it. I didn''t need many friends. Just one good one was enough. But without someone beside me, for the first time between these two lives, I now knew, I''d be lonely. So I hoped that at least one of these spirits would come to like me well enough that it would decide it wanted to keep travelling with me, no matter how far we went. "Well, let''s go meet some people" With a small smile, I headed towards the village gates. As I approached, the light above it extinguished, then a few minutes later, the gates opened. (Did they open it seeing me?) It was a bit surprising to do that to a stranger, but then I saw a small group of armed people come out. I nervously continued to walk towards the village, watching the armed group as they casually chatted among themselves. I released a breath I hadn''t realized I''d been holding. It looked like they didn''t come out because of me. We walked by each other. Strangely, they completely ignored me and the fluffballs. Well, according to Alicia, most people can''t even sense these little guys, so it was probably normal for them to be unnoticed, but for them to ignore me too. Did I have such a weak presence? Was my outfit maybe a bit ordinary in this world? As my mind filled with questions, I continued my way, but suddenly had to stop as the gates closed in front of me. I looked up at the guard. It seemed like it was a new person from the night, but the man wearing an old leather chest plate and well worn clothes stared out into the forest as he sat on a platform built into the wall. "Umm...hey! Excuse me!" I tried shouting at the man, but he ignored me completely. (What am I? Air?!) As I was starting to get annoyed, some of the coloured fluffs rubbed their bodies against me as if they were trying to reassure me. "Haha, don''t worry, I won''t get angry at the buffoon" But as I patted a few of them back, a sudden realization came to me. I could only touch these guys because I was using [Spirit Form]. But obviously, if I was using the skill, then nobody else would be able to see me. Now I felt like the buffoon. "Excuse me!" I tried again after turning the skill off. "Huh? Wha?!" The guard suddenly stood up in shock, staring at me. "Ummm...I''d like to enter the village, but can I?" "Ah, umm...sure" The man quickly got down from his vantage point and I could hear wooden boards scraping against the gates before it opened. "Sorry. Where did you come from?" The guard asked as I passed the gate. "The forest" I didn''t want to mention my little blunder. My face was already a bit warm due to it. "Huh? You came from the forest?!" The guard froze in the middle of closing the gates again. "That''s right" "I mean, you lived in there?" "Yea, me and my little sister" "Your...then your sister?" My eyes hit the ground hard. "She...she..." Just trying to talk about her made tears start welling up again. "Ah! I''m sorry, that was bad of me" "N, no, it''s not your fault. I''m just too prone to crying lately. I''m sorry" I desperately tried to get control over my emotions, but the waver didn''t leave my voice as quickly. "No, it''s...ummm...anyways, welcome to Edgeworth village!" Chapter 26 – Adventurer’s Guild The gate guard stood there with his arms spread out as he declared the village''s name. "Umm...oooohhh..." I clapped my hands awkwardly. But the man lowered his arms in dejection. It seemed like I got the meaning behind his little performance wrong. Instead, I lowered my arms and looked away as my cheeks grew warm. "Umm...anyways, I was wondering..." "Ah? Sure, what''s wrong?" "Could you tell me where the important things are in this village?" I gave the man a bit of a smile as I tried to gloss over my mistake. "Important things?" "Like stores or other notable things. I''ve never been to a village before" "Oh, is that so? Right, you said that you came from the forest, so I guess this is your first village huh?" I nodded. "That''s amazing, such a little girl like you living in such a dangerous place like the forest" My smile cramped up. Certainly, now that I looked at him properly, he was easily more than a head taller than me...or rather a head and a half...maybe more like two heads...but calling me a little girl? That was rude and annoying! He was just excessively tall! "Well, it makes me happy that you chose to come to Edgeworth for your first village. Though we don''t have much, the people are good" (Can you not make giving me directions such an event?) "Ummm...so..." "Right, right. So like I said, we don''t have much here. When it comes to important things, I suppose it would be the village chief''s house, the general store, the village''s inn, and the adventurer''s guild" That...really wasn''t much, and most of it were things I wasn''t too interested in. "If you follow this main road, you''ll reach the village centre. They''re all near that point" My eyes followed the direction the guard pointed. The wide dirt road continued from the gates all the way through the village, and I could see another set of gates on the far side in the distance. "Alright. Thank you for your help" I flashed the man a small smile in the hope that he wouldn''t be left with a bad impression of me. "Not at all, it''s no problem. It''s the duty of us adults to help kids like you when they need help" My smile cramped up so badly that there was pain in my cheeks as the guard pat my head through my hat and hood while he gave a big grin. "I, I need to get going" I hurried and stepped out of the man''s reach. The little fluffballs had gotten fed up with his rudeness and were bonking their bodies through his. It was a shame he didn''t notice, but the sight helped to soften my stiff smile. Before it could turn into a real smile, I turned towards the village centre. My legs moved me at a brisk pace, but not so fast as look inhuman. The glowing fluffs caught up after a few seconds and orbited around me. They seemed to still be a little agitated, so I tossed around a few mana treats as thanks. My legs took me past a series of shabby looking wooden buildings. Their construction wasn''t too bad, but they were in poor repair with the walls being discoloured in areas and worn out in others. Some had small gaps where broken parts had been crudely repaired with inadequate material and skills. The occasional person I saw wore what was little better than rags, as they stopped what they were doing and stared at me. My shoulders instinctively pulled inwards as I hurried my pace even further. To the side, there was a larger gap between two of the buildings. Through the gap, I could see a well and several women in shabby clothes surrounding it. It looked like they were doing some laundry. A little further in, the main street opened up to a plaza, though it was nothing more than a wide ring of buildings surrounding what looked like a dirt pitch. There were a few kids playing around there with sticks. All of them were wearing rags, and many didn''t even have sleeves. It was like their tops were potato sacks with holes for their heads and arms. Most of the boys at least wore pants of varying length and the girls'' tops were long enough to be considered a dress in the most technical sense. None of them wore shoes though. The sight worried me, but as a few of the kids noticed me, they started to point and the others started to stare at me. In a panic, I lowered my hood and turned to check the buildings. The few structures in this area were much bigger than the ones I passed earlier, and had wide space in between them. Most had wagons and carts parked to the sides and there were even a few horses and oxen. They seemed a bit thin to my eyes, but I''ve only see horses as a kid and oxen in pictures. There wasn''t anything to say that the ones in this world would be the same to the ones on Earth. There were signs on the three biggest buildings. [Mint''s General Store], [Gozer''s Inn], [Edgeworth Adventurer''s Guild]. I had no money, and I had no use for a bed to sleep in, so my destination was set for me. With a stiff gait, I circled the plaza and opened the door to the adventurer''s guild building. The door creaked on it''s not-quite-aligned hinges as it opened. Inside was a large lobby that took up the whole width of the building. To the side was several simple wooden tables surrounded by chairs. To the other was a sign on the wall that read [Requests], and a few wooden tabs hooked on to nails protruding from the wall. Across from me was an undecorated wooden counter and an old man napping behind it. His clothes were simple and old, but not worn out. It was clear he was doing better than the people of the village, but not that much better. "Umm...excuse me..." I tried calling out to the man as I neared the counter. The multi-coloured spirits were wandering around the room, looking at the various things like cats wondering around a newly bought piece of furniture. But the old man didn''t move. "EXCUSE ME!" This time, the old man opened his eye to my yell. His unfocused eye lazily appraised me before opening both eyes all the way. "Ooh, how unexpected. An unfamiliar face" "Nice to meet you" I gave him a nod with a small smile as he righted himself and grinned. He looked like a good person. "So, what can I help you with little girl?" (I take it back. All of it.) My smile once again cramped up. My face was likely to become pretty sore the next day. "I, uh, I''m new around and was wondering if this was a good place to make some money" Just because this was called the adventure''s guild didn''t mean that it was anything similar to those I''ve read in books. "Hmmm, well, I don''t really recommend it to a cute little girl like you¡­" (Shove it) "¡­but I''ll explain it anyways. It''s nice to kill some tine with a cutie" The old man leaned forward to look into the shadow of my hood. The way he did that gave me goosebumps so I took a half step back and lowered my face, covering it with the brim of my hat. The person frowned but started his explanation anyways. "So, adventures are people part of the adventurer''s guild and do requests given by the guild. See those tags over there?" He pointed at the wall with a few wooden tags hung on nails. There were five little wooden boards, each with something different on them. Three were labelled gathering requests, one subjugation request, and one escort request. Two of the gathering requests for various plants I haven''t heard of and the third for the meat of an animal called a riot boar. The subjugation request was for goblins. The escort request was, well, an escort request. "Those are the most common requests available in any guild. Gathering requests ask to gather certain materials. They are often in dangerous places, and many require you to bring back materials from specific monsters. The second is subjugation requests. They require you to defeat dangerous monsters and bring back a piece of it as proof. The last is escort requests. They have you guard people as they travel, and you''d have to deal with any monsters or bandits you encounter along the way" I gave him a nod as I turned back. "Aside from that, the guild also accepts various materials from registered adventurers even without requests, although at a reduced price" Pretty much exactly what I expected. It seemed like this world''s adventurer''s guild wasn''t particularly different from the norm. "So you see, it''s a dangerous job, and it doesn''t even pay that well until you reach the higher ranks. If you have any other skills, I suggest you try plying those first. You wouldn''t want to scratch that pretty face of yours, would you?" (Actually, so far it''s sounding pretty good) "Umm, what sort of obligations and requirements are there if I join?" "Haaa, well, there aren''t many obligations in the first place, since most of the people who become adventurers are people who can''t do anything else. Once you gain the trust of the guild and reach the higher ranks, adventurers can be given designated requests. Beyond that, registration can be revoked if you go too long without taking any requests. Generally that''s one a month for the lowest rank, stretching to one a year for the higher ones" "Is it possible to avoid designated requests I don''t like?" "Hmmm...it doesn''t happen very much since designated requests tend to pay well. If there''s a good enough reason, then sure" That was good. I didn''t want to be forced to do something I didn''t like. Adventurers in various stories were known for their free spirits, and getting locked down on something I didn''t like wasn''t a very pleasant thought. I might not make as much money as with a normal job, but it wasn''t like I needed much money in the first place. I can''t eat human food, and I didn''t have a need to sleep, so really, clothes and equipment would be most of my expenses. And if being an adventurer became a problem, I could just quit and do something else anyways. "Alright, I''d like to register" "Huh? Haven''t you heard a word I''ve been saying?" "I have, and it sounds pretty ideal to me" "You know it''s dangerous, right? It''s not the sort of job a cute girl like you should be doing" "Most of it is hunting monsters, right? I''ve spent my entire life doing that already, so it''ll be nice to get paid for it for once" The old man blinked his eyes a few times as I grinned at him. "You sure you won''t regret it? There''s a city just a few days from here. If you show me your identification, I can write you a letter of introduction to a few people that might be willing to hire you for something safer" "Identification?" (Shit, there''s ID cards in this world?) "You don''t have any?" I shook my head. The old man stared down at the counter hard for a few moments before raising his head again. "Alright. The guild''s open to even street urchins, so you can get some ID from us, but I really do think you should just use that to get through the city''s gates and go find something more suitable" "I came here so I could see the world. I doubt any job aside from being an adventurer would be suitable for me" "Haaa. If that''s your dream, then I suppose that''s true. Just don''t get hurt little girl" This guy. He kept saying things that made my back itch. "Well, the registration fee is ten copper coins" "Erm..." (Shit) "You don''t have any money either?" I shook my head. "This is the first settlement I''ve been to" "Haaa...this isn''t something I can let off. As you can tell, this village isn''t doing so well. As cheap as registration is, it still costs us money to do so. Money we can''t afford to wave" "I don''t have money, but maybe I can trade something in exchange?" "Well, I suppose that''s fine. Normally we don''t allow material exchanges for non-members, but I''ll make it a special exception this one time" "Thanks" I removed my white rabbit plush bag and dug inside, looking for something appropriate to sell. Since the village wasn''t doing so well, it was probably best to go for things that weren''t too expensive. Maybe something that the people here could use as well? Not sure what he''d accept, I pulled out a few things. A haunch of meat from a boar-like monster on a large leaf, some mangoes, and a handful of those mana infused gems I got from most monsters in the dungeon I called home. "Is there anything here you can take?" For a few seconds, the man in front of me sat frozen with his mouth hanging open until my words rebooted his brain. "Ah, erm, did you get these all on your own?" "I did" (Was it that weird?) "Really...?" Well, maybe not entirely on my own, but Alicia didn''t help me kill the monsters that dropped the meat or gems, and I picked up a few mangoes before we met. I had no idea if these were the ones I got by myself or the ones I got with Alicia though. The old man examined each set carefully. "Well, I can''t take these fruit, since I''m not sure what they are. This meat though, it''s from a charge boar, isn''t it?" "Is that what it''s called?" "Do you have the rest of the monster?" "I have more cuts of meat if that''s what you mean" Since I''ve slain quite a few dozen of them. "No, it''s fine. This alone is enough. It''ll even leave some change. I''d like to buy the mana crystals as well, but the village isn''t doing too well right now. I''d rather buy as much meat as you can afford to sell if you don''t mind" "Sure" It wasn''t like I could eat them anyways. I pulled out a few more slabs of boar meat, leaving ten on the counter to be sold, then put the remaining items back into my bag. "Oooh, this''ll feed most of the village tonight" (Really?!) The haunches were big, but they weren''t that big. Maybe 10kg per? I was quite a bit smaller than in my previous life, but a lot stronger despite that, so it was hard to accurately measure anything, but considering that even one would last Alicia a week, it wasn''t small in the slightest. But it was hard to imagine 100kg of meat being enough to feed an entire village. Even if it was only for one meal, did people eat that little here? Or maybe I was just misunderstanding him and he only meant that as side dishes? "So...uh, can I register?" "Oh, right, my bad, my bad. One moment please" All of the sudden, his tone changed. It was a bit creepy, but oh well. I''d get what I want anyways, and I can just move on somewhere else. It was hard to imagine there was much to offer here. The old man dug around under the counter and pulled out something wrapped in an old rag. He placed it on the counter and removed the dirty rag, revealing a large crystal ball the size of a soccer ball sitting on a small metal box. "Just put your hand on this, and I''ll take care of the rest" If that was all I needed to do to register, didn''t that mean that this thing scanned my status page?! I hesitated to touch it, and instead tried using [Scan]. The result: page after page of useless information. "Oh, don''t worry. This only reads your name, your mana signature, as well as checks your criminal history, if you have one" "Mana signature?" "It''s just a way to identify you. Every living creature has a slightly different mana signature derived from their soul. It''s almost unheard of for two living beings having the same mana signature" "But it''s happened?" "It has, but apparently the only time it''s happened the people involved weren''t even the same race, and they were scanned a few hundred years apart. It''s generally believed to either be a freak accident or a small mistake caused by the older models of mana signature technology" I sighed in relief, then closed off the dialogue box. [Scan] really was pretty useless as it was. Just scanning for the information I wanted took minutes. There was no way I could get what I needed if I was on a time constraint. My hand landed on top of the crystal ball. It glowed white, blinding me for a few seconds, before the light faded. The box attached to the bottom of the crystal ball spat out a dull bronze rectangle about the size of a business card with rounded corners with a hole in the middle of one of the short sides. The old man grabbed the card and examined it before handing it over. The metal card had my name, rank of G, and an emblem on it. It was a sword, arrow, and staff crossing over a shield surrounded by a simple wreath. There was a similar, but even more elaborate emblem on the back with a much bigger wreath with various leaves and flowers on it. "This rank..." "Right. So as a new adventurer, your rank is G. It''s the lowest rank. As you do requests, you can raise your rank and gain access to more difficult requests. You need to complete a set number of requests of your current rank to increase your rank. Higher ranks, like E, D, C, B, and A require you to complete an examination as well" "The lowest huh...?" The lowest rank always sucked from the books I read. "Well, considering that you can beat charge boars on your own, I can recommend you to take an evaluation exam to bring your rank up a bit" I raised my eyebrow. It was weird for him to make me a card without doing such an exam first. "Ah, you can''t do it here, I''m afraid. I''m the only staff member of this guild branch, and I''m too old to give out those sorts of tests. I can give you a letter of introduction to do the test the next town over though" He tapped his lower back as he gave a wry smile. "The only? Then..." "That''s right. I''m this branch''s guild master!" The old man put his hands on his hips and puffed out his chest. I had no idea what he was so proud about, considering despite his rank, he had absolutely no subordinates. Chapter 27 – Saint Ahem" After a few moments of silence, the guild master coughed into his fist. "Anyways, so your name is Scarlet huh?" "...It is" Why did that matter? "I''ve been thinking, but were you named after the saint?" "Saint?" Alicia never called her that. "Ah, erm, maybe you haven''t heard this version of the story? A long time ago, there was a lone stranger who travelled from place to place, helping people out" "That sounds like the person I was named after" I nodded. Actually, it really wasn''t a surprise that people would call her a saint for what she had done. "Anyways, a lot of people consider her a saint, though the church never ordained her as one" "Really?" (Rotten bastards) "Was it because she was a vampire?" "Where did you hear that?" "I...uh, the person who gave me the name. She believed that Scarlet was a vampire" The way the old man had a fierce look in his eyes when he asked that put me on the back foot. "It''s better you don''t talk about that bit. Some people are pretty sensitive when it comes to vampires" "How come?" "You really don''t know much about vampires huh?" (Aside from being one) "Well, there are a lot of people who believe that she was a vampire, but if that was true, then she was quite an exceptions. It was true that apparently she covered herself quite heavily as if she was afraid of the sun, but people often explained it as her hiding her excessive beauty. There were plenty of stories of her getting into trouble with powerful people because they fell in love with her at first sight" (That...really sounds troublesome) "Now that I think about it, you''re dressed up quite a lot like she was in the stories huh? Maybe you''re secretly a vampire?" "I uh, I''m...I just have a skin condition that makes me have to cover up all the time" (A skin condition called sunlight weakness that is) "A skin condition? I''ve never heard of such a thing" "It''s pretty rare from what I know. My skin turns red and painful under sunlight" I quickly shuffled towards an open window and pulled back my sleeve, exposing my forearm. Gritting my teeth, I lit up the skin under the sunlight streaming inside. In an instant, my arm turned red as a searing heat forced it''s way through my nerves. I held back my tears from the pain as I let the guild master see what was going on before quickly retreating from the self-inflicted torture. "See?" It was hard, but I managed to squeeze out that one word without it shaking much. "I did. I''ve never even heard of such a thing. And if you really were a vampire, then that arm would''ve turned into ash. Sorry about that. I only meant it as a joke" I felt like punching myself from ten seconds ago. If I had realized what he meant, I wouldn''t have had to go through such an experience. "So..." My breathing had stabilized for the most part as the pain faded from my arm, but my heart was still pounding hard in my chest. "Yea, sorry. So anyways, most people believe she was an elf. The stories mentioned that she always appeared to be a very young and exceptionally beautiful woman, but there were too many stories from too many places to suggest that it only happened over a decade or two. She most likely spent over a century travelling around, which discounts anything but an elf. That, and there was a couple of anecdotes that mentioned her pointed ears "There are people who are adamant that she was a vampire, and it''s not like the stories contradict that either. In fact, quite a few stories take place during the night, and as far as I know, she never lowered her hood anywhere the sun shone. All the stories about her troubles with nobility and rich merchants happened at night" I nodded. If she really was a vampire, then she''d be extremely careful when it came to lowering her hood during the day. "Anyways, if she was a vampire, then she''s probably the only known example of one helping mankind" "Really?" "You really don''t know much about them, do you?" I shook my head. "Vampires are creatures that come out of nowhere. They drink the blood of the living and take in the strengths of those they consume. Pretty much every vampire that''s left their name in history had walked a path of carnage as they wiped out entire villages and town draining everyone dry of their blood. They''d create large armies of underlings and wage war of a great scale" I grimaced. (Certainly, I''d go pretty far to drink good blood, but to wipe out entire towns for that sake? Were humans that tasty?) My mind went back to when I drank Alicia''s blood. The thought that she was delicious made me fall to my knees as I covered my mouth with my hands. I was disgusted with myself. To even consider enjoying drinking Alicia''s blood. A knot folded on itself in the pit of my stomach as my mind wanted me to hurl, but my body refused with all it''s might. "Hey, are you alright? Do you need help?" I shook my head as I unsteadily got back to my feet. "I''m...fine...it''s just...going to war for the sake of drinking blood?" "I know. It''s pretty unimaginable" (No, the problem is that it''s way too imaginable. If I didn''t abhor killing innocent people so much, I might''ve done the same) "Were there...any good vampires...?" "Aside from maybe Scarlet? Not really. At least there''s no records of them. On the other hand, there are records of a few dozen evil vampires over the last five hundred years or so of the guild''s history. Then again, we only bother keeping records of major subjugation targets. If there were any other vampires out there, if they didn''t do anything as notable as Scarlet, there wouldn''t be many records anywhere" That sucked. I was hoping that vampires had a good reputation, or at least a neutral one, but there was no way people would accept me as is unless if I made a reputation for myself. But that''s just a huge pain in the ass. I wasn''t some sort of messiah or hero. I didn''t want something like that for myself. Going to big cities and checking out the other races might not have been such a good idea. "I suppose that means people hate vampires then?" I voiced my last bit of hope. Well, it wasn''t like I couldn''t pretend to be something else. Apparently elves have ears similar to mine? And I could always just run if things got bad. My running speed was pretty good, and I could always use [Spirit Form]. This guy hasn''t even noticed the fluffballs performing Tom and Jerry in 29 parts simultaneously just to my left. "Hmm...overall I guess people are scared of them? But they''re pretty rare. I''ve never even heard of a vampire settlement, but for all I know, there''s a vampire kingdom somewhere in unexplored areas and the vampires we see are just the outcasts" The old man laughed to himself, obviously unconvinced of his own theory. If such a thing did exist, it would be nice, but I didn''t want to get my hopes up. "I''m a bit surprised you''re so interested in such things though" "Ah, umm, I was just wanted to know more about my namesake, even if it isn''t confirmed that she was a vampire" "Hmmm..." The guild master hummed as he stared at me. He didn''t look too convinced. I fought my instinct to take a step back. "Well, it''s not bad to be curious. The more knowledge you have, the better you can deal with unexpected situations. Knowledge is power for adventurers after all" (It is for pretty much everyone, in my opinion) "Well, by the way. How come the church never ordained her as a saint?" "Oh, well, that''s simple. She never joined the church" "You need to be a part of the church for them to recognize you as a saint?" "Pretty much. They won''t give the title to anyone that isn''t a member no matter what their accomplishments are" (They really are rotten) "Well, the church considers her a heretic anyways, if for nothing more than for not joining despite how much she helped others. On the other hand, if she really was a vampire, then she wouldn''t have been able to join anyways" "How come?" "The church uses a ton of light magic in their ceremonies, and vampires are weak to light magic. Even healing spells using light magic harms vampires" "There''s healing spells in light magic?!" I slammed my hands down on the counter, staring into the guild master''s eyes. "Ah, there are. Aside from banishing evil and providing light to an area, light magic is best known for healing" The strength evaporated from my body as I slumped down on the ground. (If only I knew. If only I thought to try it out. Alicia might still be alive) Tears welled up in my eyes as I balled my fists. I''d been so focused in trying to come up with a solution using my admin authority and my previous life knowledge that I hadn''t even considered that there might''ve already been a cure that was within reach. It was my fault she had to suffer. If only I wasn''t so stupid. "Hey hey hey, are you alright? What''s wrong" "My...my little sister. She was sick. I accepted that there wasn''t anything I could do, but I never considered that light magic might be able to heal. If I had, she might not have lost her life" Tears fell freely onto my lap as I sobbed. "You can use light magic" I nodded. "But then you should''ve been taught how to heal with it then" But I shook my head. "I''m self taught" "That''s extraordinary. In that case, it''s not your fault at all. There was no way you could''ve known" "But I didn''t try. If I thought to try it, then I might''ve come up with something" "But if you came up with the wrong thing, then it would''ve made things worse. I don''t know much about light magic, but there are stories of the church''s healers trying to cure illnesses with light magic only for the illness to take a turn for the worse and killed the person immediately. I''d say it''s naive to think that if you just thought about it, you could''ve saved your sister''s life" Thinking about it, if all the magic did was stimulate repair and growth, then it would''ve made Alicia''s symptoms worse. If that had happened, then I wouldn''t have had the time to create [Soul Siphon] and I would''ve lost her forever. The realization helped to calm me down. "Thanks. You''re right. Healing without enough knowledge is incredibly dangerous and could''ve easily made things worse" "That''s right. Don''t blame yourself. Fate was just being cruel to your family" "Not fate. I don''t believe in fate. If it did exist, then what meaning would my actions have?" I gave him a weak grin. Rather than that, if fate was a real thing, then I couldn''t see myself being able to put serious effort in anything, as everything would be inevitable. It was because I believed fate didn''t exist that I was able to put my all into the things I cared about, since nothing else would give me what I wanted. "Haha, you''re a strong girl. That''s right. Fate would deprive us of the meaning of our actions, wouldn''t it? Hey, where are you from if you didn''t even know these things about the church?" "Umm, the forest" "I''ve never heard of a settlement in the forest before" "There isn''t one. It was just me and my sister" "That''s quite an accomplishment. Maybe you do have what it takes to become an adventurer" "Maybe" I scratched my cheek, unsure about what to do with the unexpected compliment. "Well, I hope you live up to your namesake, but don''t push yourself. It''s a quick way to get hurt, and it''s better that you don''t get any scars on that pretty face of yours" "ahahaaa..." This guy was quick to get on my nerves. "Give me a minute and I''ll get you what I owe you" With that, he took the meat I left on the counter and went through a door to a back room. A minute later, the guild master returned with a closed fist and a something that looked a bit like paper, but curved and harder. "Alright, here you go. The meat was in excellent condition, so they were four copper plates each. Ten of them makes four silver coins, but take off the ten copper coins and it comes to three silver coins, and nine copper plates. Please confirm the amount" He opened his fist and poured the contents onto the counter. I clearly saw three dull grey coins about four centimetres in diameter and nine sheets of heavily tarnished copper that were roughly four by six centimetres. The old man mentioned that registration was ten copper coins, so most likely, ten copper coins made one copper plate, and ten copper plates made one silver coin. Though these things didn''t really look like they were made of copper and silver, it was probably just because they were old. "I''ve confirmed it" With my nod, he pushed the coins to me. "Now, here''s the other thing I promised. A letter of introduction. If you show this at the adventurer''s guild over in Linsington City a five days east of here, they''ll let you take a qualification exam to raise your rank to something more appropriate for your ability. Just remember, the highest the exam will let you become is rank D, but D is extremely good for someone your age. The typical adventurer is either rank D or C, and anyone above that are talented enough for songs to be sung about them" That...was something I could do without. It would be embarrassing for someone to compose a song about me. The letter was written on what looked like a thin piece of soft bark. There was the guild''s seal branded on it to go with the writing. "Thanks" I put it all into my bag for safe keeping and turn around. "Not going to take any requests?" "Isn''t it bad to pay an outsider more than you have to?" Everything I''ve seen so far in this town suggested that everyone was pretty hard up. If I take their jobs and their money, they''d conversely be in that worse of a situation in the long run. "I suppose that''s true. But if you feel that way, why don''t you go to Mint''s store a few doors down and buy something?" "Maybe I will" Now that I had money, there was the chance that I''d find something I liked and could afford. "Just don''t spend all your money. Linsington City has an entrance tax of ten copper coins" With a nod, I head to the door. The little fluffballs were still playing around, so I gave a short whistle to get their attention then motioned them to follow me with a quick jerk of the head. All of them stopped what they were doing and chased after me as I exited the guild building. I looked around and found Mint''s General Store. With a few quick strides, I arrived and entered the store. The inside of the store was...surprisingly barren. It wasn''t like it was empty though. There were wooden boxes lined across the side walls and a simple table was decorating the centre of the room. At the back, there was a long counter made from what looked like more boxes offset from the wall. Behind it, there were shelves on the wall filled with various trinkets and items. But in terms of products, that was the only place that had any. It felt like the table and boxes were supposed to have things for sale on them, but there weren''t and only served as crude decorations instead. "Ummm...hello?" I tried calling out, but there wasn''t any sign of anyone in the room. [Sense Presence] detected something past an open door at the back, but it didn''t move when I called out. "Excuse me? Anyone here?" This time I tried a little louder. There was a soft bang from the next room, then the sound of shuffling feet. "Yea, yea, I got it. Who is it? Huh?" A young man lazily came out through the back door while scratching the back of his head, but froze when he saw me. "Oh, sorry about that. I thought it was one of the village kids. How can I help you?" Even if I was one, that wasn''t any way to treat a potential customer. "Umm...I was just came for a look" "Oh, I see. Are you a traveller? Well, we might not have much, but we do offer good prices and my dad always brings in more stuff from the nearby cities" The guy leaned over the counter to look up into my hood. In response, I lowered my face a bit to block him with the lip of my hat. (Why do people keep trying to look at my face so closely?) "Uh, so what do you have?" I turned to look at the things furthest away from the merchant. "Oh, well, we''ve got a variety of food, from pickled vegetables to dried meats. Plenty of options for someone on the road or in need of variety" "I, I''m good on food" Since I couldn''t eat any of it anyways. "Oh, in that case, a water skin? We have brand new ones made from a variety of different animals. I''m sure you know how bad the water from an old skin can be, so it''s important to get new ones all the time" "I''m good on that too" I didn''t drink water either. "Then how about filling up? We do carry ale and beer" "I''m fine. I have more than enough food and drink" Turning my body, I pointed at the plush backpack on my back. "Oh, is that a magic bag? What a nice thing to have. How much does it carry?" "I don''t know" "Oh wow, then I bet it''s got quite the capacity then. You''re really lucky to have that. If only we had one too. It would make life so much easier" I could understand that sentiment. I''ve been relying on this bag for quite a long time now, so it''s hard to imagine going without it now. "Hmm...would you...no. I never mind" "Huh?" "Ah, I was wondering if you''d sell it to me, but there''s no way we could afford a magic bag that nice. I presume it can hold more than that box, right?" He pointed at one of the boxes lining the walls like a decoration. "Yea, a lot more" "I figured. Most people would hit the limit pretty quickly if it was less than that. Be careful of it cutie, that thing''s worth quite a bit" (These guys. Would they quit it with giving these stupid nicknames to people they only just met?) "Well, what sort of thing are you looking for? If you don''t need supplies, then I''m not sure what else I can offer. We cater mostly to adventurers that use this village as a base to enter the forest after all" That would explain why he mostly only offered food and drinks. As I scanned through his shelves, something caught my eye. "You sell knives?" "Oh yea, we have a few. You interested?" I nodded. "Here, let me show you our selection" With those words, the merchant gathered knives from several shelves and placed them on the wooden counter. The knives varied in size and shapes, and looked like they served a variety of purposes. "What sort of knives are you interested in?" "Ummm..." What sort indeed. I haven''t touched a knife since my last life, and that was a kitchen knife. Anything where a knife would come in handy, I just used my claws instead, so I didn''t really need a knife. But it would be strange if people found out I didn''t have one, so it was best to carry at least something. "I''m looking for something general purpose. Something that can handle most things I need from it on a daily basis" "Hmmm, in that case these three would do quite well" He separated the group put together three knives and unsheathing them. One was big, almost as long as my forearm. I''d almost call it a machete with it''s wide, thick blade, but it came to a tapered point. The second was smaller than the first, and single bladed, but it had a gentle curve from the middle onward. It was about half as long as the first. The third was even smaller, at two thirds the length of the second. This one had a narrow, double-sided blade that came to a sharp point. It looked a bit thicker than the second blade, but really was small. "I think I''ll take the second one" The first was just too big for me to use, and the third too small. It made me feel like Goldilocks, but the one in the middle really looked the easiest to use. "That''s a good choice. The big one''s the most popular among adventurers, but it felt a bit too big for you. The small one was apparently owned by a noble, so I thought the design would suit you, but it really isn''t that useful as a knife" I supposed it made sense. The big one would''ve been useful for more than just cutting little things or preparing meals, and could even be effective as an emergency weapon. The small one on the other hand was an elegantly carved handle, though I questioned how he thought such a dainty looking blade suited me. "The knife is normally two silver coins and five copper plates, but I can let it off for only two silver coins if..." "If?" That was quite a discount coming from nowhere. His condition peaked my interest. "If you let me have a good look at your face" I immediately opened my bag and slammed down the full amount. "Thank you very much!" (What the hell was he thinking, asking me something like that?) My face grew hot from the embarrassment, and I had to hold myself back from baring my fangs at him. "Awww. Well, is there anything else you want? Oh, here''s don''t forget the sheathe for the knife too" He meekly placed the leather sheathe in front of me before taking the money and putting the rest of the knives back on the shelf. The disappointment was clear on his face. "Some bags. I want a few small bags or pouches" As I thought about where to put the knife, the realization that I was putting everything into my backpack was a problem. It might''ve been convenient to be able to carry whatever I wanted in it, but it wasn''t convenient for anything I''d need quickly. The knife I could loop onto my belt, but I now had money. Going for my bag for every coin wasn''t exactly quick. Not only that, but not having all my money and other small, loose items gathered up was inconvenient as well. "Oh, in that case we have quite a few items like that" Instead of going for a shelf, the young merchant went for an open box on the floor and gathered a few things from it before dropping them onto the counter with a smile. He was quite fast at recovering. "We have a lot of each kind, so take your pick" There were both cloth and leather pouches of varying sizes. The material looked pretty cheap, but the make looked decent. "How much are they?" "They vary between six to ten copper coins, depending on the size" I had no idea how good of a price that was, but it was cheap enough I could afford a few. Since that was the case, I grabbed a pair of small leather pouch and three cloth bags, all of differing sizes. "That''ll be four copper plates. Though I can lower..." Before he could finish his pitch, I put the money on the counter and grabbed my things, strapping the pouch on my belt and putting the bags into my backpack. "I think that''s everything I need" Also, I''ve gone through most of my money already. I''ve only got a quarter of the money I earned from selling the meat earlier. Chapter 28 – Towards the City As I turned to leave the store, I remembered one more thing I was interested in. "Oh" "Yes? Is there anything I can help you with? Like maybe dinner? I have a bottle of fine wine we''d been keeping for a special occasion" (If you have something like that, sell it and get some more stock in. Or at least use it to find a way to bring in more business instead of lazing around in the back room) His over eagerness almost made me turn back around and leave immediately, but someone who worked at the village''s only store was likely to have the information I needed. "Have...you heard of the name Alicia?" "Huh? Oh, I have..." (Bingo) He looked to the side awkwardly. "I was wondering if I you could tell me where her family lives? She was a little girl about six and couldn''t see" "If you don''t mind me asking, but what''s your relationship with Alicia?" "We lived together for a while" "Really? In that case, how''s she doing right now?" "She...even when we first met, she was sick, and just recently..." I bit my lip. I''d been crying so much lately, I didn''t want to do so in front of a stranger. "Haaa...I see. Well, I suppose that much is alright" After receiving directions and a bit of wandering, I found the house I was looking for. The single floored wooden building was dilapidated and had dried mud forced into cracks in the walls. Once again, I wiped my face with my sleeve. In the end, I couldn''t stop the tears from falling, but I did manage to stifle any open weeping. I suppose that was progress, but progress towards what? I wasn''t sure that was a destination I wanted to ever reach. The sun was starting to reach the top of the forest to the west as the trees cast looming shadows that climbed over the western village walls. There was a faint orange glow visible through the open windows, and I could hear people talking. I walked up to the door, but my courage faltered and I couldn''t bring myself to knock. "Mama, I''m hungry" "I know dear. But you know that if we don''t finish spinning these threads, we won''t be able to buy dinner" (What?) "I know, but I''m still hungry" "That''s right mama!" "I''m hungry too!" "sigh The faster we finish, the faster I can buy ingredients for dinner. If we make enough, maybe we''ll even have enough for breakfast tomorrow" "I''ll do it! I''ll make a ton!" "Me too! It''s been so long!" "What''s breakfast?" (Just what is...) I slumped down on to my butt as I heard their conversation through the open windows. Without any glass, anything they said was clear to me through the open shutters. (To think it really was this bad) Right up until this moment, I had suspected that what Alicia had said about always being hungry was something that only happened to her, that her family might have taken advantage of the fact that she was blind and unfairly given her smaller portions or something. But everything about this village screamed poverty, and if Alicia''s family couldn''t even afford three meals a day, then things had to be pretty bad. I had no idea what I was going to do when I confronted them, but now I couldn''t bring myself to even show my face. I wanted to blame them, to yell at them for abandoning a helpless little girl, but it was obvious they had no choice. From the sound of it, they really were near their limit. Anything I would''ve done, could''ve done, it was all gone now. There was only really one thing I could do. And so, I took a few steps from the door and put a few haunches of boar meat along with some fruit and vegetables on to the ground. Beside them I folded an old potato sack with some holes cut out of it and left it on top of a magically made a stone slate with an etched message. [Thank you for taking care of her until we could meet] I flew through the air awkwardly. After leaving those gifts, I activated [Spirit Form] and bounded over the village walls. For some reason, it felt like there was warmth spreading from my chest. Was this Alicia giving her approval? (Naw, it''s probably just my imagination) I shook my head of my delusions and concentrated on the future. Apparently the next city was five days away if I followed the only road out of this village. If that was the case, then I might as well learn a form of high-speed movement that wasn''t just sprinting really fast. At first I concentrated on leaping into the air while using [Float], but the air resistance really messed that up and prevented me from going too fast for long. Alternatively, using wind magic to eliminate drag meant that I fell back to the ground pretty quickly. Using both on the other hand got me the best of both worlds, though changing direction mid-air was a problem, as any attempt to do so using magic would bring back all the drag as the first spell would fizzle out. But with just this, I could leap far and quickly, and it was really efficient on my MP. Though I had to stop because the little fluffballs couldn''t keep up. Instead of going at full tilt, the second the sun sank under the horizon, I tried experimenting with something different. It was the artificial wings made from [Alter Silhouette]. Remembering how I did it months ago, I formed large wings from my back, complete with the proper bone and muscle structure needed to make them move the way I wanted. Together with a running start, I flapped those wings and took off using the [Flight] skill. Then smashed my face into the ground a few meters ahead. The fluffballs circled around me. It felt like they were laughing. At least someone was enjoying it. My pride and dignity had been caved, but my motivation to hadn''t. With my feet under me again, I move my wings up a bit along my spine and try again, this time making it a few meters before landing on my hands and knees. A few more adjustments and tries later, and I was gently gliding across the ground as I did my best to avoid having my arms and legs flail around in the new, awkward position. It felt so unnatural having my body supported by nothing but the air under my artificial wings and the power of my [Flight] skill. Instinctively, I wanted to keep reaching out and grab something to support my body, but being a few meters from the ground, there was obviously nothing to grab on to, aside from the little fluffballs who''d been orbiting around me excitedly like they were looking at a baby deer take it''s first few steps. No, from their perspective, maybe it really was something like that. I never liked zoos anyways. That aside, I doubted very much that the spirits would be able to support my weight. Even worse, if I tried it, their lack of a physical body suggested that they lacked any real mass as well, so I''d probably just flip end over end and fall to the ground out of control. I wasn''t about to give them another reason to laugh at me. Run, leap, glide, land. Run, leap, glide, land. Until I was able to make myself settle down and glide without any flailing, I monotonously continued to practice basic gliding for minutes, maybe even an hour or two. The little spirits quickly got bored, so I gave them a few mana treats here and there so that they wouldn''t run off and disappear on me. Sometimes it felt like I was just taking care of a bunch of feral cats. At least they didn''t scratch me out of nowhere. When I felt like I had a hang on just gliding straight forward, I tweaked it, banking side to side, more and more...until I fell into an uncontrolled spin and over corrected to spin the other way and slammed into the ground, raising dust into the air. As the dust cleared, the fluffballs were laughing again. Never in my two lives did I want a fly swatter more than I did then. My persistence paid off and I avoided repeating that mistake. Banking from side to side became reliable and easy. But the real test was to move from simply gliding to actually flying. I took a few deep breaths and folded my wings to give myself as much height as I could in a single jump. With a running start, I hopped, planted both feet onto the ground, then sprung up with all the force I could muster, leaving the ground behind. The air rushed past me, flipping back my hood. I held my hat down with a hand before it could get blown away. As all things that go up, gravity won out over my momentum and I started my descent. But of course, I wasn''t content to go without a fight, so I spread my wings, entering a smooth glide as I pulled up from the near vertical drop. The glide was as perfect as I could ask at my level of skill. There was some great forward momentum helping to maintain my stability as I felt the wind wisp past my body, giving my senses the feedback I needed in absence of an actual instinctive sense of how to balance myself in flight. The wind felt good, the way it caressed my cheeks and flowed roughly around my body. The noisy flapping my robes did in the wind was annoying, but it was better than going around in what was little better than a bikini. I was in human territory now, no excuses to be uncivilized. (But speaking of flapping...) floomf! The heavy sound as my wings beat against the air reached my ears as I felt a sense of instantaneous vertigo, before the feeling flipped on itself and I was back in free fall. My mind had trouble coping with the unfamiliar mix of sensations, but the instinct I had started developing came to my rescue, arresting my fall and bringing me back into a glide as they stretched out and stabilized me. (What was...?) I tried to wrap my mind around the feelings. It was like I was suddenly throw into the air by a giant, then immediately after being in a high-speed elevator that suddenly started to descend. (Actually, when I word it that way...) What I experienced was obvious. The single flap was strong enough to lift my body up a substantial amount, and in my confusion, I simply didn''t raise my wings back to prevent me from dropping right after. I felt stupid, but humans weren''t made to fly like this. Not like I was human, but that was beside the point. Once more, and much more carefully, I flapped my wings. This time, the same hard pull of momentum resisting my body assaulted my senses, but it wasn''t nearly as bad as the first time. Without anything nearby to compare against, it was hard to tell, but it seemed like my high rank in [Flight] meant that even small flaps meant that I''d rise quickly and easily. The possibility of what I could do once I got used to this was pretty terrifying, yet extremely exciting. The image of flying through a dense city fast enough to shatter windows while weaving in between buildings and through narrow alleys made me grin like a little kid. Though actually doing such a thing would cause a ton of trouble I didn''t want to deal with, so such a dream would never come true. Maybe I could try weaving through the foliage in the forest around my home instead someday? As I slowly got used to actual flying rather than simply gliding, I flapped my wings again and again, gaining speed as I circled around the small army of glowing multi-coloured lights that chased after me all excited. From simply banking, I moved on to doing loops and barrel rolls (the real kind, as well as the weird useless kind otherwise known simply as an aileron roll), flat and rolling scissors, a vertical climb ending in a stall turn, then to a flat spin and a recovering dive as I fell. If someone was looking, they''d probably be wondering what the retarded bat was doing, but I was having so much fun I couldn''t care what any observer was thinking, though it wasn''t like anyone aside from the spirits could''ve seen me. It was both dark and I was using [Spirit Form]. Maybe once I got good enough, I could dogfight like this, firing off [Tempest Magic] at flying enemies or something? When I went back to the dungeon, it was definitely something I wanted to try against all those flying enemies I found annoying to fight against. By the end of it all, I found the dirt road I was following at the beginning and came down, ending my little air show by flaring up with a cobra as I fiercely flapped my wings, sending up dust and dirt before I touched down as gently as I could. With another strong flap to push the dust away from me, I turned around and waited for the spirits to catch up. In the end, I had been going much faster than they could, but they seemed to enjoy chasing after me as I did those weird manoeuvres. As if to emphasize that point, as each one got close, I could''ve sworn that they all did their own impressions of the cobra manoeuvre as they gathered around me. Kinda as a reward, I gave each one a mana treat as they completed their imitations, though it was really hard to tell since they were more spherical than anything, it just sort of felt like they did cobras. No sooner as they danced around after eating their little treats did they become curious of my little addition, and started flocking to my bat-like wings stick out through the slits in my robes. They circled around me, bounced off of the thin membranes, or just rubbing their bodies against them. Whether it was because the sensation of touch on body parts that I didn''t normally have or because the spirits were so fluffy, I had a hell of a time trying to avoid jerking around, like they were trying to deliberately tickle me. But the more I resisted the harder they rubbed themselves against my wings, and the more my wings trembled as I tried to desperately avoid batting the fluffballs away. In the end, their persistence overcame my self control and I flapped my wings hard, knocking all the spirits away before shaking my wings to get rid of the tingly sensations that was left. "Geez you guys. That was going too far" But as if they didn''t hear my words, the fluffballs circled around me. Rather than be scared of what I did, they were all laughing, enjoying the little ride of being blown away. At least that''s what it felt like. Exasperated, I shook my head before stretching my wings out again. With a short run up, I jumped lightly and flapped my wings, lifting off again, this time actually following the road eastward rather than simply fooling around while doing circles. While the intent was to make progress to the city, we ended up fooling around along the way. Simply flying in one direction quickly got boring, especially when I was trying to maintain a low speed so that the glowing spirits wouldn''t fall behind. Instead, I went back to doing all sorts of aerial manoeuvres as if I was practising for a stunt show or something. The fluffballs followed me the best they could into my manoeuvres, though less like a military squadron doing formation flying and more like a mob of children playing reverse tag. (...?) Below, I sensed quite a few presences. It looked like a large group on the side of the road. Looking down, I could see just that. It was a wagon with a pair of horses tied nearby. Surrounding it was a small group of people, and around them was a much larger group of brown wolves. (This...is probably bad, isn''t it?) The people only numbered four, and one of them didn''t even have a weapon, while the wolves numbered over twenty, and at the head there was a striped wolf twice the size leading the pack. Rather, I recognized the monsters. The smaller wolves were the same as the ones from the first floor of the dungeon, while the big one was like the boss, though even bigger. They weren''t really that tough at all, but this was quite the number. When I first came to this world, I''d have been easy prey, but now even these numbers wouldn''t have been able to do so much as scratch me. I was more concerned with not getting my clothes dirty than getting hurt. But these guys, they were shaking. And one of them was completely backed against the wagon. He didn''t even have a weapon, effectively making the fight about eight to one. That boss was also quite a bit stronger than the other wolves, easily worth as many as five or six of the normal ones if my memory was accurate. It looked like that same boss wolf got tired of waiting and charged towards the closest person. Without a moment to lose, I flapped my wings and went into a dive, accelerating as much as possible. As I got close to the ground, I erased my wings and undid [Spirit Form]. With a quick spin, I gave the big wolf a simple heel kick in the back of it''s neck before landing with a heavy thud. No matter how light my body felt, it seemed like the momentum was enough to dent the ground with a foot print several centimetres deep and kick up a ton of dust all around me. But such dust was meaningless to my [Sense Presence]. Remembering the position of everyone here, I put my hands to the ground and spread out my mana into the earth before activating [Terranian Magic]. Stone spikes jutted up from the dirt, the scent of blood filling the grasslands as most of the reactions to [Sense Presence] disappeared. A quick application of [Tempest Magic] and all the dust was blown away, revealing the carnage I had just conducted. All the wolves had been cleanly impaled by the stone spikes where they stood, not even given a chance to react. Well, there was a massive difference between level one and level 255 after all. It would''ve been more weird if I couldn''t do something like this at this point. A quick glance around confirmed that I hadn''t missed any wolves nor accidentally gotten any of the people I was trying to save. What an embarrassment it would be to be commit friendly fire against the very people you were trying to save. But as fortune would have it, all four people and two animals were accounted for, with no unwanted damage done at all. Aside from the unarmed guy''s pants. Those were one casualty to water damage, but I pretended not to notice. With their safety confirmed, I undid my magic and the wolf bodies collapsed to the ground with a series of thuds, making everyone jump for a moment. The three armed people put away their weapons as they stared at me. First was young girl in a worn out one-piece dress and a simply made leather chest plate over it. She had a dull grey metal long sword strapped to her hip. Second young man in an equally worn out shirt and pants with the same leather chest plate on top. He had an axe with a dull grey metal axe head on one hip and a small wooden shield on the other. Third was another young man wearing worn out pants and a vest that didn''t look like it was big enough to close to cover his chest. He wasn''t wearing any armour, but had a spear with a gleaming silvery spearhead strapped to his back. Unlike the others, he had pointed ears on top of his head and a thin, erect tail sticking out from behind. (Why are the cat bois always so sexy?) Frankly, it was more annoying than anything that he''d deliberately expose himself like that. What was his deal anyways? "Umm...are you guys..." Before I could finish, the closest person rushed up to me and grabbed my hands. "You! That magic was you just now, right? Thank you! Thank you very much for saving us all!" (Close! Too close! Way too CLOSE!) The young man stared at my eyes as he thanked me, so close I could smell his breath. The only thing that actually registered in my mind beyond him being so close was the fact that he really needed a breath mint. "That''s right! We''re really grateful! Thank you so much!" Another person grabbed my left elbow as she came close, practically pressing her chest against my arm. (Very close! Much too close!) "Ah, to be saved by such a beauty! We''re truly thankful" On my right, the third person also grabbed my arm as he tugged my right elbow. (Personal space! Assault on personal space!) "Aah. All three of them have the right of it. We''re all thankful for what you have done. If there''s anything I can do to repay you" Thankfully, the older man didn''t decide to approach me, but the disappointing smell still reinforced the others on the attack on my personal space. "I, I was...just..." "That''s right! If there''s something we can do to repay you" "Could you give us your name? Mine''s Mary, and this is Jason and Aaron" "Is there anything you want? Maybe a warm bed to sleep in?" (Aaahh, it''s too much!) "No, I..." """Yes?""" All three of them pressed their bodies against mine in excitement. Their youthful faces covering up my view of the surroundings. Rather, their bodies as well, as they were all taller than me despite not looking past half their teenage years. "I need to get going!" I forcefully broke out of their grip and went off in a run. "We''re going you guys!" Calling out to the spirits who were fooling around the wagon and horses, I activated [Spirit Form] to disappear, then leapt into the air and used [Alter Silhouette] to produce my wings and fly off, escaping from my situation. To think that I''d be punished in such a way for my good deed. Or rather, for me to react so poorly just for getting a bit of attention. My years of solitude must have done a number on me. Or maybe I''ve always been like this? I never was one for attracting attention. It took me more than a little effort just to talk to strangers, and I''ve always hated doing presentations of any kind. I didn''t think I was this bad around people though. Maybe only having Alicia to talk to for the last four years had a bad effect on me? I didn''t think I was doing so bad around those villagers, but none of them stared so closely at me, and they were all one on one. (This...was probably going to become an issue in the future, wasn''t it?) Ninetailed_Furball Hey again, it''s everyone''s favourite nine-tailed ball of hair again, in author''s note format this time. So this time, I''ve noticed a trend that''s been going on for a long time now. I kinda disregarded it at first, but some recent activity on the front page made it hard to ignore. The fact that this site basically just uses total views in the last few days as the only real metric for deciding your story''s rank! And you now what? The very fact that a relatively new story like mine has basically been on the front page constantly for the last two weeks is amazing, and it''s entirely thanks to readers like you! I won''t point fingers (especially since I read some of those stories myself), but the vast majority of stories on the top of the rankings take advantage of this feature, so I''ve been wondering. Do people prefer shorter, but more frequent updates? Do you like my current average 4000 word chapters twice a week (plus extras), or the 1200 word chapters every day that''s more common on this site? Please give me your opinion and vote just below. But remember, this is only to see what the reaction is. I plan on continuing this style for the time being, as its much more conductive to my writing style. Thanks as usual for taking the time to read my story! Chapter 28.5 – Cause and Effect A man dragged his feet on the dirt path to his home. He wore tattered old clothes, with a crudely made bow in hand and several hand made arrows in the other. The man, Philip, wasn''t limping, but simply had no motivation to reach his home. To see his loving wife and family. (Are they going to have to go to sleep hungry again?) That thought was all that occupied his mind. But as he approached his home, the scent of food reached his nostrils. The smell of meat made him think that maybe a neighbour had some luck today and they were celebrating. He felt happy for them, but it wouldn''t do anything for his family unless if they got a large kill. If it was only a rush rabbit, then there probably wasn''t enough to share. Philip''s feet grew even more heavy. If the scent reached his home, his family would be the ones trying to hold back their hunger as they imagined what the neighbours were eating. But no matter how much he walked, how many neighbours'' homes he passed, how much closer he got to his home, the smells didn''t weaken. Instead they grew stronger. It wasn''t possible. No, maybe it was, but it was hard to get his hopes up after years of famine had struck the poor village and most of the wild game in the nearby forest had been hunted out. People had been going in deeper and deeper into the forest in search of food and animals to hunt, but stories of people going missing or people just barely escaping strong monsters had been increasing. The local adventurer''s guild had been doing all it could to bring in as much meat as it could and sell it to the village cheaply, as had Mint and his general store been buying everything it could from the villagers to sell at the nearby Linsington City, then bring back food that they gathered from more successful farming villages. But no matter what they did, it wasn''t enough. The crops had been failing at an alarming rate year after year. Wheat simply didn''t grow well in the area for some reason. Despite that, other plants grew in the soil as if the low fertility was a lie. In particular, milkweed was easy to cultivate, and they were able to sell the threads and woven cloth made from milkweed, but they didn''t sell for much in the city. It was just barely enough pay for the food to supplement their meagre wheat harvests and forest hunting. But as the wheat crops failed more and more, they were forced to rely on hunting that much more to avoid starving. That in turn meant that there was less and less animals to hunt the next year, and the year after. For the last few years, it was rare to find anything to hunt without going deep into the forest, but not many returned. Philip thought back to the winter more than a year before. After counting everything up, it was clear that they didn''t have enough food to last the winter. If he tried to feed his whole family, then they might have had to go an entire month before the snow thawed and they could scrounge for any seeds and edible plants they could find in the forest. Nobody in his family would survive a month without food, so together with his wife, Hilde, he made the hard choice to sacrifice one of their children in the hopes that the rest would survive. In truth, he wanted to sacrifice himself for the sake of all his children, but doing so would doom them in the long run. With only one strong adult left, there wouldn''t be anyone who could take the risks in the hopes of bringing in a kill from the forest, or to gather seeds and mushrooms where the weaker monsters might appear. Then again, he thought, he hadn''t managed to do either this day. Even scrounging the forest floor for any of it''s bounty was getting harder and harder. It wasn''t just him either. It was getting rarer and rarer for anyone in the village to get much of anything from the forest. So because of that, he and his wife decided that for the sake of everyone, they needed one less mouth to feed. Philip''s first child was born with clouded eyes. The village chief had said that she would never know light her entire life. The day he discovered that, Philip and Hilde wept the entire day, mourning for the gift their daughter would never have. Due to her cloudy eyes, she was unable to do anything on her own, and her body ended up weak as a result. Even when she was old enough to work, she needed extra time and teaching to learn anything, as she couldn''t see to learn by example. Even when she did learn to do work, she couldn''t do it for long, as her body was weak. Even worse, she couldn''t do any of the hard work needed to raise her level. Without eyes, she couldn''t kill small animals and pests, nor could she safely do any real labour. She couldn''t even play with the other kids to slowly gain XP. His daughter was the only one he had heard of that was still at level one after six winters. Most children reached their second level by the time they were three, and by four, it was extremely rare for any children to have not have reached level two. Any normal child should have already achieved level three by the time they saw their sixth winter. All her younger siblings did just that, and she was his only child who was still at level one, with his youngest reaching level two at the beginning of that year. As for who to sacrifice, the choice was obvious. Both he and Hilde knew which one without asking. Most families would chose their youngest as they were the ones most vulnerable to illness. But for them, their youngest could already do more work than the oldest. Together with his wife, Philip told their children that they were going to gather food deeper in the forest than usual, and everyone had to help so that they could bring back as much as possible. For the first time in as long as he could remember, Philip saw his eldest''s eyes glitter with excitement. The thought that she could be truly be useful for the first time in her life made her happy, and thought of the fate that he was about to condemn her made his determination waver. If Hilde hadn''t put her hand on his shoulder and shook her head right then, his will might have broken right then and there. Philip carried his daughter on his back so they could hurry and spend as much time as possible gathering everything they could. As the trees grew bigger and bigger, the knot in the pit of his stomach grew colder and denser, but the thought of his family starving to death even with whatever they managed to bring back spurred him on. As if for extra encouragement, he spotted the broken skull of a child lying beside one tree. The sight reminded him that some of the people who went missing in recent years had been children. The fate of the adults who disappeared was easy for Philip to understand, but how little children, usually less than four years old, went missing had always confused him. To have thought that he wasn''t the only one burdened with the sin he was in the middle of committing. With the proof that his family wasn''t the only one that had been suffering so badly, that very thought hardened his resolve. And so, he left his elder of two daughters deep in the forest, telling her that he''s be back with a basket full of the forest''s bounty for her to carry home. He wondered though, that the sad expression she made as he turned his back on his own child, if it was one made knowing what exactly he was doing. If she had known from the start what her fate was, and willing came along with that knowledge? Philip shook his head. Such questions didn''t matter. He would never see his first daughter''s smile ever again. With such memories shoved firmly in the back of his mind, the man focused on returning to his home. Tormented by the smells of dinner as his empty belly rumbled, another day gone with the food meant for him being given to one of his children instead. For Philip, it was his punishment for abandoning one of his children. It was his duty to make sure the ones that lived would continue to survive, even if he had to go most days with nothing entering his mouth but cold water and rough tree bark as he distracted his belly to the best of his ability. But to his bewilderment, the scent of food grew stronger as he approached his home. Not just any food, but the rich scent of cooked meat. Finally, after being starved for so long, he was convinced that he had started to hallucinate. His failure as a father meant that god had decided to finally punish him with this hallucination more real than the harsh reality he had been living up until now. With a heavy heart, he opened the door to his home. "Papa! It''s Papa!" "Papa! Welcome home!" "Look Papa! It''s food!" "Welcome home dear" Before he could take a second step into his home, Philip was assaulted by his three living children as they excitedly pulled him inside to show him the dining room table. There, against all common sense, were plates filled with fruit. Off to the side in the kitchen was a pot on the fire brimming to capacity with with meat and vegetables. "Wha, this...am I hallucinating?" "I thought so too at first, but it''s all real dear" Philip''s shocked question was answered by Hilde. "How..." "I''m not entirely sure, but do you remember this?" Hilde pulled out some rags from a bag. It looked like a worn sack with some holes cut into it. But Philip recognized what it really was. "That dress? Huh? Doesn''t it look just like..." He hesitated to say so, but his heart already decided that it was a fact. "This, it looks exactly like the dress that Alicia wore, the only one she had" But Hilde finished his thought, confirming she thought so as well. "Then..." A strange hope started to well up inside Philip, but he wasn''t so optimistic as to let it run rampant. "I also found this" But as if trying to crush his common sense, Hilde showed a stone tablet with etchings on one side. "Thank you for taking care of her until we could meet...then that means" "She didn''t die that day. Not only that, someone found her and took her in!" "Where is she then? Did you see her" Philip''s voice rose in excitement, but Hilde''s lack of an immediate response drowned his elatement quickly. "I don''t know. These, along with a large amount of food was left in front of the house. I didn''t even see who left it" "Then...but then..." An alternate possibility started to surface, but no matter how much Philip tried to swallow it down, it refused to sink. "Maybe she didn''t want to see us. No, that''s probably the case. Why would she want to look on the faces of the parents who abandoned her?" "Maybe, but then, why would she leave such gifts?" If that was true, then the very sight of these gifts went in contrary to how their daughter probably felt about her parents. "I don''t know, but maybe she wasn''t the one who decided that" "What do you mean?" "As I came back from sharing the food with the neighbours, Russel came by to offer some food. Apparently someone came to the guild and sold enough meat to feed the entire village, so he came to trade some of it so we could eat. He was pretty surprised when he found out that someone had left so much food at our doorsteps." "Someone did something like that as well?" Philip was amazed. With how difficult it was to hunt lately, whoever it was must''ve been strong enough to hunt in the deeper parts of the forest. There was no reason for such a person to sell food at a place like this that couldn''t afford to give good prices. "Not only that, but apparently she spent most of the money she earned from selling the meat to buy things at Mint''s. Everything she bought was something made in the village on top of that" "That...how could such a good person even exist?" "I don''t know, but Russel said her name was Scarlet" "Like in the stories?" "She said that she was named after her" "She sounds more like the person herself if you ask me" "I think so too. Maybe unlike the stories, she survived that damn hero?" "Or maybe god gave her a second chance after her life was cut short?" "If anyone deserved such a thing, it would probably be her, wouldn''t it?" "I think so too. We''re really in a blessed age if Scarlet had returned" "Papa! Mama! We''re hungry!" "That''s right! I wanna eat!" "Food! Food!" "Alright everyone, settle down. We''ll start eating immediately" """Yay!""" "Ahh, she''s gone" Whack! "Hey what the hell?!" The young cat tribe beastkin man, Aaron, pulled his triangular ears back as he held the bump forming on his head. "It''s your fault she ran away!" "Haaa? How''s it my fault?!" "How about how you keep on hitting on anything with tits?" "Ahh, she really had big tits though" "Aargh! That''s why she ran away!" The young human woman, Mary, held her head in both hands in frustration. "Hey, maybe she really had some business she needed to attend to?" "In the middle of the night?!" "That''s right! If anything, we should''ve offered her a place to rest!" "You just wanted to sleep with her!" "What''s wrong with that?" "Everything!" "Hey stop it you two!" Mary and Aaron glared at each other once again, ignoring Jason, who was technically the leader of this adventurer party. "Now now, she might''ve had her own circumstances. The sun had sunk quite a while ago, yet she appeared out of nowhere. She might really have had urgent business to attend to" "See? Even Mint thinks I''m right" "Grrrr..." "But that doesn''t excuse the fact that we were rude to our saviour, nor the fact that we hadn''t been able to thank her properly" The condescending face along with the frustrated face both turned into gloomy expressions at once. What their employer said was right after all. "Haaa...I would''ve liked to at least found out her name though" "Same here. Such a cute girl must''ve had a cute name to go with it" "No, it would''ve been something sexy, with such big tits like that" "No way! She was small and cute! She must''ve had a cute name!" "She was small, but those tits were the real thing, unlike a certain someone I could mention" "Why you!" "I said stop it!" Once again the pair got into another fight and were forced apart by their supposed party leader. It was because this was such a common occurrence that he felt more like a baby sitter than an actual party leader though. clap clap "Now everyone, I know you''re tired, but we still have work to do. Imagine how happy everyone''ll be when they find out that you brought the meat and hides from so many loam wolves" "Umm...before that, I think you might want to clean yourself up?" Raining on Mint''s parade, Jason held out a water skin. The older man looked down at himself before accepting the skin and hid himself on the other side of the wagon where the sound of water splashing around came before he returned, wearing a pair of recently wrung out pants. "Ahem! Anyways, would your families be happy to have meat to eat and hides to work into sellable items?" Acting as if the last minute hadn''t happened, Mint clapped his hands once more and offered the trio some rewarding work. "Is it really alright to take these though? We didn''t help kill a single one" "Can''t we consider it a gift?" "Haa? A gift on top of saving our lives? What kind of selfish prick are you?" "And what, you want to just leave all these loam wolves here to rot? If she didn''t want it for herself, then it would be rude not to make use of it!" "That''s just you and your selfish reasoning!" Once again, the pair started to fight. "Now now, what you both say is right. It is rude to take it without permissions, but she also left without any indication of wanting any of it. If we meet again, then I''ll take responsibility for any misunderstandings. Fortunately, it looked like she came from Edgeworth, so someone might know something about her" "You heard old man Mint, let''s get to work you guys!" "Who''s the old man?!" Pretending not to hear the merchant''s words, the trio pulled out their knives and opened up the carcasses to drain the blood and remove the organs. Fortunately for them, their mysterious saviour had remembered to undo her magic before running off. The next day as the sky started to darken slightly, the group finally managed to reach their destination. Expecting to be welcomed like heroes having brought back the corpses of 23 fresh wolf kills, the three adventurers and one merchant were rudely surprised by the smell of cooked meat wafting around all over the village. "Oh hey, you guys are back!" "Hey Zimmer. What''s going on? I can smell something delicious from even over here. Did someone manage to catch something big?" "No, even better. There''s talk that the legendary saint came back and spent some time in the village!" "The saint? You mean Scarlet?! Hey hey, even as a joke, you shouldn''t be calling her a saint" Unlike a simple village guard, Mint understood the danger of calling someone a saint when the church hadn''t ordained them. While it had been kept deep under wraps, there were plenty of rumours that unordained saints generally disappeared. It wasn''t like it happened often, but that was more due to the lack of people being called saints by the public without the church''s permission. But to people with wide information networks like merchants, they couldn''t help but think of such things as suspicious, even if there wasn''t any grounds to be suspicious. But the fact was, the incident with Scarlet herself was widely suspected to have been an assassination rather than an accident amongst merchants and other groups unaffiliated with the church that benefited from Scarlet''s philanthropy. It wasn''t like they thought the church was evil, but rather that it was simply an organization like any other. And all large organizations had dark shadows, no matter how pretty the window dressing were. What made her death especially suspicious was both the fact that she was known to be pretty powerful person with a high level, along with the fact that there were records that she extended a hand even to those that the church openly condemned. She wasn''t one to differentiate nor discriminate, and gave succour freely. Among some of the more famous stories were those where she aided known criminals. And due to the mercy they received, those criminals turned their back on their dark past and started to walk in the light, helping others in similar ways to how they had been helped. In fact, there were many orphanages, soup kitchens, and shelters that were in fact famous for being started by those exact criminals, and carried Scarlet''s name as an eternal reminder. Most importantly though, was the fact that the one to have slain her was a hero, a venerable figure ordained by the church. The very fact that Scarlet just happened to be near a group of demons that hero was after, only to be mistaken as one of them, was a suspicious point. In fact, that point ruined that particular hero, as he lost the trust of both the people and many major organizations. With the public trust at stake, the church had no choice but to abandon support for the hero as well But when they tried to posthumously ordain Scarlet as a saint, the public in turn struck back, with rumours spreading that there was a greater reason why Scarlet never joined the church in the first place. After that, the church lost quite a lot of influence for decades until the public forgot the details not told explicitly in the old stories. Ever since then, Scarlet had been a sensitive issue for the church, one that still, centuries later, got people in trouble whenever they got wind that people were still calling her a saint. "Well, I don''t know the details, but apparently some girl stopped by the adventurer''s guild and sold off a ton of meat in exchange for registering as an adventurer" "Really? That''s pretty nice, but I don''t see how it''s connected to the legends" "The thing is, when she registered, it turned out her name was Scarlet" "That''s...quite interesting, but Scarlet isn''t that rare of a name" It was still a relatively popular name amongst the poor. There was even a girl with that name in this very village. "But it''s not just that. According to Russel, her skin was as white as snow, just like in the legends" "Wait, a girl with snow white skin?!" "Was she really cute and a bit small?!" "Hey! Don''t let go! Come back and help me!" Suddenly, two of the young adventurers started to run over to get more information, but were forced back to help guide the overloaded wagon through the village gates. "That certainly is quite the coincidence, I''ll admit" Mint turned to watch the trio to make sure they didn''t do something stupid again right as they were reaching the end of their job. "Yea, but it gets even better. Right after she registered and got her money, the girl went to your store and spent most of it immediately!" "Haaa...while I admit I''m happy to have a bit of extra income, but that''s hardly praiseworthy" "No, not just that, but everything she bought were things that were made here in the village!" "Almost everything sold in my store is made in the village. The only things that aren''t are the preserved food I brought over from the city" "Yea, but here''s the best part. Apparently she knew Alicia, you know, Philip and Hilde''s girl that went missing a year ago? Apparently she found her and took care of her, then went to their house and left behind a ton more food! So much that together with the stuff she sold, we''re still eating it even though she first came yesterday morning!" "That''s, certainly pretty amazing. She really did do her namesake proud..." But something in the guard''s story tugged at the back of Mint''s mind. "You said she was a girl with pale skin like snow, right?" "That''s right. Apparently she was really beautiful too" "Did she have long silver hair with a big pink ribbon along with a heavy black robe and a big, fluffy hat?" "An elf too! She had those cute, pointed ears as well! She must''ve been pretty young since she was shorter than me!" With the mystery girl''s appearance being discussed, Mary suddenly joined in as the wagon was finished being moved to the side of the main road. "But she had those tits too! Ones so big you wouldn''t imagine them from those usually stick-like elves!" "Was she really an elf though? I could''ve sworn her eyes were red" As Aaron interjected, adding the details he felt were most important, Jason asked his own question. "Huh? They were red? You sure you weren''t seeing things? I''ve never seen a person with red eyes, elf or not" "I think so too. It was pretty dark and she was wearing a hat. I only know she''s sexy cuz of her nice voice" "Haaa?! Is that the only thing you care about? Tits and sexiness?! You damn pervert!" "Better than a girl without any sex appeal" "Hey you two, not again!" As usual, the duo got into another fight, with their third trying to do his best to break things up. "Hey hey, by any chance you saw her on your way here?" "Maybe. Yesterday night, we were attacked by a large pack of loam wolves lead by an alpha loam wolf. To be honest, I thought we were done for, but all of the sudden, a girl in all black appeared from the sky and wiped out all the wolves at once. It didn''t even take a second" "Man, that sounds amazing! I really wish I saw her, but apparently nobody saw her leave the village. From what I heard, Alan was the last person to have seen her" "That lazy bum huh? I bet she ran away because he started hitting on her" "Haha, it wouldn''t be the first time" "But nobody saw her leave the village?" "Yea, it''s strange. Nathan didn''t even notice her approaching the walls until she suddenly yelled out to him apparently. He said it was like she was invisible until she called out to him, but I think he was probably just half asleep and didn''t notice" "Invisible huh? Maybe she really could go invisible?" "What sort of grass are you smoking Mint. You know nobody can do that" The guard looked at the merchant half in pity, and in exasperation. "No, actually it is possible, but you need to be pretty strong in [Light Magic] to do it well I hear" "So you think this girl''s a master at [Light Magic] then?" "More than just that. She killed all those wolves using [Earth Magic], and it looked like she killed the alpha loam wolf with a single kick" "That''s...pretty impressive alright" "Not only that, but when those three bumbling fools scared her off, she turned invisible after a bit of running" "You even saw it with your own eyes huh? Maybe she really can do it then" "Ah! Don''t forget! She''s an elf too!" As if forgetting everything that lead to the earlier fight, Mary yelled out again. "Hmmm? Well, sure, but how is that relevant?" Not sure where she was going with this, Mint threw out the unassuming question. "Don''t you remember? As she was running, she called out to something before turning invisible! If she was an elf, then that was definitely some spirits, right?" "That! That''s actually..." As if the puzzle pieces he didn''t even know he had suddenly clicked together, a new realization arrived in Mint''s mind. "You''re right. She did call out to something, like she had a group of kids following after her" "Huh, but that just confirms she''s an elf, right?" But contrary to Zimmer''s words, Mint shook his head. "No, elves can sense spirits, sure, but most can''t see them at all. The best they can do roughly feel where they are. In fact, this isn''t unique to the elves at all. There''s a bunch of people from other races who can do exactly that, but people who can actually see spirits are incredibly rare. Mostly just the elven elders and spiritualists. But that girl did what few even amongst even they can do, which was talk to them" "You say that, but all she did was call out to them. All she said was ''hey we''re going'' or something, right?" Jason tried to refute his employer''s words. "You don''t get it. She yelled that with the presumption that they could understand her, like it was a normal thing. It''s not like whistling and waving at an animal you own in the hopes that they''d come over, but an act with the full belief that they understood her and were willing to follower her orders" "So...?" "The thing is, from what I''ve heard, anyone who could do this was only able to manage it after centuries of practice. It takes decades for most elves to learn to see spirits, and many more on top of that to learn how to communicate with them" "What are you trying to say?" Unable to see where the merchant''s words were going, the guard finally asked. "Maybe this isn''t a revival, but she actually is the one and the same Scarlet from the legends?" "Is that possible?" "That hero never brought back a body. We only have the word of a disgraced hero that she even died" "So you really think that after centuries of hiding, the legendary saint has come back?" "I don''t know. I don''t know, but...maybe there''s more to it than a girl who simply has the same name by chance?" Chapter 29 – Linsington City Pushing the limit of my flight speed, or rather the flight speed of the little spirits who were following close behind me, we managed to get within line of sight of the next settlement by the time the light of the sun started to wipe out the comforting darkness of the night sky. Not wanting to deal with a sudden onset of intense pain, which would really do a number on my ability to fly coherently, I opted to land away from anyone. That said, there really weren''t many people on this road. Maybe it was because it never split to other directions, but I hadn''t seen another person since that original group I helped out. Touching down and retracting my wings, I looked up. Ahead of me was a clear, well maintained wall that fully encircled the city ahead of me. Unlike the one surrounding the village before, this one had lots of little lights both around the large, visible gate as well as on it''s battlements, with little dots of guards slowly patrolling it''s length. While I had no real basis to estimate it''s prosperity, it was certainly doing much better than the Edgeworth village. From where I was, it was probably only an hour''s walk, and the sun would still take longer than that to fully crest the horizon. The opportunity was perfect, so I went and did what my heart told me, and I built a little stone hut around me using magic, fully furnished as a miniature bath house, with some small magical flames in the corners to light up the interior in the place of any windows. I filled up the large tub with hot water and stripped down, putting my clothes into a stone basin which I also filled with water. The fluffballs danced around, examining all the strange thing I had made. I quickly pulled out some soap from my bag to scrub my clothes clean, but as I motioned to do so, my hands passed right through them and the basin they were in. Once again, I forgot I had left [Spirit Form] on. Without someone to be a constant reminder, it had gotten difficult to remember that I had it on. The sensation of my hands passing right through the hot water and cloths was unpleasant, like something was trying to invade inside my body. No wonder the little fluffballs didn''t like passing through things. Deactivating the skill, I went back to scrubbing all the accumulated dirt from my clothes. Fortunately, since I spent most of the time flying, not a whole lot had built up, but I wasn''t about to use that as an excuse. Rather, I didn''t want to put on dirty clothes after cleaning myself, so there was no way I wouldn''t wash my clothes as well. With a quick scrub and some rinsing, I left my articles to hang off of a pole suspended from the ceiling, then splashed some water from the tub on to my body. Starting from the head, I slowly filled my long hair with milk and honey scented soap lather, all the way from the top of my head down to the tips as they hung a bit above my knees. I ran my fingers through their whole length, making sure that I got every strand before using a stone basin to rinse off all the suds. All the dirty water flowing across the slightly sloped stone floor and through a small hole in the wall. Once again I lathered up my hands and rubbed them across my body, once again careful to not miss any spots. My face, my neck, my chest, my back, my belly, my arms, my hips, my legs, my feet. And again I used the basin to rinse it all, including any hair that got covered in lather again. Like I often did, I couldn''t help but think that washing my body didn''t take long, but also like usual, I dismissed that thought by reminding myself that using how long I took to wash my hair would skew any estimate. Confirming I was as clean as I was going to get, I eased myself into the bath tub, letting the hot water embrace me as I closed my eyes. After a few minutes of pure relaxation, I retrieved my brush from my bag and started to pass it through my hair, removing any loose strands and smoothing the rest. To be honest, if the whole process wasn''t so zen inducing, I''d have long cut this hair. Having to lather, rinse, and even brush it in parts because it was too long to do it in one go. But then there was the softness of it every time I touched it, as well as the scent once I''ve oiled it were like rewards on to itself, on top of how enjoyable it was to take care of it. I couldn''t help but think that maybe I was a bit weird for investing so much time on something so mundane, but in the end, I enjoyed it. Even if people thought I was weird for it, I didn''t care. I just continued to brush my hair until I was satisfied. When I finally was, I rubbed in my favourite hair oil, the lavender and lemon scented one. I loved the gentle, yet refreshing nature of it. I was down to only a single bottle of it, as I hadn''t made any since Alicia''s illness took a turn for the worse. It was fortunate I had some supply of the ingredients left, but that would only last a few weeks at most. If I couldn''t get more soon, I''d have to come up with a new mix. Once my hair was fully coated, I rubbed a sheet of soft leather through it to remove any excess before going through it once more with my brush. Lastly, I rubbed on a layer of milk and honey lotion on to my skin, ensuring that it''s softness nor glossiness wouldn''t lose out to my hair''s. With one more quick hand stroke across my body in the bath''s hot water, rubbing off the excess, I got out. Gently squeezing the water from my hair, I wrapped myself in a gentle, but warm breeze, lifting off the water from my hair and skin slowly. It turned out this was a much better way to get dry than simply using evaporation magic, as the latter would excessively dry out my skin and damage my hair. Taking things slow and easy was best, and I wasn''t lacking in time in the slightest. I forced out most of the humid air through the small ventilation holes near the ceiling, letting in fresh, drier air from outside. Unlike my own body, I had no qualms with using evaporation magic on my clothes, and water vapour quickly rose from the silk and leather, only to be pushed outside with the circulating breeze. One by one, I grabbed each article and put them on, finally at the end, gathering my hair over my left shoulder and tightly tying the pink ribbon into a big bow just above my hips, just like how Alicia always did it. I double checked myself, making sure I didn''t forget anything. gurgle But as if as a reminder that I had indeed forgotten something, my stomach rumbled. It was true I went the day before without a bite to eat, and once I entered the city, it might be difficult to find a private place to indulge. I retrieved a clay jar from my white bunny bag, then removing the lid, I brought it to my lips, tipping the contents into my open mouth. The cold blood flowed down my throat as I swallowed. This one was probably that goat monster. Unlike as a human, the cold drink wasn''t very refreshing, but despite the lack in satisfaction, it did do a good job of at least filling me up. The empty jar went back into my bag, which was quickly looped around my shoulders. Flipping my hood down, I opened a hole in the side of the impromptu bathhouse before heading off towards the city. The glowing fluffballs gathered around. It looked like they started to wander as they got bored with how long I took to bathe. Rather, the sun was clearly visible above the horizon, so it must have taken more than an hour. Confirming that none of the coloured spirits were unaccounted for, I dismissed the bathhouse, returning it into the dirt it originally was. With a bit of a pep in my step now that I was clean and fuelled up, we made our way on foot towards Linsington City. Or rather, I made my way on foot. The others just floated like usual. "Hold up" An armoured guard raised his hand as I approached the city. His partner casually watched me as he leaned next to the wall. Beside him, beyond the open portcullis was a large, closed gate. "Please show your ID and state your business inside the city" As firm as his words were, the guard''s tone and actions were lazy. If what I saw on the road was any indication, people probably didn''t visit this gate much. If it wasn''t the main access point for the village I just passed, I''d have wondered why there was even a gate here. Actually, that wasn''t really enough of a reason. The city was probably made first, along with this gate. The most likely reason was that this gate was made for easy access to gather resources from the wild. From what I saw from above, it was the closest side to the woodlands. "Here. I came to do work for the adventurer''s guild here" I pulled out my guild card and handed it to the bored guard. The man took out something from his waist pouch and touched my bronze guild ID with it. The small, stone slate-like object made my ID card glow blue for a second before settling. Confirming the light, the guard leaned over and glanced into my hood. I had to stop myself from pulling my hood down immediately as his glazed eyes sharpened, but couldn''t stop from turning away after he continued to stare for a few seconds. "Is, is there a problem?" "Uh, ah, no, here you go. It''s ten copper coins for the entry tax" I hand over my last silver coin, and recieved nine copper plates as change. "Don''t cause trouble, and welcome to Linsington City" The guard stuttered a bit and his face was red, but stepped back and gave a nod to the other guard who opened the heavy gate he was beside, enough to let me through. The city beyond the gate was claustrophobic, with large buildings on either side of the main road as they both towered above and arched over the streets, encroaching on the limited view of the sky. This...really wasn''t what I expected. It was a bit of a surprise seeing buildings more than two stories high, yet every one I could see were more like four or five. It certainly wasn''t the sort of thing I expected from this technology level. The buildings were clearly made from wood frames and the walls from what looked a lot like plaster. A bunch had stone walls for the first floor, but they weren''t even bricks, just squared off stones with mortar filling in the gaps. It didn''t feel like the buildings could safely support it''s own weight with the technology level I was looking at, but maybe it was because they didn''t need to follow modern safety standards? That said, the city didn''t stink to high heaven like I expected. It wasn''t like it didn''t stink, but it wasn''t like the inside of a porta potty. It was on the level that I could consider bearable. It really betrayed my image of medieval cities. Not like I was going to complain, at least not much. It still stank, but holding my breath wasn''t a viable option. Putting my initial shock aside, my mind wandered back to what happened with the guard just outside. His expression changed quite a bit when he looked closely at my face. The very fact made me nervous. I hoped this wouldn''t become a trend, though a few people tried looking at my face pretty closely already. I shook my head. It probably wasn''t very important. The guard probably didn''t expect my skin to be so pale or something. He didn''t say anything about it, so it probably wasn''t a real issue. What was more important was to find the adventurer''s guild so I could decide what to do next. I was sorely lacking on a direction, and maybe I could find one once I went through the guild''s examination. Putting one foot in front of the other, I walked down the street, hopefully in the right direction. After asking a few people on the way, I found my way to the guild building. It was one of the biggest I''ve seen in the city. While it was only was three floors high, it was very wide, taking up triple the width of the surrounding buildings. There were people entering and exiting as well. Most wore armour and weapons on them, along with a large bag on their backs. A few wore robes, and many of those carried a large staff like a walking stick. Almost all were in groups of three to five, though some seemed to be solo. I felt a strange sense of camaraderie looking at them. It was like the robes I used to cover myself from the sun wasn''t so weird and suspicious after all. Mustering up my courage, I opened the door and strode in boldly. The inside of the building wasn''t too well lit, with things that looked a bit like lanterns hanging on the walls. Looking directly at the lights hurt my eyes, but otherwise weren''t too bright. Not only that, but my exposed skin felt a bit warm as well. Most likely, they were magical items that emitted [Light Magic] to brighten up the interior. I was thankful that it wasn''t harmful enough to make me to hide from even that. As long as I didn''t look directly at the lamps, I could safely ignore them. In front of me, the overall layout was similar to the guild in Edgeworth Village, just much bigger and there were actually people here beyond the branch guild master. A third of the tables on my left were occupied by various groups discussing things, or just relaxing with a drink and some food. A waitress was leaning against a bar counter talking to the bartender near the tables. There were a couple of people on my right browsing through the requests posted on the wall. Unlike the village''s guild, there were actually a decent number of wooden planks posted. In front of me, there were several people standing in front of multiple clerks sitting across a wide counter with signs above stating what each clerk was in charge of. All the people lined up were under the three clerks under a sign that read [Requests and Information], with the other clerk was looking bored doing some sort of paperwork. It looked like a single man was operating all the other counters, but despite that, he looked bored as nobody stood at any of his counters. I made my way to the line for [Requests and Information]. "Welcome, how may I help you" The receptionist gave me her route welcome when I reached the front of her line. She had bright orange hair with darker stripes with small, triangular ears sticking out on top. The loose blue and black guild uniform did a poor job of fitting her lithe figure. Thinking back, the old man at the Edgeworth Village''s guild was wearing the same outfit, but his was much more faded and worn out to the point that it wasn''t immediately obvious. "Hi, I''d like to take a rank examination?" I presented my guild card and the letter, prepared beforehand while I waited. "Hmm...I see, please give me a moment" The staff member retrieved them both and pressed my card against a crystal orb with a stone base. The card glowed blue for a second, then some light appeared inside the crystal orb. "Miss Scarlet? You registered just yesterday at Edgeworth Village?" "Does my card say that?" It was a surprise that she found that out. The card only really had my name and rank etched into it. Maybe there was more info encoded on it? The card seeped with mana after all. "No, the guild has magical communication equipment to send that sort of information across branches on regular intervals. When I checked your card, this ID reader simply showed me the information that we had stored" "Oh? What sort of stuff do you record?" It was interesting that they had the ability to transmit information like that. The world''s technology must be better than it looked in weird places like this. "Mostly just your professional records and any notes left by guild staff" "I see" Pretty standard fare I guess. "If that is all, please wait a moment as I take your request upstairs" "Oh, alright" Kinda figured that she''d need to talk to whoever was responsible for the examination. The clerk got up from the counter and went through a door in the back. Her presence rose up to the second floor and met with another for a minute before they both went further up, quite a bit up. Rather than continue spying on the staff members, I turned to have a look at the little fluffballs in the room from the corner of my eye as I waited. Once again, they were zipping around, checking out whatever strange thing that piqued their curiosity. Some were bouncing around groups of adventurers, others were checking out the magical lamps on the walls. Some further were already bored with the stuff the guild had to offer and were flying orbits chasing each other while trying to avoid bumping anything. No matter what they did, the spirits always brought a smile to my lips. Oops. There was a person sitting at one table with the look of shock on his face. It kinda looked like his gaze was following some of the little spirits, but not quite. He had long ears sticking out from the side of his head, like mine. Probably an elf. Alicia said that most elves can sense spirits, but maybe this is the level that the typical elf was at? It looked like it was important that I didn''t attract attention to the fact that I can see them completely. "Miss Scarlet, we are ready for you" Turning back, the staff member had returned. "This way please" I followed her motion and made my way around the counter and through a door off to the side after her, different from the one behind the counter she took earlier. The door lead into a short hall that branched off to the side. We followed the branch and down two sets of stairs ending in a door on the far wall. Opening that door, I followed the receptionist into a large room, about the size of a basketball court. The floor, walls, and arched ceiling were made of stone though, and were suffused with lots of mana. Waiting for us was a giant of a man, easily twice as tall as me, and maybe four times as wide. It wasn''t like he was fat though, it was all muscle. I felt a tinge of envy, but rational thought reminded me that with my current body, hulking muscles wouldn''t look good at all. Besides, thanks to my level, I had more than enough strength despite how thin my limbs were. That thought was further blasted away when I saw the long, soft-looking ears on top of his head. They were grey like the rest of his mop, but didn''t fit him in any other way. (Alex Armstrong meets Roger Rabbit?!) I had to work hard to avoid bursting into laughter at the thought that he might have a fluffy little pom of a tail sticking out from his butt. "Hrmph. You''re the one who wanted to take the advancement examination? ...is something the matter?" "N, no. It''s nothing" (Just don''t look at his ears, pretend he''s just a macho man) Then again, even that was a weird gut punch for me. For some reason, the man in front of me was only wearing a few leather straps in place of a shirt. (Was was even the point of those things?! Bondage?! Is that the meaning?! At least they were red, rather than black, or else I wouldn''t be able to see them as anything but bondage equipment...no, it still feels like it''s bondage equipment) I tilted my head even further down, covering his entire body with the brim of my hat to avoid doing something too disrespectful. "Hrmph. Well, it''s fine. So you think you''re strong enough to skip the early ranks? What''s your level?" (Ah, saying that out loud might be an issue if I''m way out of the norm. Better check what his is first) "Ah, right. Ummm..." I looked up a bit, activated [Scan] and quickly scrolled through looking for his status page. ------------------------------------[Name: Florian Strongear][Species: Rabbit Tribe Beastkin]...------------------------------------ "Pffff!" (What was with his name?!) "Is something the matter?" "Ah...no...I just remembered something funny..." I couldn''t say it. I couldn''t say I couldn''t stop myself from laughing at his name. Forcing the laughter down, I quickly checked his level. It was 89. Was that high? I wanted to check a bunch more people, but the only other person here was the receptionist. She probably wasn''t a good comparison. "Umm...my level is 75" For now, it might be best to give him something lower. "Ooh, really? You''re not lying to me?" (I was. I''m sorry) "Is there something wrong with my level?" "Ah, if you really are 75 at your age, then I''d want to shake your hand. I''ll adjust myself to that level, but this is your only chance to tell me if you were lying" (I''m sorry. I''m actually over triple that) "Haaa...." "Well, let''s start the examination. Take your spot. You can start whenever you like" Was that consideration for me being the challenger? Or maybe because he didn''t believe my level? "Umm...what''s the conditions for the exam?" "Just try your best to beat me" "...umm...I''ve never had to hold back in a fight but..." "Ah, don''t worry, I''m confident in my strength" Well, yea, I bet. The guy was built like a truck. "No, I mean, in case of injuries..." "Haa? I''ll stop before something like that happens" "No, I mean for you..." "You''ve got some nerve spouting such a thing! I can take anything you can dish out! I''ll make sure that I don''t break you badly enough that magic can''t heal you afterwards!" Well, I wasn''t too concerned about myself. I wasn''t fond of pain, but I could just regenerate any damage I took, but this guy probably couldn''t. Looking through his skills...yea, aside from [Tailoring], he basically had all combat skills. (...[Tailoring]?!) "Pfff!" "You little...You think there''s a limit to how much to disrespect your elders?" "I''m sorry, I just noticed something funny. I didn''t mean to laugh" "Haaa. Whatever. Let''s just get this over with. Start whenever you''re ready. Oh, you can use your normal weapon. I''ll deal with it" The giant of a man picked up a large wooden two handed axe from a weapon rack on the wall before stepping to the middle of the left side of the room. "Is that really fine?" "Yea, it''s more for your protection than mine anyways" I supposed that made sense, if he was strong enough to back up that claim. I made my way to the middle of the right. The little fluffballs spread out along the walls like an audience in bleachers. It looked like neither the big man nor the receptionist noticed they were around. "Really?" "Yea yea, just start already" Slightly bending my knees, I dramatically waved my arms back, then pushed them forward in a scooping motion. To start with, I figured I''d try out [Lunar Magic]. I pushed forward my shadow, then extended it from the ground into large tendrils that attacked the big man. His eyes opened in surprise, but he quickly reacted and swung his weapon, repelling the tendrils. With some more dramatic swinging of my arms, I made the physical shadows attack again and again from the front, the sides, and even a few from behind him. Each time the mountain of a man proved his experience as he repelled the many tendrils with nothing but his axe. It was neat seeing how someone would deal with an attack like this. I had no choice but to go straight for the caster when I faced such an attack, as I quickly got overwhelmed by the relentless attacks. My claws could deal with two or three tendrils, but as the numbers increased and attacked more and more in my blind spots, I couldn''t stop from taking damage, but this guy moved as quickly as his species suggested, despite how hulking of a body he had. Well, this was really only my first attack though. I carefully pointed a finger at the big man''s thigh, then fired off my second attack: a condensed beam of light using [Solar Magic]. "Aaagh!" Pain erupted from the ashen stub that was my index finger as all the shadow tendrils disappeared and the rabbit man''s knee exploded in blood and gore as he yelled in agony. The scent of burnt flesh and fresh blood spreading outward. (Ah, his blood smells nice) I had to watch myself to avoid drooling as the huge man sat on the ground holding his leg. The receptionist rushed over and placed her hands on the bleeding stump. After she mumbled something, a blue mist emitted from her hands, and I could see the bleeding quickly stop and the wound close, but the dismembered leg didn''t reattach or grow back. "Umm..." I was impressed at seeing healing magic for the first time, but was worried that this was the limit of this world''s healing magic. If so, I did something really bad. "Ah, that was a surprise. Not only was your [Dark Magic] impressive, but that other thing you did. What was it?" "Oh, uh, just some [Light Magic]" "That thing?! I''ve never seen anyone use [Light Magic] in such a way" "I''m self taught, so a lot of my magic isn''t normal" I always figured how monsters used [Light Magic] was weird, dispersing the rays as widely as they did. If I wasn''t a vampire, then they were probably little more than just annoying. Or maybe they had some sort of property that wasn''t very noticeable compared to the burning sensation I felt? Either way, focusing those rays into a laser would obviously be much more efficient than firing off a wide beam. At least I thought so. "I see. Well, you certainly impressed me. Lucy, make sure this kid is upgraded to rank D promptly!" "Yes sir!" "Umm..." "What is it? Something the matter?" "I''m sorry. I don''t know any healing magic, but maybe I have something to make up for it" I pulled off my bag and started to dig through it. "Wha?!" The big man grabbed his axe while the receptionist took a few steps back in response to the giant''s yell, looking back and forth between us with both confustion and fear in her eyes. "Huh?" I froze, unsure what was going on. "That...did you hunt that yourself?" "Huh?" The muscle man eased up and pointed at my bag. "Oh, I found this a while back. It''s pretty cute, isn''t it?" I held it up against my chest as I waved it''s arms. "You...found it...? That''s a pretty lucky find there little girl" "I think so too. My life got so much easier since I did" Magic bags were so great. Everyone should have one. Though I''d like it if he didn''t call me a little girl. "No...well...that too...but still, to have a magic bag made from a killer bunny hide?" "Killer bunny?" What a weird name. "Yea, that thing. It''s a killer bunny. They''re the most foul, cruel, bad tempered rodents anyone''s ever set eyes on. Although I admit they''re pretty innocuous for A rank monsters" "A rank?!" I didn''t know how strong A ranks were, but just the term suggested that they were really up there. "That''s right. Many people approach them without realizing it only to be cut down immediately. Be careful if you ever see a live one" I nodded. If they were that strong, then it was best I wasn''t careless if I ever saw one. It really was a surprise that there were creatures that looked like my bunny plush though. "Umm...anyways, your leg" Remembering why I unshouldered my plush bag, I opened it up again. "Ah? Oh, this thing? Don''t worry about it" "Huh?" "I''ll have one of our healers fix it later. Something on this level isn''t a big deal since the bleeding''s already stopped" "Oh...that''s good" I was glad. The thought that I might''ve severely damaged this big man''s career because I thought my laser spell would only drill a hole through his knee like on TV and movies was a bit nerve wracking. "You...you really were worried that much about me huh?" "Wouldn''t anyone?" That was a weird question to be asked. "Hmmm...I wonder. Sorry the way I treated you. Seems like you''re the real deal" "Ah no, I was a bit rude in the first place" "Hahaha! Let''s call it even then. I''ve got some big hopes for you in the future!" "Thanks..." The big rabbit man slapped my back, planting my face into the ground. It didn''t hurt, but it was annoying. Chapter 30 – D Rank and First Request I''ve got to say though..." I looked up as I rubbed my nose. It didn''t hurt, but having it planted into the stone floor probably left some dirt on it. "It''s really impressive that you even have [Chant Revocation] on top of both [Dark Magic] and [Light Magic]" "Huh?" What was that? "Hmmm? You have it right? You didn''t chant at all" "Chant? For what?" "Hey hey hey, don''t tell me you''ve never chanted to use your magic" I tilted my head to the side. (Why''s the receptionist looking at me with so much surprise) "That''s...you really must''ve gone the long way around to use magic then, if you''ve never chanted before" "Well...I am self taught" "True, you did say that before. Normally people learn from an experienced mage and are taught the chants first. From there, they learn the magic skills, but it sounds like you learned [Mana Manipulation first]?" "Well, I do have it" I can''t just say I got the magic skills first then learned [Mana Manipulation] while trying to figure out how to make the skills work. "A high levelled mage that''ve never used chants huh? Well, not like it''s never happened, but it''s pretty rare. In that case, I recommend you check our library. You might discover some orthodox skills and techniques that normal mage would have" "Really?" A library huh? I haven''t read any books since coming to this world. No, I haven''t even seen paper now that I thought about it. Was it expensive or something? "That''s right. Hey Lucy!" "Sir!" The receptionist sat straight up, nervously looking at the macho man. "Once you''ve updated the girl''s registration, make sure to show her the library" "Yes sir!" "I think you should look into getting the [Multi-cast] skill next little girl. But anyways, good luck out there. I expect great things from you" With a big grin, the rabbit man pawed my head, squishing my hat and hood as he rubbed it back and forth. The second he removed his hand, I combed back my hair and fixed my hat and hood before standing up again. "I''ll try not to disappoint" With a bit of a smile, I turned back and followed the receptionist back to the lobby. "Please give me a moment and I''ll have your new guild card ready" With those parting words, Lucy went back through the door behind the receptions counter I was back to standing at. A short while later, she returned, and handed me a shiny new card. This one was made from polished steel, or something that appeared like that. The details and decorations itself were the same as before, aside from the change to my rank to D, and some colour was added to the emblems on both sides. "With this, you are officially now a rank D adventurer. Congratulations" The receptionist gave me a gentle smile and bow. "Ah, thanks" Once I finished admiring the new card, I put it away in my bag. "With your new rank, the guild waives the standard rank restrictions regarding requests, but still recommends that you avoid taking requests too much higher than your own rank" "...does that mean I can take A rank requests if I wanted?" I asked her after taking a second to process her words. "That is correct, but I strongly warn against doing so. Every increase in rank comes with a significant increase in difficulty. Even with the results of your examination, I don''t recommend you try any requests above C rank" "Alright, I''ll keep that in mind" Getting killed because I was too cocky would be a terrible way to go. "Now then, thanks to the guild master''s permission, if you like, I can show you to the library immediately" "Ah...umm...the guild master?" "Branch Guild Master Strongear. The one who administered your examination" "Huh?! He was the guild master?" That bunny-eared macho man?! "Yes, he is. Is something the matter?" "Ah, ummm, it''s just..." I couldn''t say that I thought it was absurd that such a weird looking guy was the guild master. "Umm...I never thought that the guild master would go through the effort of doing the examination for a new adventurer" "Well, admittedly not normally, however you were recommended by the guild master of Edgeworth Village. It may be a small village, but the branch guild master there is highly regarded" "That...you mean that letter I gave you said such?" "That is correct" (To think that I had hit the jackpot like that. I suppose I owe him a bit for that) "It is also thanks to the letter that you were given permission to use the library so easily" "That too?!" (I mean, it''s just a library isn''t it?) "That is correct. Normally, you would need explicit permission to use the library by someone with authority regarding the library" "I suppose it''s because the guild needs to be able to trust anyone who uses the library?" I suppose it''s where secrets would be stored after all. "That is correct. It would be troubling if any articles were damaged or stolen after all" (That''s the reason?!) "So they''re that expensive huh?" "A book would normally cost the average D rank about a year of private savings" "That much?!" Lucy nodded. "So I ask that you consider the level of trust the branch guild master is offering by giving you permission to freely use the library" "I see, I guess so..." Now I was getting intimidated at the thought of reading any books. It was like I just suddenly got permission to check out original historical documents. (Am I going to have to wear rubber gloves to avoid leaving fingerprints? But that aside, I really do owe that old guild master for this) "So would you like me to show you the library right now?" "Ah, no. I''d rather take a request and earn some money first" I only had some chump change left. If I got distracted by the library and forgot to make some cash, I could be put in a bad spot pretty quickly. "In that case, simply present your guild card to any receptionist when you desire to use the library. Your access permission has already been registered" I nodded. Those notes kept in their system was already proving useful. "In regards to requests, they are all posted on that wall over there. While you are allowed to take request of any difficulty you desire due to your current rank, the adventurer''s guild recommends that you not overreach yourself and take requests significantly higher than your own rank. Also please keep in mind that some requests require specific ranks, and can not be taken by those below that rank under any circumstances. Requests like that specifically note the rank requirements on them" I carved Lucy''s words into my mind. I was glad I safely got to rank D without problems, but I still had no idea how strong I was relative to actual strong people of this world. That macho man, I mean guild master, might''ve been an outlier and was unusually low level. "Simply bring any request boards from the wall you wish to take to this counter and we will register those requests for you" "I can take more than one at once?" "You may take as many as you feel you are able to complete before the request date is reached. However, taking too many requests at once is frowned upon, and we insist that instead of taking many lower rank requests that you take a fewer number of more suitable difficulty requests so that fellow adventurers have a chance to receive requests appropriate to their skill" That was pretty convenient, and their request made plenty of sense. "Alright" "Oh, one last thing" As I was about to turn to check the wall, the receptionist called out to me again. "This doesn''t really apply to you this early, but some of the request plates aren''t for this city but for other locations. Particularly the B and A rank ones. Due to the small number of B and A rank adventurers, we often post requests from other locations in the hopes that capable people can discover them even if they are not at the city the requests were offered in" "Huh, ''kay. Well, I''ll have a look now then" With a small nod, I made my way to the wall where the requests were posted. Unlike the previous village, there were actually a decent number of request planks hanging off of the wall. On top of that, they were even organized by rank and type, with the lowest rank ones on the right and the highest on the left. In addition, the rank B and A planks weren''t for this city like the receptionist lady said. All of them didn''t state that they were requests, but instead mentioned that they were for other locations. I immediately disregarded those requests. I wanted some quick cash, not a big job from far away. Not only that, but I didn''t have a good grasp of my strength. While it was unlikely, for all I knew, I was only as strong as the average C rank. Taking an A rank request right was too risky. Instead, my eyes scanned through the D rank requests. While I was probably quite a bit stronger than most D rankers from how the examination went, first hand experience hunting monsters considered appropriate for D rank adventurers would give me a good idea in regards to my abilities. There were two subjugation requests available for my rank. The first was for orcs. The plank said that a group of five orcs were spotted to the north, and were to be subjugated before they established a colony. If the orcs were similar to the ones I had farmed in the dungeon, then they would be small fries for me. In addition, they wouldn''t have much extras for me to bring back for bonus cash most likely. The second request was for something called hornbulls. It seemed like they often appeared in the plains to the south-east, and the requester wanted their numbers culled a bit. The proof of subjugation was their horns. One pair for one monster, and the request was for three, but would accept more. The request was 15 silver coins, with additional kills offering 5 more coins each. Just doing this one request would make me more money than everything I had earned at the previous village. It made me wonder if I had been ripped off. Then again, I was selling something that they wouldn''t normally buy, so it made sense that it wouldn''t give me as much as something that was high in demand. Especially considering the poor state of that village. I reached up and pulled the hornbull request plate off of the nail it hung off of before returning to the reception counter. Luckily, I didn''t have to wait and got to talk to Lucy again immediately. "Hey, I want to take this request" I put the wooden plank on to the counter with my shiny new guild card. "I understand. Please wait a moment" She took both items and examined the plank for a moment before touching them both to a device under the counter. A quick glow of light later, she gave them both back to me. "Thank you for waiting. The request had been registered. Please hold on to the request plate until you finish the request. In addition, in case you haven''t been informed, if the request plate is shown to the guards at the city gates, they will waive the entrance tax" "Oh, thanks" (That''s convenient) "Oh, could you tell me about this hornbull? I don''t know anything about them" "Is that so? Hornbulls are large, quadruped monsters. They usually stand a bit taller than you do, and vaguely resemble a horse, but with a short neck, and have large horns that stick out sideways then bend forward. They typically appear in small groups in open grasslands, and have made the south-eastern plains their home" Her description made them sound a lot like normal bulls from Earth. "They are well known for charging at anything they perceive as a threat and try to gore them with their horns, so be careful of approaching them head-on" I nodded. They really sounded like bulls. "Alright, thanks. I''ll be back soon" "Please be careful, and good luck in your hunt" I grabbed my card and the request plank and put them into one of the belt pouches I bought in Edgeworth Village, then headed out. A quick walk got me through the eastern gates, and what greeted me was a wide open plains with a single packed dirt road cutting through it as it meandered all the way to the horizon. According to the request, my subjugation targets typically were to the south-east. Confirming the direction, I headed off with a light jog, holding my hood down with a hand. As I made my way, I passed other adventurers. They looked at me in surprise as I quickly ran past them, but returned to whatever they were doing. It looked like most of them were relatively new, as they always wore pretty basic equipment. Simple leather breastplates and dull swords or spears, maybe a worn-looking bow or a simple stick in their hands. Most of them were working together in small groups, but the occasional adventurer was hunched over digging something up by themself. As I created distance between myself and the city, the number of other people I saw dwindled from the occasional one to pretty much nobody. Despite that, there wasn''t any indication that the grasslands were going to end anytime soon as the city walls slowly sank into the horizon. In the distance, I finally saw a group of creatures grazing on the plains. There were five of them, and all looked like shaggy brown cows. Three had the stereotypical wide bull horns, while the other two had smaller horns that each formed a half-crescent. I wasn''t too worried about the differences, but they were all pretty big. Just like how Lucy said in the guild, their shoulders stood taller than me, yet they were quadrupeds. It was hard to imagine how much more they weighed than I did, but probably at least five times as much. No, probably way more than that, as they looked significantly wider than me as well. One of them was keeping an eye out for me, but otherwise ignored me. That would probably change the second I got too close, so it would''ve been better to start my attack from here. After thinking about it for a moment, I chose to deploy [Aqua Magic]. I produced an ice lance for each monster, then fired them all off at the same time. Shockwaves pounded against me as the speeding projectiles pushed the air outwards as they flew. Immediately after, the sounds of shattering ice and the splatter of blood and gore reached my ears before five heavy thuds followed. All the hornbulls were laying dead. ... Well then. I wasn''t too surprised considering they were considered about as difficult as orcs, and back in the dungeon I used to commit genocide on their settlement floor before moving on to the deeper floors. But it was sort of disappointing that they weren''t able resist at all. It was a waste, so I used telekinesis magic to lift one up and put an empty jar below the monster to gather it''s blood while I sucked the rest out from the open wounds from the other four. My belly was full, and all my blood jars were at capacity. The hornbulls were deprived of their horns as I snapped them off as proof, then they were all shoved into my bag. The surreal sight of a white cartoon bunny plush eating giant bulls made me wonder what real killer bunnies looked like when they ate, but I quickly put that thought aside as my work ended, and I made my way back to the city. The guard asked for my ID and I showed my request plank at the same time. Unlike the first time I entered the city, this guard didn''t ask for the entry tax just like the receptionist said. I was thankful for being able to save money like that. Once inside, I quickly made my way to the guild. The sun was still high in the sky, so once I cashed everything in, I had plenty of time to spend in the library. Like earlier, there weren''t too many people inside the guild building, so I was quickly able to get to Lucy''s counter again. It was nice being able to talk to someone I already knew a bit rather than go to a new receptionist each time. "Oh, welcome back. Was there a problem?" "No, no problem. I''m done" I took out my card and the plank, then the horns from all the hornbulls. "..." Across from me, Lucy had a look of shock on her face as she stared at the pile of horns I placed. "Umm..." "Oh, I''m sorry! Please give me a moment to check the proofs" After taking a moment to reboot, the receptionist gathered the horns and sorted them out on the counter, confirming them all. "I have confirmed it. Five sets of hornbull horns. Three from males, and two from females" (Ah, that was the difference between them) "I have confirmed that you have completed the request with an additional two subjugations, totalling your reward to 25 silver coins" With that, she took my guild card and the request plank and put them to the device she used earlier under the counter. A soft glow appeared, then she handed me back my card and held on to the plank. Next, she opened a drawer, and with some clinking sounds, she extracted and placed two silver plates and five silver coins on to the counter. Finally, she piled the horns into an empty crate pulled from a stack beside her and dropped the request plank inside as well. "If you brought any of the hornbull materials, you can sell them off at the materials counter to your left" Lucy pointed towards the bored looking man at another counter. "Alright. Could you show me to the library after?" "It would be my pleasure" I quickly made my way over to the other counter. "Umm...excuse me..." "Oh, hey. Do you need something?" The man who looked like he was about to nod off quickly woke up and gave me a gentle smile. "I was wondering if you''d buy something" "That''s fine, but we mostly only buy monster materials. If you have anything else, then you''re better off selling it to someone who deals with that sort of thing" "That''s fine. Can I put them here?" "Yea, just lay it on the counter" I pulled out one of the hornbulls and plopped it onto the counter with a heavy thud. Shifting my body to the side, I could see the man''s mouth gape open as he stared at it. "You...that wasn''t heavy?" I shook my head. The body certainly was huge, and would''ve been impossible for anyone to lift on their own on Earth, but thanks to the skill system, even someone as small as me could easily lift up something as big as that without issue as long as I had high enough stats. "I''ve got four more too" If there was more space on the counter, I would''ve put them out already. "Ah, wait a sec, let me get some help" With that, the man called for two more people, who carried the hornbull carcasses away though the door in the back as the first man examined each of my kills before giving me the money for all of them with a nervous smile. Chapter 31 – Scarlet’s Sweet Home Oh, did you make more than you expected?" Lucy asked me as I returned to her counter. Despite my best efforts, I hadn''t been able to suppress the smile that crept on to my face. Combining the earnings from the request as well as the corpses I sold, I made over seven silver plates. It seemed like the condition for the hornbulls I brought were considered especially good, and they liked the fact that I drained the blood beforehand. Well, the latter bit was especially convenient for me. "I did. I''m surprised how much you can make at D rank" Glancing back at the request wall, there was an obvious wall in pay between D rank and the ranks below it. Even most E rank requests gave little more than two or three silver coins for the standard reward, yet the D rank request I took gave more than five times that at base. The lower ranks were even worse, but C rank wasn''t that much higher than D rank, with most requests being about five silver plates at base. Maybe the materials were worth relatively more at the higher ranks? "For me, I was surprised you finished the job so quickly. Usually that request takes the better part of a day to finish" "Huh? Really?" It wasn''t hard to find the monsters, since it was the plains, and they weren''t the type that would take a long time to beat. Weak people would simply lose rather than take a long time to fight a monster like that. "That''s right. Since you have to go so far out to find hornbulls, most people take a while to make the trip. Though the fact that you have a magic bag would speed things up, I didn''t expect it to be that fast" "Really? I just ran the way though" "sigh I suppose that just shows how strong you are. Most people would walk. Only a fool would rush and reach a fight while tired" Lucy looked away while giving off that sigh, like she was thinking of a particular example. (Erk!) I couldn''t help but feel that she was talking about me in particular despite the lack of an accusatory tone. "Ummm, anyways, the library..." "Ah yes, please come with me" Without looking like she noticed the forced change in topics, the receptionist got up and waved me to follow her. We took the door we used earlier for the examination, but instead of going down, we went up to the second floor, down a simple hallway to the end, then entered a door to the side. "Here''s the library. You can read anything you want from the shelves" "But make sure you put it back when you''re done" A voice called out from beside the door. There was an old man with a long, grey beard sitting at a simple desk working on some documents. "This is Honorius, one of Branch Guild Master Strongear''s assistants and the one in charge of the library" "Just don''t make a mess or damage anything" He didn''t even look up when he talked and instead concentrated on the wooden slate in his hands. "Don''t mind him, he''s always like that" I carefully nodded before taking a look at the room. In front of me was a simple table with two chairs against the wall. The opposing wall was covered in bookshelves, but the shelves themselves was mostly filled with things other than books. What predominantly filled the shelves were wooden slates, many of which were bound together with cords. Maybe those were supposed to be cheaper alternatives to books? "If there''s anything you need, you can ask Honorius or find myself downstairs" "Preferably go find the lass" "Erm, well, enjoy yourself" With a nod, Lucy closed the door and left me with the grumpy old man, who proceeded to just ignore me. Doing my best to avoid worrying about him, I made my way to the bookshelves and poked through what was available. "Miss Scarlet?" I jerked my head up. Lucy was standing at the door. When I turned my head around, the old man was still hunched over at his desk. (Did he move even once since I got here?) "What''s up?" I turned back to the receptionist. "The guild facilities will be closing soon. I thought you would like to know" "Huh? Already?" I looked through the window, but the way the shadows fell on the buildings outside suggested it was still a little while before dusk. Even then, this place was illuminated with magical lamps, so the sun''s position hardly made much of a difference. "That''s right. The secondary facilities will be closing soon with only the guild hall being open from here on" "Ah, alright" She sounded apologetic, but I just nodded. If that was how they operated, then who was I to argue? "Have you already found a place to stay the night, or do you need a recommendation?" "Ah no, I''ll be fine" Renting a room would rouse suspicion for a person who couldn''t sleep like me. "I understand" "Thanks for the help today. I''ll be back tomorrow" "Thank you as well, and I hope to see you again tomorrow" As Lucy left, I got up and put away the wooden slate I was reading, then headed out to the streets, the little spirits following silently the entire time. Despite the periodic mana treats I was giving them, they were completely bored while I we were in the library. As I wandered around aimlessly, I thought about the library. When I first picked up a book, admiring the material and craftsmanship on it alone ended up taking a lot of time. The book''s cover was made from a thick leather with a fancy design on both sides, and the pages were thick and stiff, completely unlike paper. I suspected it was made from parchment, but that was a type of leather right? No wonder books were expensive if the hundred or so pages of a single book were made from sheets of leather. If you couldn''t get leather en mass like I could in the dungeon, then a single page would be worth a decent handful of coins. Even that presumed that any ordinary leather could be used to make parchment, which I had a feeling wasn''t true. Not only that, but the writing and drawings on it was all done by hand. The amount of labour just to make one book was staggering. No wonder the typical D rank would only be able to buy a single book a year with their savings. The book itself though was filled with information about all sorts of monsters. Being able to put names to things I had fought was nice, though two thirds of the entries were things I had never seen before, I did my best to store the names and descriptions in my head for future reference. After the big book, the wooden slates I picked up had all sorts of random pieces of information written on them. One was a broad overview of forms of physical combat, and another some basic chants for newbie mages. The first described common weapons and the standard way to use them, and the latter covered the four primary elemental magic. To my luck, I found a chant for a basic healing spell under [Water Magic]. The description sounded similar to the one that Lucy had used this morning, and was only good for closing wounds. I immediately went to memorize the chant. Healing magic was the one big thing I currently lacked. Even though it was easy for me to heal myself, healing others was a big problem. After that, I was reading a slate about some hero from a few ages ago. It seemed like he was working for the church as he went around slaying demons all over the place. The way the wooden slates described his adventures made him sound less like some epic hero of lore, and more like the church''s handyman. Or maybe even their hit man. It always started with the church giving some sort of oracle or command, then the hero went off to wherever the trouble was, and slew the creature that was rampaging around. It was a bit of a slog to read, so I was a bit glad that Lucy interrupted me and gave me an excuse to drop the entire thing. There were still plenty of books and wooden slates to read, so I was looking forward to spending another day being able to do something I hadn''t been able to do for the last three years. "No! We won''t go!" "Hey now, just do what your elders say" "No! We need to go home!" "And I''m telling you we''ll take you home" "We can go home on our own!" Suddenly the sound of yelling reached my ears. Before I knew it, I was in a narrow alley and there weren''t anyone around. My level was high, but being in such a place was still a bit hard on my nerves. "Just do what I say!" "Hey now, just be good kids and you''ll get a nice treat" But the yelling was getting louder. It didn''t quite sound like a fight, but it didn''t sound good. The fluffballs were getting really agitated, and were urging me to do something. Not like I needed them to prompt me. I quickly followed the voices around a corner and saw three men in thick clothes surrounding two dirty looking kids. One of the men grabbed one of the kid''s arm and pulled her towards him. "No! Stop it!" The other kid tried to grab the man''s arm, but another man raised a fist. Without any time to lose, I spread out my mana and filled the alley with it. Then with a single thought, the mana turned into a thick mist that obscured everything. "Wha?!" "What''s going on?!" "Is it magic?!" While I was blind, [Sense Presence] was more than enough for me to keep track of everyone''s position as I rushed in between the group. "Ghah!" With a quick swing, I chopped the first man''s arm, forcing him to let go of the girl''s arm. "Hold on" I whispered into the kids'' ears as I picked them up. Maybe it was instinct or they were just that street savvy, but they wrapped their arms around my neck as tightly as they could when I grabbed their torsos. With a quick kick, and use of [Float], I jumped up above the men''s'' heads, then I kicked off the wall and sailed over the group. Disengaging [Float], I landed a decent ways away, then took off in a sprint, relying on the little spirits to help me find a way away from those men. A few minutes later, we made it back to the main street, filled with evening businesses calling out to the crowd as they passed. "Hey, are you two alright?" I asked the kids as I lowered them. "I''m fine" "Thank you miss" The girl thanked me honestly while bowing her head, but the boy looked away while scratching his head. Frankly, putting aside how dirty they were, the two of them were both pretty cute. The boy was probably about five, and the girl four? Or maybe my guesses were wildly off. The boy had floppy ears sticking out of his dark brown hair and a thick furred tail poking out from behind. The girl had triangular ears pulled back on top of her reddish orange hair and a bushy tail with a white tip was fiercely wagging behind her. Now that I was looking at them properly, I saw that their clothes were hardly more than rags. It looked like little scraps of cloth sewn together to roughly make out the shape of outfits. Not only were they made from many different colours, but even the material and weave were different from one patch to the next. "Do you need help getting home?" "We''re fine. We can get home by ourselves" The boy looked directly at me, but the smaller girl looked down. I felt a light tug on my arm, and from the corner of my eye, the little girl''s arm was stuck on my sleeve. "How about we go to your home together?" "We don''t need your help!" The boy stomped his foot, but I was sure the girl had a small smile on for a split second. "Well, maybe you don''t, but I''ve been wandering around by myself lately, so I''ve been feeling lonely. So do you mind if you two gave me company until we reach your home at the very least?" The little spirits protested to my lie, but I ignored them for the time being, leaving a mental note to make it up to them later. I extended a hand. "In, in that case, fine. We''ll accompany you so you won''t be lonely" With those words, the boy grabbed my hand, but he refused to look at me. On the other hand, I could see the tips of his ears grow red. "Yay! We''re going together!" The girl on the other hand hugged my other arm wholeheartedly. "It''s this way" The boy pulled on my hand and we took off through the main street, weaving in between the crowds as we headed west. All sorts of people were yelling out their last calls before their stores closed up for the night, while other stores emitted scents of cooked foods of endless variety. The little girl stared at one store after another, occasionally swallowing her saliva before turning back to look forward again. For me on the other hand, in my head I could tell that they smelled good, but my body only treated it like it was the scent of grass or something. I''ve long since gotten used to that dichotomy, but it didn''t stop it from being annoying. We continued to pass one store after the next, and as I thought we might end up at the western gates, the boy suddenly turned into a narrow street. Less than a block down, he stopped in front of a large building. It was only three stories tall and didn''t overhang over the street like the other buildings, but it was wider than the surrounding buildings. The walls were worn down and had many cracks in them, but were well polished. There were many small windows, especially on the upper floors, and their open shutters were clean, many of them were slanted, and some were entirely missing. The front entrance had large, double doors made of wood, but they too were cracked. Unlike the rest of the building though, the damage to them looked a bit unnatural, like they were recent, unlike the natural wear and tear the rest of the building suffered from. But what made me really stop from taking another step towards the front doors was a large wooden plaque stuck above the entrance. It was made from a single large plank of wood, and words were lovingly carved into it. But the plaque itself wasn''t the problem, it was what was written on it. [Scarlet''s Sweet Home] I could swear that my face was as red as my name implied it to be. Chapter 32 – Poor and Hungry Orphans Miss?" "Ah, oh, umm..." The little girl pulled me out of my stupor. "Well, we''re here now. We''re going inside Flix" The boy let go of my hand and looked at the girl still hanging off of my other arm. Her tail''s near constant wagging had slowed to a halt as realization formed in her eyes. "Umm, hey, this place..." "What? It''s the orphanage we live in" The boy didn''t quite answered my question, yet it was enough for me to understand. These two kids didn''t look alike in the slightest. They weren''t even the same species, yet they acted like siblings. The answer to the question that hadn''t quite surfaced in my brain until it was practically pointed out was given to me when I wanted to know something else. "In that case, can I come in?" "Huh? What for?" "I want to talk to the one in charge" "You..." The boy glared at me and the girl looked down as she pulled harder on my arm. "Is there a problem with having a little talk?" "...no" He turned away and opened the front door. The hinges screamed out and I saw something flake off one before I followed him inside with the girl still on my arm. The little spirits followed behind as they flitted around in curiosity. "We''re back!" Both kids tapped their shoe toes on the ground before entering. The inside was worse than I imagined. The only light came from the open windows, but as it was pretty late, hardly any ended up inside after bouncing off of the opposing building''s outer wall. There wasn''t any traces of any dust anywhere, even the floor was pretty spotless, considering that the boy and girl were still wearing their shoes inside. A bunch of kids were peeking from other rooms, but were nervously keeping their distance. "Hey, call for Miss Philia" A little kid ran off after being ordered by the boy and quickly returned pulling the hand of an older lady. The woman''s face was well ordered but creased with wisdom, and there were locks of grey mixed in with the shoulder length sky blue hair. Her well patched dress showed signs that it was once a vibrant red, but not only was it a shadow of it''s former self, but it hardly did any favours to properly hide how poor her diet was. Unrelated to her diet though, was her short stature. Why was it unrelated? Because not only was she shorter than me by a full head, but her body was built with a significant amount of girth. Way more than me at least. "Oh my, a guest? I hope the children haven''t been bothering you" "Ah, umm, no. I just helped these two get home..." "Oh, is that so? Come, we don''t have much here, but at the very least we can provide a drink" The woman turned and went through another doorway, several of the little kids following after while the rest stared at me. Without anything else to do, I ended up following after. In the next room there was several large tables surrounded by chairs of irregular make. "Please, sit. I will be with you in a moment" The lady went through another doorway and I could hear her doing some work in the next room. I sat down randomly at a convenient seat. The girl who was practically attached to my arm let go and pulled closer the seat next to mine and climbed on. None of the other kids sat down, but formed groups, some just watched me from a distance, some others from outside the room. In the quiet room, the sounds of even more kids in other parts of the building reached my ears. Soon enough, the lady came back with a tray, a cup, and a pot. She put the tray down and poured the hot liquid from the pot into the cup and placed it in front of me before sitting down. I raised the cup to my nose and breathed in it''s aroma. No, that was way too generous of a word. There was hardly any scent to it. If this was tea, then it was tea made from the tenth brewing. It smelled more like just hot water than anything. But the lady''s strained smile made me ignore that fact and I took a sip. The taste was definitely hardly any better than water, and I struggled to swallow it due to my physical constitution, but did my best in consideration of the effort she made. Once a third of the cup was empty, I put it down so we could have our talk. "So..." "I am thankful for the kindness you have shown in helping the children of our home" "Ah, no, it was nothing" "She saved us from some mean people!" The girl beside me practically shouted out as her eyes glittered. "Is that true Torii?" "Yea. A bunch of scary guys tried to take us away, but that lady saved us" The boy that I found with the girl answered. "I see. In that case, I truly am thankful for your kindness and courage miss" "Ah, no. It wasn''t a big deal. But how come such a thing happened?" "That''s...I am sorry, but it is best if you don''t get involved. We can''t allow harm to come to our benefactor" "But..." The lady''s kind eyes were stern. She probably really wanted me to drop the subject, and as an outsider, I really didn''t have any right to press further on the issue. I wasn''t some sort of wandering hero that solved everyone''s problems. People wouldn''t just open up to me just because I asked. "That said, while we don''t have much to offer, if there is anything we can do to repay your kindness, please don''t hesitate to ask, for kindness and mercy are the mottoes of Scarlet''s Sweet Home" (Erk) "...actually, if you don''t mind..." "Yes? If it''s something within my power" "No, well...what''s up with that name?" "I''m sorry, I don''t quite understand" "The name of this place. It''s an orphanage right? What''s with the name?" While obviously it didn''t refer to me, the name was plenty embarrassing. "Allow me to tell you the story of how the name came to be" I nodded and urged her to tell it to me. "Long ago, there was a man that would only drink all day and get into fights all night. But one day, he had gone too far and killed a man in a drunken brawl. Wanted by the guard, he fled the city and was forced to wander. As he lay beside the road, starving, a woman appeared out of nowhere, and offered him some food and drink. In the hopes of getting enough food to reach the next city, he tried to rob the woman, but she easily stopped him, like an adult stopping a child. So completely overwhelmed, the man feared for his life, but rather than ending it, the woman simply asked what had happened. "He resisted at first, but eventually explained what he did and why he was alone on the road with nothing to his name. After listening to his story, the woman offered her hand, and said she would not only forgive him for attacking her, but even help him reach the next city and get a job. The man was skeptical, but the woman was true to her word. She walked with him along the road, shared her food and drink, convince the guard to let him inside the city, and once inside, she even helped convince a person to give the man a job. "After that, all she said was that now all the man had to do was to forgive himself however he felt fit, and left him. Those words stuck with the man for the next few years. He was given a second chance, a third chance, but the weight of the mercy given to him drove him to not squander the chance he was given. "But despite that, no, because of it, he couldn''t forgive himself. Simply living an honest life wasn''t enough to make up for the crime he committed, so he used his savings and bought a plot of land in that city and had a large building built on it. He then used that building to shelter those who were were unable to receive the kindness and mercy that they deserved, and named it after the woman who gave him mercy so many years before" "Is this person by any chance..." "That is right. She was Scarlet, the kindest person to ever live!" I hadn''t heard this story before, but I was confident that it told of the same person Alicia often told stories about. This Scarlet really got around. It made me wonder just how many more stories there were about her. That said, it felt weird talking about a person with the same name as myself, though I was named after her. Looking around, several of the kids were nodding, and they all had smiles on their faces. It seemed like they were often told this story. (...) "Does this mean that this is the same building that was build all those years ago?" "It is. Long ago, the founder had this building built strong and sturdy, and we successive directors have done our best to maintain it" Considering it was over a hundred years old, maybe even several hundred, the building was in remarkable shape. But only remarkable considering how old it was. I could see a few cracks even on the inside of the walls, though there had been an attempt to fill them in with dried mud. "I see. It really is impressive how well it looks despite it''s age" "We''ve done our best to do what we can with what we have" I didn''t like it. Not the part about how well the building''s condition was despite it''s age, but how they obviously couldn''t afford more than whatever maintenance they could do themselves. With just a bit of magic, those cracks could easily be sealed, and it shouldn''t have been expensive to replace the missing and broken window shutters. And even more than that, these kids all looked malnourished, just like the director. And everyone was practically wearing rags. Most of the kids were simply wearing a bunch of scrap cloth sewn together in the semblance of clothing. So I didn''t like it. "I''ve been meaning to ask, but how is this orphanage funded anyways? Does the city pay for it?" "...The lord does not. We are not the only orphanage in this city. There is a much larger one on the eastern side of the city which the lord pays for. This one takes in all the excess children that the other one can''t or wouldn''t accommodate" "Wouldn''t?" "The children of non-citizens. The city orphanage doesn''t take in anyone who isn''t a child of a citizen of the city" "And there''s this many of them?!" Just in the last few minutes, I had seen at least two dozen children here, and there were at least another dozen or two elsewhere in the building. "Most of the children here are the orphans of adventurers. Most adventurers don''t have citizenship, and if they leave behind a child, they often end up here. Kind travellers would bring children who their local orphanages wouldn''t take for similar reasons here" "I see" That was a pretty raw deal, but I could see how administrators would''ve thought it might''ve been a good idea to balance the books. A pretty cold hearted and naive idea, but one nevertheless. "Another question. If the lord doesn''t pay for everyone here, then how do you pay for everything? Food, clothes, taxes?" "We rely on private donations from other citizens. Coin from merchants, food scraps from butchers and grocers, cloth scraps from tailors, wood scraps from carpenters. The land itself we don''t have to pay for, as the founder managed to negotiate a tax exemption in return for not asking for funds" It kinda figured that if no central authority was paying for the orphanage, that they''d rely on private donations. The tax exemption was a bit of a surprise, and might''ve been the only saving grace. A plot this big must''ve been pretty valuable, though it might not have been when the orphanage was first built. But one look told me how little these private donations were, and how far they were forced to go. Things weren''t good, and these people were pushing against their limits. "...In that case, I suppose you wouldn''t be opposed to me making a donation as well, would you?" "Eh? I didn''t mean to impose on you further after helping some our children already!" The director waved her hands in front of her while shaking her head. "It''s fine. I''ve got more food than I can eat on me. Which way to the kitchen?" "I believe you really have done more than enough for us" "You run an orphanage. It''s your job to take the charity of others to help raise the next generation, just like it''s the duty of people like me to offer it" I wasn''t really one to go out of my way to help others, but if they were already in arm''s reach, I generally stretched out my arm. For example, I religiously gave a few dollars to the Legion and Salvation Army every time I walked by one of their donation stands, but wouldn''t cross the street to do so just because I saw one. It was a very small act of kindness, but I thought that sort of thing was what made the world a better place, not preaching and ranting about how other people could better the world. "I see, if you''re so adamant about it, we graciously thank you for your generosity" I followed the director, Philia I think her name was, though the doorway into the kitchen. Although I called it a kitchen, it was mostly just a room with a large preparation table and a stone wood burning stove. I looked around and tallied up an inventory of equipment. While they were all well used, it was still all in good condition, as best as I could tell. With the equipment that I could see and the food I could remember I had in my bag, and considering how many mouths I was going to feed, it really limited what I could make. "Miss...uh, Philia was it?" "That''s right" "Could you fill a large pot with water for me?" "Understood" She quickly went out with several of the kids while carrying buckets. As they worked, I quickly went on to fill another bucket with [Aqua Magic]. The reason why I asked for water as well was because I wasn''t sure what would happened to the magically conjured water in the long term. It would be bad if it suddenly changed back into mana while inside a person''s body. But if it was for soaking or washing, then there shouldn''t be any problems. I took out a large quantity of potatoes from my bag. Originally I harvested a large number because I often used them for Alicia''s meals, but once her health had gone south, I refrained from using them much. Potatoes were supposedly incredibly healthy as long as you didn''t deep fry them, but they also contained alkaloids, which were a mild toxin. In theory, just soaking them in water should get rid of it, but I was worried about the possibility of even trace amounts being harmful to Alicia when she was already sick, so I switched over entirely to sweet potatoes which didn''t contain any alkaloids in the first place. The potatoes were quickly washed, then as I was about to skin them with my claws, I noticed I was being stared at. "Hey, is there a good place to dump this water?" One of the kids nodded and pointed at a drain hole in the corner of the kitchen. With a quick thanks, I carried the bucket of dirty water over and dumped the contents, then quickly rinsed the inside before filling it up with water once again and placed it back on the preparation table. This time, I pulled out my knife from it''s belt sheath and I quickly went though the process of skinning the pile of potatoes. Thankfully the kids didn''t seem to think my actions were strange at all. I was glad I stopped myself from using my claws, as it was a dead giveaway that I was a vampire. I had no idea how they''d react to such a discovery, but the likelihood that it wouldn''t have been good was enough of a reason for me to hide that fact. Strangely, skinning the potatoes went really quickly. It was like I instinctively knew just how to work the knife and move the potato to efficiently cut away the skin. Maybe this was the product of my [Knife Master] skill? If it was true, then it was a much more convenient and versatile skill than I thought. As the potatoes were skinned, I diced them into bite-sized pieces and tossed them into the bucket of water. "Here''s the water you asked for" Just as I finished with the potatoes, the director came in leading a small procession of children, all with buckets of water. Philia filled a large pot on top of the stone stove using the buckets as the kids passed them to her. "Alright, right on time" With a smile and a nod, I went and placed a pan on the stove as well, then filled the stove with magical fire. "Wow! Was that magic?" "Magic?" "Really?" "Wow!" The kids all looked surprised and amazed as the stove lit up without anyone touching it. "Yup. It''s something I''m good at" Turning back, I pulled out a few onion heads and quickly diced them up, then poured some oil on the pan and added the onions. As that sizzled, I brought out the star of the show: a large cut of some monster called a Furybull. Several large cuts to be exact, as there were quite a few kids here. "That''s all meat?!" "It''s so big!" "And there''s so many!" "I''ve never seen so much meat before!" As expected, the kids responded well to my surprise. "Ummm...is it really fine for us to receive such a thing? Those cuts look especially expensive" "I don''t know if they are or not. It''s something I just gathered in the past" "Something you just gathered...?" I mean, especially the meat I just got while farming for other things. If you spent a lot of time hunting for various materials in a dungeon and could easily carry anything you got your hands on, it was inevitable that you''d get a ton of meat in my experience. Frankly, it was too much meat, but once I got my magic bag, I never stopped grabbing whatever I found. Until the bag reached it''s capacity, there was no point in not taking what you found. Though I''ve yet to discover what the capacity was. As the onions browned nicely, I transferred them to the large pot, then started to sear the meat as I cut them into bite-sized chunks. At the same time, the potatoes went in to the pot as well. As the beef seared, I transferred them to a large plate. I cut up some carrots and added them to the pot, and once the meat was all seared, they joined the pot as well. With the remaining meat fat in the pan, I blended a roux using some flour. I stirred the giant pot slowly as I added in some chopped herbs, salt, and crushed pepper. As the pot simmered, I occasionally skimmed off the scum as well. I had learned the hard way in my previous efforts that if you didn''t do that, the taste of any soup you made dropped down considerably. At first I thought it was because of the cheap cuts of meat I had used, but later discovered that it happened regardless of the quality of meat you used. It was something more fundamental about meat that caused this. Finally, as the stew looked like it was getting close to being done, I added the roux a little at a time to thicken the soup. "Alright then..." I turned my back to the simmering pot to clean up, but to my surprise, the entire kitchen was filled with people from the orphanage. There were even kids looking in from the other rooms, and everyone was trying their best to hold back their drool, but quite a few of them had failed spectacularly. "Umm...it''ll be done soon, so how about everyone help prepare the table?" With my words, the kids all hurried out of the kitchen. I could hear the clattering of bowls and cutlery in the next room before the crowd quickly returned. They were fast. Too fast. At this rate, the kids would be left hanging for a while longer as the stew wasn''t ready yet. I wracked my brain, trying to come up with a way to distract the kids for a little while longer rather than wait and stare at me and the pot. "Oh right. Did everyone wash their hands already?" For orphans, they were certainly pretty clean, but there was still dirt and grime visible on them. If I could see it on their faces, then their hands were most likely even worse off. "Wash?" "What for?" "Wash our hands?" "What''s that?" My face cramped up. "Nobody here washes their hands before eating?" "No, is that a custom you do where you come from?" I was astonished at the director''s words. The degree of unsanitaryness was appalling. Then again, it took me a while to realize that Alicia wasn''t washing her hands either, but once it became habit, I forgot that she didn''t originally. "Alright, line up! We''re all going to wash our hands. Nobody gets to eat until it''s all done!" "Awww!" "Why?" "What does it matter?" "We''re hungry!" "Now now, she''s being kind enough to not only give us her food, but to prepare it as well. The least we could do is do as she says" The director quickly got onto my side, though it didn''t look like she was convinced as to why. I lead the kids to the kitchen drain and pulled out a bar of soap. "Now, one by one, I''ll help you wash your hands" As the kids lined up, I quickly scrubbed and rinsed their hands with conjured water. "My hands are so clean!" "They feel weird" "It smells nice" "They do!" "It smells so sweet" Once one of the kids noticed the scent of milk and honey, all the rest of the kids started to sniff their hands as I finished washing them. "This scent. Is it really fine for you to use such an expensive soap like this?" "It''s not expensive. I made it myself. Doesn''t it look pretty dirty?" Even the best soap I could make still was a bit grey and had black specks in it. There was no way I could consider it sanitary looking if I didn''t already know that it was soap. "You made this? That''s really incredible. Not only are you strong enough to hunt such splendid meat easily, but you are capable of making things like this nice smelling soap" "Eh, it''s not that amazing" "Excess humility is equally bad as hubris you know" "Eh?" "Talented people become great sources of inspiration and awe, but just like how hubris makes people detestable, so too does excess humility make those around them feel incompetent. It is important to strike a balance, or else you will invite ill feelings in those around you" "I...see" Her words did make sense. I probably was a pretty impressive person by the standards of this world. No, even by Earth''s standards, if you purely judge by my combat strength. I was way above average here, maybe even in the top 5%. I most likely could take on a modern squad of soldier and win hands down thanks to my stats and magic. Maybe even an entire battalion. I could probably tear open a tank, maybe even with nothing but my claws. By those standards, I really was an impressive person. It just didn''t really feel like it. I didn''t really do much to get strong. I just screwed around in the dungeon for two years. It was like selling drawings or handicrafts just for fun, then suddenly realizing that the sales from your hobby made you rich. But being too humble about it denied one''s value and deflated others who aspired to be similar. Thinking about it, it really was bad. "Thanks for that life lesson Miss Philia" "No problem at all. Ah, I believe I haven''t heard your name yet" "Ah, right. My bad. It''s one you''re pretty familiar with: Scarlet" "Well then, Miss Scarlet, it was my pleasure. And I hope that one day your actions would have your name be sung just like your namesake" Chapter 33 – Happy Orphans With everyone''s hands washed, I had a look at the simmering pot. As best as I could tell, it was ready. "Alright, it''s ready" "Everyone! Let''s head to the dinning room now!" Following up for me, the director called everyone to order, and the small army of kids rushed over to take their seats at the arrayed tables. When the kitchen was cleared out, I grasped the heavy pot in my hands and carefully lifted it up. I had wanted to try carrying something that would normally look impossible with my body, and this was the perfect opportunity. The iron pot was pretty warm as well, but not so hot that it burned my hands as I awkwardly carried it over. And despite it probably weighing more than I did, as long as I actively resisted against it''s mass, my centre of gravity stayed inside of my body rather than in front of it. Hooray for stats! "Wow!" "That''s amazing!" "You''re so strong!" "Miss Scarlet, are you sure you''re fine carrying it by yourself?" "Ah yea. I have a pretty high level, so I''m fine" I quickly placed the pot on the ground, then one by one, I levitated over the kids'' bowls, filled them, than floated them back to a chorus of ''oohs'' and ''aahs''. "Miss Scarlet, I can do the serving. You don''t need to mind such a thing" "It''s fine. It''ll be faster if I do it" "If you say so" "By the way, what about your bowl?" All the seats were occupied, and I didn''t see any extra bowls for the director. "Ah, no. The children come first" "I made enough for everyone. That includes you as well" "That may be true, but I''d rather the children have their fill first" "Look, you''re the kids'' caregiver. If you collapse because you didn''t eat properly, then it''s the kids that''ll be in trouble, won''t they?" I felt like we suddenly swapped positions from a few minutes ago. "That''s...I understand. It wouldn''t do to not be able to care for the children just because I didn''t care for myself" The short lady quickly made her way to a shelf and timidly came back presenting a bowl. I made sure to fill it up all the way with some extra meat. "Does everyone have their food?" "Yes!" "We do!" "What about you?" "Yea, you don''t have any!" "Miss Scarlet, do you remember what you just told me?" Out of nowhere, Philia reversed our positions. "Ah, no. I ate before coming here, so I''m not hungry" "Really? Well, we''ll believe your words. Now everyone, what do you say to Miss Scarlet?" """Thank you for the meal!""" All at once, the kids started to gorge themselves out on the stew. Even the director happily ate as she stood at the side. "Ah, could you handle the refills Miss Philia? I''m gonna take a look around if you don''t mind" "Oh, ah yes. Of course. But wouldn''t you like a guide?" "It''s fine. It''s better for you guys to eat first, and I won''t be long" Without giving her a chance to object further, I quickly made my way out of the dining hall. I passed through one room to the next, examining the conditions these people were living in. While everything was well kept and ordered, especially considering that there were dozens of kids here, the rooms were pretty sparse. The furnishings were barely adequate, and everything looked like they were cobbled together from scraps. The building itself was only just barely holding itself together, with cracks everywhere, most of which were filled in with mud to avoid drafts, but that only had limited effectiveness as many of the window shutters didn''t fit properly, and some were even missing. It felt like everywhere I went, I could feel the poverty just constantly screaming at me. If this orphanage didn''t have such a strong beginning, it most likely wouldn''t have survived this long. At the very least, I could do a little something so that the building itself was more livable and would last a while longer. I touched the walls and passed my mana through them, feeling out the structure. Anywhere I could feel cracks and weaknesses, I fixed and reinforced using [Terranian Magic]. The damaged shutters as well I quickly repaired and realigned, and the ones that were missing I made from scratch using some of the wood I had left in my magic bag. In only a handful of minutes, I finished my little tour. The building itself was in a much better condition than before. Structurally speaking, it should have been almost as good as new, though I didn''t go as far as to alter it''s surface appearance beyond fixing the visible cracks. Next up, I looked at the bedrooms. The beds themselves were rickety and were unpadded. I made some simple adjustments to improve the beds'' stability, but the lack of padding I couldn''t do much about. I simply didn''t have enough materials to make mattresses for all the kids. Rummaging through my bag, I did find I did have enough for something else though. I pulled out dozens of large animal pelts I had accumulated from all my hunting in the dungeon, and placed them on the beds. I think the monster I got them from were called frost leopards? They were a big white cats with a black pattern similar to leopards; I hunted on an icy canyon floor. They were pretty strong and aggressive, but their fur was incredibly soft and thick along with being very pretty. There wasn''t much more I could do for now, so I went back to the dining hall. What greeted me was a room filled with kids with satisfied looks on their faces as they were putting away their dishes. "Ah, Miss Scarlet!" The first to notice me return was the orphanage''s director. "Thank you Miss Scarlet!" "The food was really good!" "Thanks for the food!" "Ah, no problem. Was it enough?" "We''re so full!" "I haven''t had that much ever!" "I ate three whole bowls!" The kids'' responses put a smile on my face. "There is still a little bit left if you are hungry as well" I made my way to short woman and peeked into the pot. There was probably enough for two or three servings left. I originally intended to have made enough so the kids could have it for breakfast as well, but I severely underestimated how many there were. "No, I''m fine. Rather than that, are you fine for breakfast tomorrow?" "Ah, yes. We have enough in stock, thanks to your generous donation today. I can''t thank you enough for what you have done" "It''s fine. I said it before, but it''s the duty of people like me to donate what people like you need to keep the orphanage running" "In that case, it''s also my duty to properly give thanks for the donations people like you give" Philia gave me a bright, but slightly cocky smile. (She''s got me there) "Ah, I suppose" I scratched my cheek, unsure as to what more to say. "Hey Miss" There was a slight tugging on my sleeve. I turned to see a group of kids standing behind me. "Are you a beastkin?" The little kid''s question made me freeze for a second. "Gaooo! I''m going to eat all you people up!" "Kyaa!" "Eeek!" "Run away!" "There''s no use in running! I''m going to suck all your blood dry!" "Halt! Vile vampire!" "If you want to harm everyone, you''ll have to go through us!" "We stand to protect the innocent!" "Hahaha! The heroes again? This time for sure I''ll defeat the three of you!" "This time we''ve got the holy sword!" "Gah! The holy sword?! And three of them?! No~~~!" """Take this!""" "Gaaaahhhh~~~!!!" Thump "We''ve done it! We''ve beaten the demon lord!" "Evil''s been defeated!" "Everyone''s safe now!" "Yay~~~!" "C''mon! Play with us next!" "No, it''s our turn this time!" The kids at the orphanage started to pull at me even though I was still laying face down on the ground at the end of the previous game. It seemed like my disguise didn''t do much to hide my fangs, though I guess just wearing an oversized hood wasn''t particularly good at hiding something like that. It was fortunate that they interpreted my teeth as being that of a beastkin. Most likely, that was the term used for all these people with animal ears and tails. While I had seen a few of them in the city, the majority of kids at this orphanage were beastkin, with human kids being second most prevalent, then stocky kids that were short but big boned (but not fat) like the director numbering a handful, and finally a single boy with pointed ears, though his ears weren''t as long as mine or that one man I saw in the adventurer''s guild. It was a fortunate misunderstaning, but one that wouldn''t last, as I didn''t have the ears nor tail of a beastkin. Taking advantage of my physical traits, I played Hero and Demon Lord with the kids, though obviously it ended quickly with my defeat as the demon lord. After that, we continued to play game after game in a small yard behind the orphanage. It turned out the building only took up half the plot that belonged to it. Though because of it, aside from the narrow alleys in between each building, it was entirely closed in by four stone walls of the surrounding buildings that blocked what meagre sunlight was still lighting up the sky. The little fluffballs had joined in as well, and while I couldn''t directly play with them here, they did enjoy themselves well enough as they flew circles around the kids or chased after them. "Everyone! It''s getting dark, so come back inside and get ready for bed!" "Awww" "Already?" "What about my turn?" But a certain someone came to spoil all the fun. No, well, the kids did need to adhere to a decent sleep schedule, so I couldn''t blame her for doing so. "C''mon, you heard the lady, let''s go" As three of the kids were clinging on to me like some ride, I took the hands of two more and lead the group back inside. "Wah!" But as I leaned down a bit to get through the door without accidentally hitting anyone on the frame, the bushy tailed girl on my shoulder lost her balance and frantically grabbed for my head. In a panic, I grabbed her ankle as she slid down my back. "Hey, you okay?" "Uuuu, my ankle..." "Umm...wait a sec..." There wasn''t any way to let the girl down without risking her getting further hurt...normally. Instead, I resorted to using a particular spell for the first time on a living being. "Ah! Wha?" Careful with my mana control, I gently lifted the girl up using [Arcane Magic], and placed her safely on to the ground. "Are you alright?" The other kids climbed down from me and formed a circle around the girl. "Thank you Miss Scarlet" The little girl gave me a bright smile, but when she tried to stand up, her face twisted in pain and she fell back on to her butt. "Owww..." "You alright Flix?!" The floppy eared boy rushed over to the triangle eared girl''s side. "Ah, sorry. That''s my fault. Let me have a look" I took hold of the girl''s foot as gently as I could and examined it. There was the beginning of a bruise forming around her ankle, roughly the shape of my hand. My teeth clenched at the realization as I thought about what I could do. None of my skills could help fix the damage I had caused, but I had just memorized a new spell earlier that day. While I was a bit hesitant to try it out on a kid without any prior practice, I didn''t want to move on without fixing the injury I had caused. "Oh water, spread out and become mist, envelope and touch, give thy mercy and provide succour to this who ails" Holding a hand over her ankle, I mumbled the cant for the healing spell. Strangely, my magic skill activated on it''s own as I chanted, and I could feel my mana seep out from my hand and automatically envelop the girl''s injury, permeating it and fixing it from the inside. Within seconds, the spell ended, and when I removed my hand, all traces of the bruise was gone. "How''s that feel?" "Wow! It doesn''t hurt anymore!" The little beastkin spun her foot around then tried standing up. She even stomped her foot a few times to make sure. It looked like it was a perfect success. I could now confidently add the basic healing spell to my repertoire. "Thank you for fixing my foot Miss Scarlet!" "It''s fine. It was my fault anyways" "Hmmmm?" Before I realized it, all the kids were staring at me. "You''re not a beastkin?" "Huh?" "Miss Scarlet? Your teeth, but those ears...?" My hand rushed up to confirm that both my hood and hat weren''t in their place anymore. "Ah ummm..." I frantically thought of a way out of this. I hadn''t confirmed my race yet to the kids, but I was worried that they''d be scared of me if they found out I was a vampire. Alicia was most likely an outlier for not being scared. No, she was probably scared at first, but she had resigned herself to death already before then, so being confronted face to face with a vampire wouldn''t have changed things even if she thought I had intended to eat her. But these kids, while their situation was bad, they were still full of hope and were relatively happy. If their image of vampires were already bad, then I most likely wouldn''t be able to show my face around here again. Even if the kids were fine with it, what about the director? What about the neighbours? I had to do something about this, though I hated to lie to them. "There''s a trick to this" I covered my face with my hands, then quickly applied [Alter Silhouette], changing my eye colour to purple and shortening my fangs to normal human lengths. When it was done, I uncovered my face and gave them a big smile. "How''s that?" "Ooh!" "Your eyes! They''ve changed!" "And your teeth too!" "So you were an elf?" "Wow, an elf!" I had a feeling that one of the kids was a half-elf though. "Sorry, I forgot about that. Now hurry up and go to bed" "Will we see you again?" "Yea! Are you coming back tomorrow?" "We want to see you again!" "I''ll be back, but I need to do some work first, so only after that. Can you all promise to wait and not be a bother to the director until then?" """We promise!""" With those words, they hurried past Philia up the stairs to their rooms. "I hope that''s fine with you too?" "Of course. And I can''t thank you enough for what you''ve done Miss Scarlet" Once again she gave her thanks. It was starting to turn into her signature line. "It''s fine. I did what I wanted to do" "But still, what you gave us in one day can only be matched by the founder" The short director gently patted one of the walls, then glanced upstairs. "Don''t sell yourself short. Like you said, excess humility is just as bad as hubris" I put on a big grin as her eyes became like saucers. "That''s true. Even humility needs to be used with moderation" She gave me a thin-lipped smile as I turned to leave the building. Chapter 34 – Hard to See Dangers Even with Night Vision v2 You know, if you don''t love yourself for who you are, it''s difficult for others to love you as well" "..." Just as I pushed the door open, Philia gave me those parting words. But after a slight pause, I simply left the orphanage, put my hat on and pulled my hood back up. I wasn''t quite sure what prompted such words from her, but I packed them to the back of my mind. Maybe I''d figure out what she meant by them later on. The sounds of surprise and excitement reached my ears through the orphanage''s walls, but rather than investigate, I simply increased the space between myself and it. While I was proud of what I had done, I didn''t want to deal with the fallout. My feet speedily took me from the orphanage, and rather than head to the main street, I turned away from it and deeper into the narrow streets. Usually people would want to see the stores and main attractions of a city they visit, but the light of the sun had mostly faded already. No such thing would still be open, and I had to find a way to kill quite a few hours until they were. Most people would say that it was risky and stupid, but conversely, when it became so dark that most normal people would have trouble seeing anything, even most criminals would be asleep. At least, that was my presumption. It was still bright enough for me to see everything without issue, so all I could do was imagine how hard it was for the other races to see things. Also, my presumption might''ve been vastly wrong, and even in this supposed oppressive darkness I was forced to imagine, they were still operating at full and I was an idiot for presuming otherwise. If that was the case, then I would have to rely on my skills and stats, but unlike Earth, things like skills and stats were a part of your own abilities, so it was foolish to not rely on them. I wandered around aimlessly, occasionally throwing a mana treat around or playing with the little fluffballs as they energetically flew around. The cityscape quickly became pretty boring to look at. While the architecture was pretty different from what I was used to, seeing one wooden framed, stone and plaster walled building after the next lost it''s appeal despite the small differences between each. It wasn''t like the city was that big either. My own that I grew up in had tens of millions of inhabitants. While most of it wasn''t as dense as this city, some of the older parts were, and this city didn''t have amazing marvels such as sky scrapers or street after street of brightly lit LED and neon lights. Though if I saw such a thing here, the sight would make me pause for a different reason. My mind instead drifted back to a few days ago. I had preserved Alicia''s soul and data inside of me. Checking the storage tank of [Soul Siphon] confirmed that there were no obvious issues as well. Her [Memory] and [Core] seemed fine, and were active, though at a reduce pace than before I extracted her from her body. If there was any deterioration to her, I couldn''t tell. But even if she was perfectly preserved, I didn''t want to keep her locked up inside of me longer than I had to. If there was a way for me to give her life again, I wanted to do that as soon as I could. Thinking about it, I had essentially three ways to do it. The first was to put her inside of a new body. Whether that was the body of someone who had already died, but with a repairable body, or the body of a non-living thing. I didn''t really like that idea, and as if to reinforce that thought, my chest felt cold, like I was physically rejecting it. That would be a last resort. No matter what, I''d try everything else before that. The cold, heavy feeling took it''s time to go away, but eventually it did. Second, was the option of creating a brand new body for her. This was the ideal, but most likely the hardest. If possible, I preferred making her body the same as her old one, aside from maybe fixing her blindness. The thought that it would be like having her back whole made my chest feel warm and naturally brought a smile to my face. But a problem quickly came to me: I had cremated her body. There wasn''t anything left to use as a base. That said, her new body didn''t have the be the same as her old one. But all I knew about making new bodies was from the little bits of scrap about the cloned sheep I had heard on the news years ago along with random bits from sci-fi movies. It wasn''t even enough to use as a starting point. The alternative was to create a homunculus like in fantasy stories, but I had even less of an idea how to do that, as it wasn''t based on anything in reality, and any technique of that sort that worked here would be something entirely original. I wouldn''t be able to start working on this without getting some more information first. The third option was one I was a bit hesitant on, but less so than the first. That was to find a way for Alicia regain consciousness without the normal definition of a body. Whether that was straight up as is, or maybe with an artificially made incorporeal body like a spirit. In theory, I might have been able to get it to work with nothing but just creating a new skill, but it wasn''t a real revival. Despite my personal reservations, my chest felt warm at the though. (Maybe I''m not as against the idea as I originally thought?) It was possible that my reservations on this idea wasn''t as strong as I was making them out to be, and emotionally I was fully fine with it. It wouldn''t have been a true revival, but Alicia would be able to interact with the world again, and maybe even quickly. Not only that, but I wouldn''t have to encroach on potentially taboo subjects. "Hey missy, you lost?" (Should I prioritize on this one? It''ll probably be faster than the second option and it''s still much nicer than the first) "Or, maybe you wanna have some fun?" (But she wouldn''t have a physical body. Would Alicia be happy with that?) "Hey! I''m talking to you!" Suddenly, a hand grabbed my arm and pushed me against a stone wall, disorienting me for a moment. Two men were standing in front of me. From their outfits, they were obviously thugs. It looked like my presumption that even criminals wouldn''t work when it was so dark was completely off. (Or maybe it''s just not as dark as I thought? Having such good natural night vision has it''s own pitfalls) "Hey! Are you deaf, or just plain stupid?" Bang! "!!!" The man holding my arm closed in on me, slamming his other hand onto the wall beside my head. (He''s huge!) Distracted by my own thoughts, I didn''t realize just how big these two men were until one of them towered over me. I was standing with my back straight, yet I was forced to look almost straight up to see his face even though he was leaning down so he could see my face. "Heh, now we''ve finally got a response. So missy, maybe you were wandering around here looking for company?" "Ah, no. I''m fine. I''ve already got company" "Oh? Well, I don''t see any. Maybe they ran off and left you all alone?" (They probably won''t believe me if I mention that the fluffballs are here and looking angry) "Ah, umm, no. I''m really fine..." "Oh, of course you''re fine now, since we''re here. How about you come back to our place and spend the night? It''s already dark, so it''ll be hard to find your way back" The two men further invaded my personal space. I wanted out. I wanted out really bad. "Ah, umm...I..." It may have been the first time someone had been so aggressive with me in this way, but I recognized it. Despite such an event not being possible in my previous life, it wasn''t like I couldn''t recognize this sort of thing from this angle. He put his arm on my shoulder. The oppressive feeling the two gave off intensified. The nervousness I was feeling grew stronger, more primal. Rather, it felt like it was threatening to turn into something else. I didn''t like this. I didn''t like it at all. Tension filled my body as the thugs'' actions left me incredibly agitated. Raising my hands to my chest, I briefly considered just shoving the two away. Only briefly, as the thought of what might came next stopped me whole. Yet my instincts were screaming at me to do something. Fight or flight. To pick one and go at it. And my long experiences in the dungeon was pushing me towards the former. But if I did that, I could already see the blood and pulped flesh on the walls while I was forced to hold back my hunger as the scent of fresh blood stimulated it to no end. But for the first time I was finally around people. A lot of people. I even had some that were depending on me. And unlike before, if I were to accidentally kill them, or even worse, someone managed to make the connection that I was a vampire. And then the orphanage were suspected of being connected to me... They couldn''t resist, they couldn''t run. If I did something, there was a chance that they''d suffer the consequences. As I came to realize that, my brain managed to make the synaptic connections and it became obvious that if I let my instincts loose, things would turn out bad. No matter how things went, there was little doubt that things would go badly for these two, but it was likely that things wouldn''t end there and the damage would go further, both physically and temporally. I was stuck. The urge to force my way out was starting to win over my ability to find a peaceful way out. The fact that the end of that road was filled with blood, potentially the blood of many if things went really badly was growing less and less important compared to the desire to use brute force. But quickly, a blue light entered my vision. Then a green one, and a yellow one. A whole bunch of soft, glowing lights circled around my legs. The spirits that were following me were trying to encourage me. As I raised my face, I could see more spirits trying to ram the two men in anger. Of course they were simply passing right through, but the very sight of their defiance helped to clear my mind. My chest warmed up and I was able to gather my thoughts. "I''m fine!" I stood my ground and glared back at the first man in the eyes. "Huh? What the hell are you talking about? It''s too late for that now." "In fact, you''ll get a slice of heaven if you come with us." Goosebumps crawled up my arms and down my back. "I''m not interested" "You ain''t got no choice!" I generated a ball of compressed air between us, careful to avoid it from being too powerful. Then I released it, allowing the air to expand naturally. The winds that ensued from the rapidly released ball knocked the two men around, the closest being sent two meters away and falling onto his butt while the other barely managed to regain his balance after a few steps. As I feared, the spell had a greater effect than I wanted, but it was too late to worry about that. "Now you''ve done it!" The still standing man tried to grab for me, but his movements were slow. Incredibly slow now that I was properly focusing my attention. I had no trouble whatsoever to simply weave in between his outstretched hands and get to his backs. The other man had hardly even started to get back to his feet by this time. I turned and ran at a moderate pace, slow for my perception, but still way faster than those thugs. I quickly made the first turn and activated [Spirit Form] before stopping my feet halfway down the street. Turning around, I saw both men looking all around with puzzled expressions. Before long, they turned and left, leaving me alone with the little spirits in the narrow street. Now that they were gone, I sat down beside a wall and pulled my legs in and wrapped my arms around my knees and rested my head on them. I let out the breath I hadn''t realized I had been holding. (I was so stupid...) As I buried my face into my knees, I reaffirmed the thought that having high levels and stats didn''t mean immunity. In fact, they could make things even more difficult. If I had put in too much power into that air ball, those men could have died. If there were any witnesses, I''d be a wanted person. I came to realize I wasn''t prepared. I simply wasn''t prepared to handle these sorts of trouble. It was naive of me to not even consider these sorts of trouble. But I had very little knowledge about these sorts of things, so I could only worry about them happening again. Fiction only prepares you so far. Not everything goes as planned. Expecting the unexpected is just a child''s dream after all. As I huddled by myself next to the wall, something soft and warm touched my cheek. I raised my head and saw the fluffballs all surrounding me in worry, then one by one, they rubbed their bodies against mine. Their soft bodies were each a little different. Some were warm, some were especially soft, some were cool, some felt weighty and others were almost imperceptible. There were even ones that felt hot against my skin like scalding water, but I didn''t let that sensation bother me. I could feel all their intentions, and something that little wasn''t enough to detract from how my chest was feeling all warm. "Thanks you guys. What would I do without you?" I smiled and produced tons of mana treats, throwing them up into the air. Each of the little spirits rushed out to catch them before coming back to join the huddling. We stayed like this until the sky started to light up again with the sun. As the sky above lit up, I finally rose to my feet. Taking out my brush, I fixed my hair and clothes then undid [Spirit Form] after confirming that there weren''t any presences that could see me aside from the little fluffballs. I quickly made my way back through to the main street. What greeted me was the sound of morning commerce. Wagons being pulled through the streets by horses or other large animals, stores opening up and welcoming customers, people exiting the narrow side streets forming a slow trickle making their way to whatever business they had. Even though the sun wasn''t visible over the tall walls surrounding me, people had already long woken up and were on their way through the day. Looking at the gradient of the sky, it looked like I came out on the north/south main street. A quick glance confirmed that the central plaza was towards my left, suggesting that I was on the southern side of the city. Since it was so busy already, the adventurer''s guild was most likely getting ready to open up, if they weren''t already open. It was a good opportunity to make some more money. So thus, I made my way through the main streets and quickly found the overly large building that marked the guild. The guild was bustling with activity as people were reading and taking request planks off of the side wall and taking them to the receptionists. I wasted no time to join the group to find something to earn some quick coin as well. The day before, I finished a D rank request without any difficulty. In fact, it was way too easy for me. D rank requests was a bit of a waste of time if something better was available. My eyes gravitated towards the area labelled C rank and my mind almost automatically filtered out requests that looked boring. The monsters in the subjugation requests were mostly things I had seen before in the dungeon roughly in the 30s floors. If that was the case, then they wouldn''t be very interesting to hunt. As my eyes wandered from one boring looking request after the next, it stopped at one. It was a request to take down a pack of dagger porcupines. I hadn''t seen them before, but from the description I read in the library, they were relatively small monsters roughly one metre long covered in blades along it''s back. They mostly attacked by curling up into a ball and rolling at their targets. They were difficult to defeat due to their blade-like spines creating a natural armour. But aside from that, they had very little going for them. Their bellies were unarmoured, and they were blind when they rolled to attack. To be frank, the only reason why it even caught my eye was due to the thought of facing a monster I hadn''t seen before. Otherwise, it would look as uninteresting as the rest. The request asked for the extermination of the entire pack as they weren''t native to the area and were likely pushed out of their original environment. The request rewarded four silver plates for taking out the pack, and an additional eight once the pack was confirmed to be gone. Squeezing between other adventurers staring at the boards, I reached above my head and grabbed the plank and made my way to the receptionist lines. "Welcome...oh, Scarlet! How may I help you?" The receptionist called my name even before I gave her my guild card. Looking up, it turned out to the be the same receptionist that handled everything for me the day before. "Oh, you remember me?" I figured that clerks never remember their clients'' faces since they usually dealt with so many people every day. "I would think a brand new adventurer who could beat the guild master in her rank exam would be hard to forget" "Even though she caught him off guard?" "Even then it''s still an impressive feat. At the very least, it''s the first time I''ve personally seen it" I suppose that was true. Most people who went through an examination would''ve done so with someone lower rank than the guild master, and he looked like one who got to the position through working up as a former adventurer rather than from the back end. Then again, I could be completely wrong, but from the skills I saw, I would''ve had no idea how a macho bunny man like him could''ve gone up the ranks by pushing pens. "...I guess" I presented both the plank and my card, trying to change the subject. "Dagger porcupines? I don''t think they''ll be much of a problem for you, but still, be careful. Adventurers generally only get careless once after all" "I''ll try" It was a good saying. She quickly went through obviously practised motions to register the request for me. "Umm, but this last bit..." "Oh yea, I suppose nobody would''ve told you about it yet. The second reward will only be payed out once another group is sent out to confirm that you''ve indeed taken out the entire group. They''ve been trained to identify the traces of monsters, so they''ll be able to tell if any of the pack you take out managed to escape" "I see...and I guess I''d have to come back in a few days to get the reward?" "Nope. The guild can also hold on to your money, so the reward would be put into a personal account. You can even use this account to have us hold on to any money you don''t want to carry around, and can be retrieved from any guild building, though they will need time to confirm your account, so try to visit the guild in any new town or city a day in advance before you need to withdraw any money" "Huh, thanks" That was a pretty nice feature for sure. "The guild can also hold items for you if needed, though in that case there''s a rental fee and you can only pick it up at the location you stored it at unless if you''re willing to pay for a transportation fee" "That''s...pretty nice" "Isn''t it?" It really was. I got my things back and left the building. According to the request, the target monsters were last seen in the north east in the rocky areas bordering the open plains. Following that, I made my way through the main street and out the northern gates. Grasslands greeted me like at the eastern gates, but I could see a forest to the west, though it was at a distance. Picking up the pace, I moved from a jog to a decently quick sprint as I passed travellers and other adventurers, cutting through the tall grass keeping an eye out for the rocky area the subjugation targets were spotted at. At a running pace that definitely felt more suitable for a bicycle or even a scooter rather than on foot, it didn''t take long for me to find what I was looking for. As the tall grass thinned out and the soft dirt became more packed and grew more rocky, I saw what looked like giant porcupines in the distance. Like the monster manual stated, most of them were roughly a metre long, though there were a decent number that were smaller. Their wide, almost hemispherical bodies were covered in spines, but unlike Earth''s porcupines, the spines were flat like blades rather than thick and round like needles. But aside from those two features, they really did just look like normal porcupines I''ve seen in pictures. [Sense Presence] detected 14 monsters in the area and others further away. The distance that was put between this group and all the other hits was large enough that I could presume that they were something else entirely. In conjunction with my skill, I managed to visually confirm all 14 monsters. I put my hands on to the ground and spread my mana through the packed dirt towards the group. As my mana passed underneath the dagger porcupine pack, they quickly stopped nomming on the local flora and their knife-like spines stood on end. Their small heads looked back and forth, alert to a foreign presence, but unsure where it was. Before they could curl up and mess up my perfect chance, I converted my outstretched mana with [Terranian Magic] and stone spikes rose up from the ground, simultaneously impaling the entire pack at once. Just as I aimed, the spikes went right through each of their heads, snuffing out all traces of their lives in an instant. When I confirmed that the closest 14 hits on [Sense Presence] had all disappeared, I erased the magic, causing the spikes to dissipate into unaspected mana and float away. As the little spirits chased after the trailing wisps of mana, I grabbed the closest corpse and sucked out it''s blood. Even without my fangs, I was able to drink the blood without issue as long as there was a proper exit wound, though not being able to feel the thick fluids flowing through the unique vampire organs in the roof of my mouth made feeding less satisfying. A lot of the taste was lost as well. Not only do vampires drink through an exclusive organ but also taste with it. My tongue could only tell that I was drinking blood. Much of the nuances to it''s quality was lost by drinking this way, though I suppose I could drink poor tasting blood this way, I''d rather avoid drinking such a thing. The nutritional value would probably be pretty low as well. I did the same with the next two, then lifted the remaining monster corpses up using my telekinesis spell one by one to drain them of their blood. As I could only lift one at a time with magic, I lifted two more by the tail with my hands. But only being able to drain three monsters of their blood at a time, it took quite a while to empty all of them. It wasn''t so bad the day before as there weren''t that many monsters, but this time there were 14. The process was annoying and time consuming, but I had to do it so I could feed on my prey while it wouldn''t look suspicious if I had hunted more than I could eat due to the guild''s request. I wouldn''t have minded so much if I could just collect this blood, but all my jars were full and making more wouldn''t solve the issue, only delay it. Well, spilt blood only seemed wasteful because I was a vampire. To the other races, it was just as much unwanted as intestines. If I couldn''t drink it all, then maybe weaponizing blood would be a useful alternative? Then there would be a good reason to carry a lot of it. Blood magic was a thing in a lot of fantasy stories involving vampires, but I hadn''t seen any hints regarding it. The closest thing was using other magic to manipulate blood, but that wasn''t very efficient at all. (I should probably take a look at the skills database to see if I could find an equivalent) Eventually, I was finished draining all the dagger porcupines and I made my way back to the city. Showing my guild card and request plank to the guard, I was waved in without trouble like usual, and I made my way through the city back to the guild building. By the time I got there, the sun had barely crested above in the sky. The inside of the building was pretty barren. The only ones here were the usual staff not occupied with other duties and adventurers wasting time waiting for something. "Hey" "Oh, you''re back quick. Was the request that easy for you?" "It was" I nodded to the receptionist lady I had just gotten the request registered with. "Could you give me the proof along with the request plank and your card?" I nodded and pulled out the right ear I had removed from each of the monsters as proof and placed them on the counter along with the plank and my card. "Alright. I''ve confirmed it. 14 dagger porcupines. Are you sure you didn''t push yourself on this? You were awfully quick" "I''m fine. I just hit them all at once. It took more time to remove the blood" "I see. I suppose that if you used something similar to that spell during the exam, it would''ve ended pretty fast" It was different, but close enough I supposed. "Well, here''s your reward. And if you brought back the bodies, they''ll take it at the materials counter like before. Dagger porcupines are worth a decent amount intact" "Thanks" I nodded and palmed the coins and my card before heading over to the counter further down. "Umm...excuse me..." The man looked like he was about to doze off again. "Oh, hey. Ah, you again. You''ve got something good for me today as well?" Well, I hoped that he''d consider it something good at least. If for nothing else than making my wallet happy. Rather than saying anything, I pulled out the first of the monsters I brought back. "Oh, a dagger porcupine. Very nice, and virtually everything''s intact. How many do you have?" "14, but some are a bit smaller" "That''s fine. Even the young ones are worth quite the penny. Did you know we use the spines to make throwing daggers?" "Really?" "Yup. They''re strong and sharp. You don''t need to do much processing to make them into weapons, but they''re better than cheap ones made by a blacksmith. The longer spines are even used to make swords, though they aren''t very durable, they make excellent backup weapons and don''t rust" I nodded. That really did sound useful. Just a glance told you that they were very sharp, and the fact that they were already perfectly formed blades meant that you only needed to cut them down to size then add a handle. Quick and easy quality knives. In addition, as a backup weapon, the fact that they didn''t rust meant that they were easy to keep and their low durability wasn''t much of an issue since they wouldn''t be used very often in the first place. Those spines would sell well no matter how many were brought onto the market. As I was admiring the use of those annoying looking spines, the man called over some more workers like yesterday and took away the monster corpses as I took them out from my bag. This time they were able to take one per, but because they were so many, they were forced to make quite a few trips. "Alright, for 14 dagger porcupines, here ya go. I''m looking forward to seeing what you bring next time" The man gave me a big grin as he handed me my money. There were three gold coins and eight silver plates in my hands. "This?!" "Ah, those were fine specimens. None of the spines were broken at all and the meat was all there. Not even the skin on the belly was harmed. It''s hard to make even a copper coin more than that without capturing them alive, and that''s not something you can do with more than one or two at a time" "But...this much?" I was shocked. It was the first time I saw a gold coin and I got three of them at once. It wasn''t so much of a surprise that the monster bodies were worth more than the request, especially with the high rating the man gave them, but this felt like overkill. "You know, normally these sorts of requests are done as a party, but you''re a soloer, right? I''ve heard from the others. Your strength is pretty insane for a newbie. If you got yourself good party, you''d be an A rank in no time. Well, even solo I bet you''d be able to climb up to B rank without much issue" I didn''t know how to feel about that. There seemed to be a lot of prestige attached to high ranks like that, but frankly I didn''t really care about such a thing. I just wanted enough money so that I wouldn''t have to worry about it when I needed it. I didn''t want to be famous, and there wasn''t any use of me becoming rich. I was pretty happy living on my own in my dungeon, and I intended on returning to that some day. For now, I accepted the coins and secured it in my magic bag. Rather than worrying about not having enough money, I was starting to get worried about having too much. Chapter 35 – Return to the Orphanage With my pay safe and secure, I returned to the receptionist counter. "Oh welcome back Scarlet. Are you thinking about taking a second request today? Even though you''re so strong, I do recommend you take the rest of the day off and rest. Even strong adventurers might be taken down by weak monsters if they don''t rest properly." Once again she gave me good advice. Fortunately, I had no intention on pushing myself to do more than I had to, but I had pushed myself pretty hard at times in the dungeon. I should remember this when I went back home. "Ah no. I want to use the library." "Oh, in that case, follow me." She got up and I followed her through the back entrance and up the stairs, down the familiar hall to the library entrance. She opened the door for me, and I passed through, giving a nod to the man who was virtually a librarian. He only gave me a glance before turning back to his pile of wooden planks. Not even a ''hrmph'' came out of his lips. All the receptionist and I could do was give each other a wry smile before I turned to the shelves and started reading again. Randomly picking up slate after tablet after stray parchment, most of them were things of little importance to me. From the local history (or rather the local lord''s family history), to stray but unsubstantiated theories about how stone mole colonies form, and even synopsis of yet another hero who sounded more like the church''s hit man than the protector of the people. Maybe I had just developed some jaded preconceptions about heroes ever since Alicia often spoke of that one in her stories about Scarlet in such disdain. That was just one guy, and everyone made mistakes. His was just particularly bad. Then again, there was the saying that the road to evil was paved in good intentions. Actually, I needed to be particularly careful on that end. I''ve thought I''ve been doing a lot of good deeds, but I hadn''t really put any thought into any of them. It was possible that the consequences of my actions would be quite different from what I had intended. I may even end up doing something really bad with the assumption that it was for the betterment of the people. I needed to spend more time thinking about my actions, and the orphanage was a pretty good place to start. Realistically, no matter how much I donated to it, it wouldn''t mean much the moment I left this city, as it would become pretty difficult to continue giving donations. Not only that, but my donations would likely be pretty unreliable in the first place. And if people thought that the orphanage was doing better because of my donations, others might consider reducing their donations even if the orphanage desperately needed them. The end result would be that my own actions would''ve made things worse for those kids rather than better. A cold stone formed in the pit of my stomach as I thought about this problem. The more I interacted with that orphanage, the more I was responsible for it and the kids it cared for. But I couldn''t stay here forever. Hell, I probably wouldn''t stay in this city for more than a few more days. I already had plenty of travelling funds and there didn''t seem to be much interesting to see here. But not doing something to help secure the orphanage''s future left a bad taste in my mouth. I wouldn''t be able to forgive myself if my good intentions turned out for the worse for the orphanage. I needed to do something that would help them in the long term. The orphanage needed a reliable source of money or goods. For that, they needed a reliable patron, or a way to earn money. But nothing really came to mind. There really wasn''t any way for an orphanage to make money, and I hardly knew anything about this world outside of the dungeon I called home. It was hopeless. I really had no way to help the orphanage in the long term. All I could do was clench my teeth as the cold knot hardened in my stomach. "Hey, are you alright Scarlet?" I turned and looked up. The receptionist was standing there looking worried. "Huh?" "Is something the matter? You don''t look well." "I, uhh..." My eyes fell to the ground. Was it right to burden her with my troubles? We hardly knew each other and our relationship was entirely professional. "If there''s something troubling you, at the very least I could listen to it." (Was she trying to be considerate?) "Umm...what if...you intended on doing something good, but the results of helping someone might''ve made their situation worse in the long term...?" "I''m...not quite sure what you''re trying to say." "Ummm...what I mean is, I helped some people, but what if helping them might make things worse later on?" "Are you saying you''re sure it''ll become worse?" "No, but they need continuous help, and the more I help, the more likely things will go bad in the future" "That''s a really difficult problem. You want to help them, right?" I nodded. "I don''t think there''s anything wrong about that, but you''re sure that things will become bad if you keep doing so?" "Not completely, but pretty sure. And I can''t keep helping if I leave the city" "Well, you''re an adventurer, and it''s common to keep moving around. Though I''d miss having you around..." "Huh?" "A, anyways, you want to make sure that they can do alright even when you can''t help them anymore, right?" I nodded again. "Then the answer''s simple. Help them help themselves. Once they can help themselves, they won''t need your help anymore" "''Give a man a fish, he''ll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he''ll eat for a lifetime'' huh?" "That''s a pretty good line. But yea, something like that." (But how do you make an orphanage self sufficient?) "Did you...already think that far?" After a moment of hesitation, I nodded for the third time. "Well, maybe it''s a problem about what type of help they need? Everyone can find a way to stand on their own two feet. If they don''t have two feet, then you just need to give them a second foot, even if it''s made from wood." "Everyone? Even kids?" "This is about children? Well, I suppose it depends on how young they are, but I helped out sewing with my mother when I was six, so as long as you''re not talking about children much younger than that, then there''s probably a way. I mean, I imagine you started fighting even younger than that." I got my first kill on the first day of my life, but I was hardly a good point of comparison as I not only spawned just big as I currently was, but I kept the 30 odd years of memories from my last life. But all I could give her was a blank stare. I was worried anything else would reveal more than I was willing to let out. "Well, I don''t know what those children are able to do, but don''t look down on them just because they''re young. In many families, even a six year old is expected to help bring in some money for the family, so maybe you can find a way for those children to stand on their own?" "I...I think I''ll try. Thanks." I gave her a smile and extended my hand. "It''s no problem. If it''s only this much, I don''t mind listening to as many of your troubles as you want, Scarlet. It''s certainly better than being hit on constantly by bored adventurers." The latter bit she turned her head and only whispered, but I heard it clearly. I supposed women really did have to deal with that sort of problems even in this world. (Wait, I''m a woman too. Am I going to have to deal with that at some point?) The cold realization made me feel insecure. Not only that, but it made me realize that not only was that likely in my future, it had already happened to me in the last village. I wasn''t sure how I would have to deal with it if that problem continued to crop up. "Thanks. I might just take you up on your offer...ah!" "Is there something else you want to ask?" "..." It was embarrassing, but if I didn''t ask here, it could easily turn into a bigger issue down the line. "Ummm...I don''t know your name." "Ah, I never mentioned it? Sorry. It''s Lucy. Lucy Tileoger." "I''m Scarlet, as you already know." I clasped her outstretched hand and smiled. After that, I left the guild building. The library was already closed and the rest of the building was preparing for the evening. Since I was done there, I headed straight towards the orphanage. I still had no idea how to solve their problem, but at the very least I could help out in smaller ways in the meantime. "Miss Scarlet!" "You came again!" A pair of the orphanage''s kids were playing on the street and greeted me as I approached. "Hey, you guys doing alright?" I patted them on the head. "We are! Did you come to play again?" The first kid asked immediately. He had small, round ears on top of his head and a stubby little tail that was barely more than a pompom. His eyes half closed as I rubbed his short, black hair. "Or maybe make dinner again?" The second''s eyes sparkled at me, practically ignoring how my hand moved. Despite being shorter than his buddy, this kid was much more horizontally built and there were a handful of lonely strands growing from his chin. "Haha. I wonder which one you guys are hoping for the most?" The two kids looked at each other for a second before answering me with with a full-faced grin. ""Both!"" (Cheeky little...) After a short moment, the two grabbed my hands and lead me inside the building. "Hey! Look who we found!" The taller of the two boys opened the door wide, but just as I thought it would slam into the wall, he made sure to have a firm grip to stop it from being damaged. "It''s Scarlet!" "You came again!" "Yay! Did you come to play?" "Are you going to make dinner again?" Almost in an instant, I was swarmed by the kids before I could take a second step into the lobby. In all their excitement, I wasn''t able to respond as they rapid fired their questions and statements one after the next. But a change happened that made it even more difficult for me to answer. "Those furs on the beds! Were they yours?!" "Yea! They''re so soft and warm!" "And the window shutters too!" "And the doors don''t creak anymore!" "And the cracks in the walls are gone!" "Was that all you?" "It was amazing!" "Everyone, what do you say when someone gives you something?" Like a final nail in the coffin, what would normally be words one would welcome felt more like the biggest attack when I was already being overwhelmed. """Thank you Scarlet!!!""" Everyone yelled so loud I bet that the neighbours could make out the words. The fact that the front door was still open only made things worse. "That''s right. Thank you very much Miss Scarlet for everything you had done yesterday. Don''t think that you can get away without being properly thanked" (Was it me, or was that a threat?) The kids all huddled around me, the closest grabbing at my robes and pulling me deeper into the building. While they were expressing their happiness and excitement with how they pulled at me, from my perspective, I couldn''t help but feel like an insect caught in a spider net. In the end, it wasn''t as bad as I was fearing, though I knew that it wasn''t like the kids were going to eat me or something. Instead, they sat me down and brought me all sorts of gifts that they scrounged up or made during the day. From freshly picked flowers to hand fulls of berries, I was practically buried in them as I did my best to hold them without dropping any. "So how does the heartfelt thanks of everyone in the orphanage feel?" (Overbearing) But it wasn''t like I could actually say that. The directer figuratively looked down at me with a smug expression despite her head barely peeking out from behind the shorter of the orphans. If any of the older kids were in front of her, the view of her would''ve been blocked entirely. "I can feel everyone''s warmth firmly in my chest" My smile cramped up. "Well anyways, everyone, if you stick so closely to Miss Scarlet, she won''t be able to do what she came for" With her words, I was finally given some reprieve as the kids made some space around me. "Considering the time, I suppose you came to make dinner again?" "Yea." I gave her a nod, and subsequently stiffened for a moment as the kids all cheered loudly. After getting some help to put all the gifts into my bag, I made way to the kitchen and started on the day''s dish. Considering the number of mouths, soups and stews really were the best option as there weren''t any woks to make stir fry with. But to change things up, I went with meat from a large bird monster called a Roc, mixed in with potatoes, onions, and broccoli, all boiled in a thick, white soup heavy in goat''s milk and goat butter. As I tried to get away after serving everyone''s share, the director grabbed my arm and made me sit down despite my protests. "Now now, you''ve already done so much work and given us so many things. You should at least take a break while the children enjoy your meal, right?" "Ah, but..." "Everyone, what do you say to Miss Scarlet?" """Thank you for the food!!!""" Without me getting a chance to say anything, Philia firmly held me down, preventing me from escaping. "Even if you don''t need to eat, isn''t it good to take some time and enjoy the smiles that your food brings?" Unable to do resist, my eyes wandered as the surprisingly strong-willed woman continued to talk into my ear quietly. Around me, all the kids had huge grins as they quickly ate as if they were worried it would disappear before their eyes. "Yum!" "It''s so good!" "I love it!" Everything that came out of their mouths were words of praise, and nothing but pure joy was on their expressions. (Actually, this is kinda nice) It wasn''t like I didn''t know that being praised for the work you do felt good, but ever since coming to this world, I had only done things for myself and Alicia. Alicia was my sister, so it was a given to make her as happy as I could, and it was also a given that I''d be happy whenever she was smiling. I had done good things for others, but I hadn''t once stopped to see the results properly. (Maybe I should do that more often?) "Scarlet! Scarlet! Won''t you play with us?" As I was enjoying the warm feeling in my chest a small group of kids rushed up to me. "Oh? You guys done already?" "We are! Thank you very much!" "So will you play with us?" "Hmm..." As I looked around the room, it felt like as the rest of the kids noticed what was going on, they all increased their eating pace by a few steps. This could become a problem. "How about something a little different until everyone''s finished eating?" "Like what?" "Not playing?" "Hmm..." "How about a story? That way the children eating can also listen" For once, Philia came to actually save my ass rather than scorch it. "Sounds good. Story time then" "Story!" "Yay!" Thankfully, the other kids slowed down, made their slurping quieter, and perked their ears in anticipation. "''I love you, Suzu!'' ''Thank you for loving me'', she responded again. ''Please don''t disappear Suzu! Suzu!'' He yelled, holding her even more tightly. ''Thank you so much, for giving me your life.'' As she said those words, her soul disappeared from the afterlife, returning to the reincarnation cycle, leaving Izuru behind as he cried, calling out for Suzu''s name, over and over, but she was no longer in that world." I opened my eyes, gazing at the ceiling. Tears were running down my cheeks, just like every time I saw that scene of that show from so many years ago. But after taking the time to stabilize my breathing, I continued the story. "Days, weeks, perhaps months or even years later Izuru was able to..." Whack! Something hit the side of my head. It didn''t hurt, but the sudden impact bent my neck a good 45 degrees. When I looked back, I saw the director staring at me, her face somewhere between pensive and frustrated...maybe? I couldn''t really read her expression very well, but there were tears running down her face. "You...! What are you doing telling such a story to little children?!" "Huh?" I looked around. All the kids had long finished eating and were all looking my way, but there were tears running down their faces, and all of them looked like they were holding something furious back. "Umm..." """Waaaahhhh~~~~!!!""" But as I was trying to figure out what was wrong, they all burst out crying, practically in unison. "Ah...wait...that''s...!" I didn''t think they''d cry so hard from that story. Sure, I had tears running down my face, like pretty much every time I saw that scene, but I didn''t think my poor retelling of that show''s story would make the entire room of kids cry. Not only them, but the directer was pretty obviously holding back from crying herself. (Was it that effective?) But before that, I needed to calm all the kids down. "Umm, the, the thing is...ummm...." But I was drawing blanks, and the more the kids cried, the more flustered I became. It was one thing to deal with a kid one-on-one, but another to deal with a large group of them. "You fool! So? What happened next Scarlet? I''m sure that the story doesn''t end there, right?" "Umm...that''s right! Everyone! Calm down. There''s still more to the story! But I can''t tell it while everyone''s crying!" I wasn''t finished telling the story, but I was interrupted before I could continue. "See? Everyone, there''s more! Even after little Suzu and Izuru were separated, there''s more to the story!" The director''s strong, almost booming voice redirected all the kids'' attention to her, and they managed to calm down enough to hear her words. But almost in unison, their eyes turned to me, filled with expectation beyond any level I had ever seen. gulp It felt like this was my only chance at salvation, but all I had was one, short scene after the ending credits. Since it was a show, it was a wordless almost entirely visual-based epilogue, but I had to somehow portray it in words in a way that everyone here would find satisfying. The weight of this tension was heavier than facing any boss in the dungeon back home. "Umm...anyways. Long, long, later, Izuru reincarnated in another world. He grew up, his memories of his time in the afterlife erased, his previous life gone. But he still felt that something was wrong. Something was missing. One day, as he was idly walking through the streets, he walked past a girl. She was an unremarkable girl. No different from any of the dozens he passed the last few minutes. But still, he turned and stopped. It wasn''t because of what she was wearing, or for how she had her hair up. He stopped, because she was humming a tune. One he recognized, but couldn''t remember from where. And when he gazed into her eyes, he felt that the thing he was missing all his life, that thing that was wrong for as long as he could remember, was right there. Unable to hold back, he approached that girl. The end." The entire room was quiet. Everyone was staring at me so hard I thought that they''d bore a hole right through me. Clap...clap...clap To my side, the director was clapping slowly. Not a condescending golf clap, but a proper one. She had a gentle smile, but there were tears building up at the edge of her eyes. "I see. So they were able to meet up again in the next life is it? How wonderful." Clap clap clap clap clap More and more hands started to clap, and it spread throughout the room. The kids no longer looked pensive, but large grins burst onto their faces. In the end, I needed some help from Philia, but I succeeded, it seemed. The tension in my shoulders disappeared all at once, but for appearance''s sake, I continued to sit up straight. Ninetailed_Furball Thank you everyone for your outpouring of support. I''ll be careful about burnout for sure. You''re not the only ones who want to see this story through to the end ^_^ The comments on the previous chapter were simply amazing, and I enjoyed every moment of reading them. I do hope that some of the things a portion of readers have had trouble accepting would be things I can improve on in the future, and wholeheartedly welcome criticism like that. That said, I have made a change to the bloodsucking line in the previous chapter, as I felt I had neglected a detail even though nobody had pointed it out. Well, more world building for me then XD Well, more important than that though, I realized that I had neglected to do the most important thing in my previous chapter note. And that was to thank all of you readers who had pointed out errors in my story, from the small ones to the big. Every contribution helps tremendously to improve the quality of my work, and I appreciate every little bit of it. I''ve done my best to give personal thanks in the comments, but that''s hardly enough, so I wanted to collectively thank you all here, and hope I''ll see more and more "fix this you !" posts as you continue to whip my butt in the black leather. I kid. Keep it PG at the very least. Once again, I''m thankful to have so many great readers, and hope you''ll continue to enjoy my story as much as I enjoy writing it ©c(¡ä¨Œ`)/ Chapter 36 – Life Anew And Sustaining Life Once my overly extended story session ended, the kids gathered their plates and cleaned up. But as they worked, they couldn''t stop talking about the story I told like a crowd that just finished watching a heart-pounding movie. The very thought that they took my poorly told story so well warmed my chest. Personally I didn''t think I did the show justice, and even just trying to retell it entirely through words rather than watching it whole was borderline blasphemy, it wasn''t like there were any TVs or computers in this world. At the very least, I haven''t seen any hint of any electronics yet. "I''ve got a question." A little girl with a big bushy tail and pointed ears on top of her head pulled at my sleeve. Her name was...something I couldn''t remember. "What''s up?" It looked like she had already finished cleaning up ahead of the other kids for the sake of asking this question. "Umm...in your story, everyone had already died, wasn''t it?" "Hmmm? Yea. The story took place in the afterlife where souls visit after people die". "So...does that mean that when we die, we go to a place like that?" "Huh? Uhhh...well, probably not." "Huh?" I supposed that my short response was way too curt. I leaned in closer to as I prepared my answer. "After you die, you go to the lands of the gods. There, you join up with others who have died. There''s a god that watches over everyone so that they don''t cause trouble. Aside from that, you basically wait until your turn comes up, wherein you visit another god, who helps process your reincarnation. When they finish that, you move on to your next life" "So you don''t stay by god''s side then?" "Wouldn''t that in turn be weird? I mean, how many people would go to god''s side every year? How many people would it be after ten years? A hundred? A thousand? Eventually, no matter how big god''s realm would be, there would be too many people for it to hold." There were a ton of jokes about how hell was overfilled and various consequences regarding that as I grew up on Earth, but realistically thinking about it, wouldn''t the same thing happen with heaven as well? "So...no matter what we do here, we''ll come back with a new life after visiting god''s realm?" "Hmmm...pretty much. Well, normally the gods would make you forget about your previous life, so you wouldn''t remember your past lives. It''s not like you can remember your previous life, can you?" "I can''t." (Though I can.) "So because of that, it''s not like there''s no meaning in doing your best to be happy in this life. Who knows what your next would bring, and it might be an even better life, but it could also be worse. All you can do is do your best now to be happy when the end comes." All this morbid talk was starting to get me concerned. While cliche, I thought that it was a good mantra to live by. "I see...but if you can''t remember your previous lives, then anyone might''ve been someone amazing, right?" "Huh? I suppose so." Technically speaking, there really wasn''t any reason why that logic wouldn''t work, though the chances of actually been a remarkable person in a previous life was a bit slim. "Then, then maybe you were the Scarlet who saved the orphanage''s founder a long time ago?" "Huh? Ah, umm...maybe? I suppose it''s possible." "Right? Maybe, just because you can''t remember your past, doesn''t mean that it''s all gone, right? I mean, in your story, Suzu and Izuru were both able to remember a little bit about their time in god''s realm right?" "Well, it was only a story, but it is possible." The little girl''s eyes had taken a sparkle of their own, like she was entirely convinced of her theory and the implications of it. "So maybe, maybe, somewhere deep down, you really are the same Scarlet, and you''re helping out people around you because of that?" Well, it was an interesting theory for sure. Technically it wasn''t impossible, but the likelihood was extremely low. The chances of any one person in a pool of countless trillions amongst who knows how many worlds being the reincarnation of a specific person was infinitesimally small. But even more importantly, I didn''t like her theory. The thought that my actions were guided by the will of a previous life I couldn''t remember? It was like denying my own free will. My mind was my own, as were my actions. It was one thing if I just happened to follow a similar road as a previous life though sheer coincidence, but another if that previous life guided my feet along a similar road. "Hmmm...maybe. Or maybe not. It''s possible that Scarlet had reincarnated into you instead you know?" I put my hand on the little girl''s head and lightly brushed her hair in between her erect ears. While I had personal grievances in regards to that theory, there wasn''t any point in pushing them on to this little girl. She thought it was a cool idea, and in all honest, it was a bit cool. The thought that you might''ve been someone amazing in a previous life, and that being the reincarnation of someone amazing, you might become someone just as amazing in your new life had a certain degree of appeal. But I didn''t like how it disregarded one''s free will. I was my own person, so I didn''t want to be manipulated by someone else who I couldn''t even remember. "Ehehe. Maybe, but I think, if anyone''s would be it, it would be you! Even your name matches!" "Haha, true, though I can''t be the only Scarlet around." "Mmm! That''s right. Over there, her name''s also Scarlet!" The little girl pointed to an older girl roughly twelve years old. She had long bunny ears sticking out from her shoulder length brown hair, and a fluffy little tail stuck out from a hole in her dress. I kinda wondered why someone would bother making a hole just for such a short tail, but maybe it was uncomfortable otherwise? "Right. See? The name''s not too unique. And for all we know, maybe she''s the one who was the original Scarlet''s reincarnation." "Hmmm...maybe? But I think you''re more like her than she is." "If you say so. Anyways, isn''t it getting late? The director''s going to get angry if I keep for too long." And felt like I wasn''t getting anywhere with this conversation. "That''s right. Just like how Miss Scarlet said, it''s getting close to bedtime. Hurry on and get ready Flix. The rest of you as well!" Philia came and saved me from the girl''s little inquisition streak. Looking up, quite a few kids had surrounded us, listening to our conversation with glowing eyes. They all scattered as Philia raised her voice to be heard. Once she confirmed that they had left, my saviour turned to me but... (Why does she look so angry behind that smile?) "You...do you know what you were doing?" "Huh?" I just answered some questions after telling a story. "Haaa...it seems you don''t, do you? Those things you said. If the church hear you, you could be branded as a heretic you know." "Huh?!" (Wait, what?!) "You really don''t know huh? The Church of Enveloping Light tells that when people die, the souls of good people go to god''s side while the souls of sinners go to the netherworld for eternal damnation." (Sounds like half of all religions on Earth) "I see..." "No, I don''t think you do. People who spread gospel about things contrary to church doctrines tend to get labelled as heretics and are dealt with harshly." (That...while it sounds a bit bad, also sounds a bit similar to Earth) "Okay, I get it." "Do you? Really? The church can be pretty scary if they set their eyes on you." "Yea, I think I do. Thanks for the warning." "Please. Don''t talk about that sort of thing again. Even that story of yours might push things a bit hard. I''ve never even heard of this sort of things before, so word can get around pretty quickly if you''re not careful." "Yea, I''ll be careful. Thanks." She really was pretty persistent on this sort of thing. Then again, the influence of religious figures were pretty strong back on Earth''s history, so maybe it was the same here? The hard edge on the director''s expression had melted away, leaving only a hint of concern. "I''ll tell the children to forget about the idea that Scarlet''s soul had come back, so don''t worry about that." "Yea, thanks. I''ll come back tomorrow." "We''re all looking forward to it. Thank you once again for everything you''re doing." The director bowed her head to me. Her earnest gratitude still felt awkward, but nothing I had tried yesterday worked, so I had no choice but to accept it. "Oh right. Do the kids here bring in money?" "Huh? Oh, a little. Some children go and beg on the streets, and others do some odd jobs like taking trash out, but it doesn''t amount to much usually. Most families have their own children do chores like that after all and most craftsmen don''t like orphans hanging around their places." "But if they could get a consistent job to bring in money, they''d do it then?" "They would. Though it depends on the type of work I suppose. Did you have something in mind?" "Maybe." I had the feeling that there were things that they could do to earn some money, but it hadn''t coalesced to the point where I could put it into words yet. "Well, I''ll come talk about it if I think it could work." "If it''s you, everyone''ll surely be excited to try it out." Leaving me with a gentle smile, I left the orphanage and the energetic sounds of kids who weren''t quite ready for bedtime yet. Looking left and right, a shiver ran up my spine. The orange light of the sky was quickly being replaced by the starry blackness of the night. Now that I was alone, aside from the slowly orbiting group of ever present fluffballs, looking at the quickly emptying streets brought back memories of the previous night. Even though I wasn''t in any physical danger, somehow those two men managed to bring out something that I didn''t even know I had. It wasn''t something I wanted to face ever again. Taking on a boss rush in a dungeon would be a million times more preferable. Even if it culminated with dozens of monsters stronger than those metal golems I had so much trouble against. At least then, I could freely use my claws and magic. There wasn''t much point in me leaving the city just for the night, but I wasn''t about to just wander the alleys as is. Feeling out the presences around me, I quickly dipped into a narrow side street where nobody could see into, then I activated [Spirit Form] before using [Materialize] on only a sliver of my soles and turning on [Float] to quickly reach the roofs. I went and took a walk on the rooftops, maintaining [Float] to a reduced degree so that my footsteps wouldn''t make any noise and disturb anyone inside while [Materialize] on my soles so I could actually walk without passing through the tiles. My eyes panned around as I took in the scenery. The roofs of all the buildings extended out in every direction a little like rolling hills. In one direction, all the buildings rose up, culminating to a single large cluster of buildings that looked more ornate than any I have seen in this world. I could only think that it was either some sort of major governmental building or some extremely rich family''s home. It certainly had the majestic presence to be some sort of city hall like in the city I grew up in, but such a building felt a bit off when I thought about the sort of place this world was from my short experience outside of the dungeon. Hopping from one rooftop to the next, I casually made my way across the city towards the eye-catching district in the north-eastern part of the city. Thanks to the fact that I could make a beeline towards it, it didn''t take long at all before the roofs started to rise up. Looking in between the gaps, it was clear that the roofs weren''t higher in this corner of the city because the buildings were taller, but because the ground was higher. This specific area was built on a hill, and continue to rise up. Most likely, the building that stood out the most amid the other higher class-looking buildings was built on the top of the hill. I continued to hop across the roofs until I reached the last building. Directly ahead, there was a tall wall with an impressive gate. My vantage point allowed me to see the small courtyard beyond the wall and the impressive-looking building past that. It rose up a good five stories and was made entirely of stone. Or at least it seemed like it. It seemed to be entirely covered in a white clay or plaster, so the material underneath wasn''t visible. Unlike the rest of the buildings with white plaster, this one didn''t have any timber frames or reinforcements anywhere that I could see. The walls were more or less flat and featureless aside from the regular windows. The lower ones were very narrow, but the ones from the third floor and above were much larger, allowing me to see inside quite easily. It looked like the insides were well decorated with plenty of bright colours, and various things sparkled from inside. The pure simplicity of the outer surface was awe-inspiring, and the inside obviously suggested a huge amount of wealth. Frankly, it was annoying. The orphanage was barely surviving, and the next town was on the verge of collapsing, yet this building, this house, it was like the very symbol of opulence. The heavy gates and guards, along with the extravagance of the interior banished any thought that this was a governmental building. It was a palace, simply put. Technically palaces were governmental, but they were also private residences. It was probably the local lord''s or something, I imagined. I turned and dashed across the roofs before dipping down to the streets below. Once that the gaudy building was out of sight, I could take a breath and calm down. But it didn''t really work. I had only made it a handful of blocks away from that palace, and all around me were buildings that screamed out opulence. Their polished white exteriors, fine decorations in notable spots, and the bright colours and shiny decorations visible through the windows even from the ground floor. Jumping back up to the rooftops, I grew out my wings and flapped hard, sending me back west. It only took a few moments of flying, but it felt like a small eternity as my emotions were threatening to break free. I had reached the main street close to the western gates. Reabsorbing my wings, I fell from the sky before lightly landing in the now empty streets. Nearby, I could see the adventurer''s guild building. It''s plain, slightly dirty exterior, the rugged interior I knew was just beyond those walls, the sight of it calmed me down a bit. My feet quickly delivered me to it''s walls, and I slipped into a side street beside it and leaned against the building. Taking a few deep breaths, I suppressed my emotions. Getting angry about rich people showing off their wealth wasn''t productive. In fact, if anything, it would be harmful. I had no idea what the circumstances were when it came to the greater scheme of things, so it wasn''t like I could blame the orphanage''s situation on the rich people of this city. No, rather than blindly blaming one side, it was better to simply come up with a solution. Trying to make others move for the sake of sympathy would only be a short term solution. Better than my donations, but only a little bit. It wouldn''t last unless if someone was committed to keep the rich people convinced that it was worth helping. Philia had agreed to having the kids work, so that would be the best solution. I doubted child labour laws existed in this world and Lucy said that she helped out earning money when she was six. It wasn''t like all the kids in the orphanage were that young either, and some of them were already doing odd jobs. The orphanage needed a reliable source of income, and the kids were able and willing to work, at least as far as whatever small, weak, unskilled kids were capable of. The gears were moving in my head, but it felt like they weren''t getting any traction. I was missing a piece to connect all the dots. When it came to work, generally it came to goods or services. Goods were a pretty expansive subject, so I thought about services first. Services were helping someone do something, or doing something someone else couldn''t or wouldn''t do. As I rolled all the types of services I could think of through my head, each one was quickly eliminated. Either they required substantial backing in terms of an existing business, skills that those kids wouldn''t have, or were straight out unethical. It didn''t take long before I scrapped services entirely. Then the alternative were goods. But that alone was an insanely broad subject. Goods could be either finished products or intermediary products. Intermediary products would require an existing industry or business that could take advantage of those goods, so they were out. I had very little knowledge of this world''s economics so any further thought when it came to something like that would be a waste of time. Finished products came in two varieties. The first were consumer products and the second were industrial products. Or in this case, things used by people of other professions. This latter one had the same issue as intermediary products, so I scrapped the idea immediately. The only thing left were consumer products. Things that the average person could use. Or if not average, then at least for personal use. Daily necessities were nice, but unless if a good niche could be secured in the long term, the kids would be quickly out-competed. My mind went through all the things that could be sold. Furniture, toys, foodstuff, clothes. Pretty much none of them were appealing. Either they required skills or connections that the kids wouldn''t have, or were too unreliable. Anything made by the kids would just be like those times I saw people selling soap sculptures on the streets on Earth. Most people just ignored them and walked by. The sculptors were treated as little better than beggars. At the very least, I thought that way once I had a look at the poor quality of the sculptures that were on display. (Huh?) I felt like I had almost hit on something, but passed it by without giving it the attention it deserved. There was no way kids making sculptures on the streets would be a reliable income. For that matter, there was the issue of the materials they''d make them from. Since they didn''t have something easy to carve like soap, they''d be forced to use wood. (Huh? Soap?) It was as if a light bulb went off in my head. (Of course! Soap!) Alicia had freaked out when I mentioned soap, asking if I was some sort of noble. If that was the case, soap was a well known thing, but it wasn''t something that the average person could afford. Or at least had access to. But what if they did? Or what if those rich nobles were willing to buy soap from more than their usual sources? For the average person to buy soap, it would have to be at a price point where they found it affordable. (No, that''s not enough) They wouldn''t just have to be affordable, but they''d have to feel the need to use it. The kids found the idea of washing their hands exotic. They weren''t especially dirty, so it wasn''t like bathing wasn''t done, but it probably wasn''t done with soap. (Would I be able to convince people that using soap would be worth the cost?) It was hard to say. Most people would see it as a needless expense. Without the bathing culture to back it up, nor the ability to advertise like on Earth, soap might not really take hold in a time span short enough for the orphanage. Rather than weeks or months, it could take years before sales picked up to the point that the venture was worth it. That was an unacceptably long timescale. Even if nobody starved to death in the meantime, I was against it. No, the future was to appeal to nobles and other rich clients. They would already have a bathing culture, and by presenting a product that was similar, but had it''s own benefits, it would help the orphanage immediately. If exclusivity could be maintained, then they''d have no choice but to buy from the orphanage! Once sales start, it would be guaranteed to continue as long as nobody was able to copy what made their soap uniquely appealing! (But what could be done to create that appeal in the first place?) I wasn''t very confident in the general quality of my soap. I had managed to purify the lye a bit and my more recent soaps were lighter than my early batches. I was confident that I could further improve the purity, but that didn''t mean that the soap would have a real edge over the competition. I needed more than that. If that was the case, then scenting the soap using essential oils was the only option. No, they could carve the soap on top of that. It probably wouldn''t be much, but the small addition would certainly help, especially for initial sales. It would be quickly copied, but if the core was the essential oils, then that bit wouldn''t be easy to simply copy. They''d need to have knowledge of the distilling process, and if the knowledge to make something as simple as soap hasn''t disseminated world-wide, then there was no way that they''d be able to figure out steam distillation on their own. I still needed to actually do some research though. There was no guarantee that scented soaps weren''t already common for the upper class. If they were, then either I''d need a new idea or find a way to make the average household buy them. Or maybe some sort of business? Thinking about it, even with just soap, it was possible to come up with quite a few business ideas. If I could find out more about the current state of things, the possibilities were endless. As I thought about all the possible angles and made my plans, before I knew it, the sound of people walking through the main street reached my ears. Ninetailed_Furball Hey everyone! Sorry for the late submission today. I had more trouble with this chapter than I expected, and even ended up being a little short. Only a little, but enough to make me annoyed! `¥Ø¡ä I''m sorry again. I''ll try to do better m(_ _)m But that aside, nice to see all those comments last chapter! And you guys seriously predicted Scarlet''s movements quite well. Are you guys psychic? JK. I left behind quite a few clues. Glad so many of you picked up on them! So the orphanage is going to become a soap factory huh? Wonder how well that''ll work out? Well, it''s Scarlet, so I''m sure it''ll work out fine. She''s a smart girl after all! Not only that, but the director too! And maybe more? That said, there''s been quite a lot of nautical references last chapter. You guys really want the SS Scarlet to set sail huh? But I wonder who the helmsman would be? Well, jokes aside, I''m happy for the positive responses at least £Ü(^o^)£¯ It seems like quite a few people also got the reference in her story as well. I''m a big fan of it, and really wish it went on for two seasons like it was originally planned. So many great characters had their arcs cut out. BTW, of those who saw that show, which one did you guys prefer? The original epilogue, or the alternate one? It''s pretty hard for me, but I think I liked the alternate epilogue more. It was a bit sad, but kinda badass as well, and made more sense to me. Well, thanks for reading my latest chapter, and hope to see many of you in the comments section and in the future! (????) Chapter 37 – Shopping Entrepreneur The sky had started to grow light again, and the light bouncing off of the atmosphere was starting to stream down in between the gaps in the roofs overhead. I scattered around some mana treats for the little fluff balls to kill time before the various places opened. Pushing off of the wall, I deactivated my skills and joined the growing crowds on the main street, then entered the adventurer''s guild building. Inside, there were already people around. Some were gathered around the tables, having snacks and discussing thing quietly, but most were having a look at the filled requests wall. It was tempting to just pick up something, but I wanted to spend my day on moving my plans forward instead. It wasn''t like I was hurting for money or anything. I hadn''t even spent a single coin from what I''ve made since coming to this city. "Oh Scarlet, welcome back." So instead I walked up to the Lucy. She greeted me with a smile like usual. "Hey, morning. Umm, rather than the usual, I''ve got some questions?" "Is that so? That''s fine. What do you want to know?" "I''ve been wondering if you could point me towards some shops?" "You''re going shopping? What sort of shops are you looking for?" "Umm...I need a butcher, a place that sells cloth, and somewhere that sells soap." My eyes went up as I listed off the things I needed. "Those are...certainly an unusual combination of stores." "Well, I''m trying something out." I didn''t want to spread the news about what I was doing so early. "I see? Well, the first two aren''t too difficult, but the third..." "I''ve heard that soap is expensive already. I haven''t spent the money I made yesterday yet, so I should have enough to pay for it at least." Or the money from the day before either. "Umm...well, it is expensive, but the other problem is where you''d need to go. Soap would only be sold in the noble district." "Oh. Is there a security checkpoint or something?" "Huh? Do you mean a guard post? Well, they don''t, though there are a lot of guard stations in the area, they won''t stop you from entering. You don''t look as bad as most of the other adventurers. At least if you put your hood down." She leaned forward and looked up at my face. I instinctively took a step back, before I realized what I was doing and returned to my position. But by then, the damage had been done, and Lucy looked like she was pouting a little. "Sorry..." "...No, it''s no problem. Anyways, like I said, you''ll probably be fine if you lower your hood. They won''t think you''re some rough adventurer." "From just that?" "Rather, isn''t that why you''re hiding your face so much?" "Ah, no. I just have a skin condition. If I don''t wear something like this, I get burned pretty easily." "Is that so? I''ve never heard of such a thing, but I guess the world''s always bigger than you think huh?" "...yea, I suppose..." I wasn''t lying, but even then it was difficult to keep looking her in the eye. "Anyways, as for the other two places..." After receiving the directions, I left the building and headed out. First thing first was the butcher. My plush bag prevented things from going bad, so I might as well go get the cuts I needed first since it was closer. The butcher''s was toward the centre of the city, a few blocks from the adventurer''s guild. The walk only took a couple of minutes, and I arrived at a small building. There were a bunch of signs on the large, open shutters that advertised the types of meat that was in stock. Some of the names weren''t familiar, but others were those of various monsters that were on request. Apparently they even sold goblin meat. Even if I was still human, I couldn''t see myself eating goblin meat no matter how desperate I was. Not even for these rock bottom prices that were listed. A little bit disgusted and apprehensive, I opened the door and entered. "Welcome! What can I kill for ya?" A large macho man in a simple leather apron greeted me from behind a large counter that stretched across the entire room. On the customer''s side, there was a pair of tables against the walls, but otherwise it was barren. On the employee''s side, several large pieces of animal carcasses and chains of sausages were hung, with even more large pieces of meat laying on a bed of crushed ice. I was surprised to see ice in a store at first, but then remembered that it was probably made with magic. It was a given that if magic existed, it would be used in this sort of manner. I already used magic in similar ways myself, so it shouldn''t have been such a surprise just because it was the first time I''ve seen someone else do it. My eyes returned to the macho man. He had big arms with hair that ran all the way up his shoulders and chest, as well as most likely his back. There was no hint of a shirt underneath that big apron. I really hoped he was at least wearing pants, but I couldn''t see due to how the apron wrapped around his body. (That said, why isn''t he wearing a shirt?!) I was feeling embarrassed in his place, and we hadn''t even started a conversation yet. "Umm..." "Yea, what''cha looking fer little girl?" My cheeks instantly cramped up. (This guy, he''s not deliberately trying to annoy me, is he?) Not only was he dressed in a way in which I couldn''t tell if he was wearing anything under that apron or not, but he was already treating me like a kid. I took a deep breath before letting it out, and tried starting again. "I''m looking to buy some lard. Do you sell any?" "Ah, lard? Sure. How much do you need?" "Quite a bit. Could I get a bucket worth?" "Eh, that much ah? Sure. Gonna make some candles or something?" "...more like something..." I guess that would be a normal use for a large amount of lard. "Gimme a sec." The big man turned his body and went through a back door. (Phew. He''s wearing pants.) The first thing I noticed was that he was, indeed, wearing pants. Full length brown leather pants. But he really wasn''t wearing a shirt. Instead, his back was covered in black hair. (They say that red meat puts hair on a man''s chest, but if his back''s any indication, I''d more suspect him of suffering from werewolf syndrome.) The sound of metal against wood repeatedly rang out through the back door before the man returned with a large bucket with big chunks of lard sticking out. "Here ya go. This enough?" "Umm...yea, I think so." He put the bucked down onto the counter and tipped it over so I could see inside. Not only were there lots of large pieces of fat sticking out of the bucket, the inside was filled to capacity with smaller chunks. "Right then. Do you have something to carry it in? Or are you gonna buy the bucket as well?" "Oh, right." I hadn''t thought of that. I was probably still too used to the idea of prepackaged goods and cheap plastic bags from Earth, so the thought of having to get my own container was still pretty novel. But for every problem, there was a solution if you just took the time to look. I removed an iron ingot from my bag, then applied some magic to form it into a large bucket. "That should work." "Little girl, was that magic? You some sort of magical smith or something?" "Huh? It was just a bit of [Earth Magic] though?" "Just some [Earth Magic] huh? It looks way more than that, but I''ll take your word for it." With his slightly confused words, the man sold me the lard for three copper plates. I had no idea if that was a lot or very little though. Thanking him, I left the store and headed towards the tailor Lucy recommended. The tailor shop was pretty close by as well, though it was a bit past the central plaza on the eastern side of the city. I quickly made my way through the main street, and arrived at a larger building than before. The large window shutters were open and I could see some outfits hanging along the walls. The quantity of clothes was very little in comparison to Earth, and everything on display were things like capes, scarves, as well as large and loose outfits. If anything, it felt like what they were showing off were only things that could fit a wide variety of people with little to no work on fitting. Rather, that was probably the entire point. This place was a tailor shop, so most of their products were probably made to order. That also meant that they had plenty of sheets of cloth. The question would be if they would be willing to sell those directly to a customer or not. "Welcome. Oh my oh my." As I entered the building, I was greeted by a middle-aged woman in a moss-green one-piece dress with some simple yet eye catching white embroidery on the sleeves and neckline. She wore a white kerchief around her head with some dark green embroidery along the front edge. With how her sky-blue hair was folded in on itself underneath the kerchief, she gave a pretty homely feel. Or maybe the nice next-door granny feel? Though she didn''t look to be that old yet. (Maybe I''ll keep that bit to myself?) That said, she quickly made her way around the short counter in the back and shuffled straight towards me. "Oh my, yes. You." Before I knew what was going on, the woman grabbed my hands and held them in between hers as she pulled them up to her chest, or in other words, in front of my face. "This simply will not do. For a girl to be wearing such concealing clothes when you''ve been blessed with so much. Please, I can''t stand it. I''ll even give you a discount if you''ll let me chose a full outfit for you!" "Uh...I mean..." (I take back my impression entirely! She''s not the nice granny next door! She''s the fashion freak!) I tried to take a step back, but rather than letting go of my hands, she pulled them even closer to her chest. I could feel something soft hitting my wrists! "Please! You deserve so much more than mere robes. They''re very much hidden, but I know that you have a body that deserves to be shown to all the world! It''s practically a sin to hide it!" "Umm...no, I...I only..." The woman pulled even harder, fully pressing my hands against her collarbone. I could see how her moderately sized chest squished and pushed out around my wrists. Despite having my own much larger pair for the last three years, my mind still couldn''t stop from focusing on the sensation that enveloped my arms. "That body of yours! It''s a gift! A gift from god himself! It would be a loss to the entire world if you continue to hide it!" "I...I..." As if due to being unable to push my hands even closer to her chest, the woman instead brought her face closer to mine. "Oh my! That face too! It''s like the face of a fairy tale princess! Those eyes! Those eyelashes! Those round cheeks! That nose! Those lips! That chin! It''s a crime! It''s a crime I tell you! Hiding such a thing is a crime to all the world!" Unable to stand it anymore, I forcibly pulled back and ran out of the store. There was a small thud as the woman shrieked as she fell to the ground, but I paid it no heed and just continued until I was out of sight and in a side street. Leaning against the wall, I pulled my hood down as far as it would go. I took in deep breaths, trying to stabilize my breathing. I could feel the presences of people stop for a moment at the entrance of the side street I was hiding in before moving on. Even that was too much, so I turned off [Sense Presence] and shut out the outside world the best I could. After a few minutes, my breathing had calmed down and I looked up again. All around me, the little fluffballs were hovering close by, worried about me. "Ah, sorry about that. I''m fine now." (That woman was too much. I get that people can get pretty obsessive about their hobbies, but that was going too far.) I needed some cloth, but that store was a no-go. Frankly, that storekeeper was pretty scary. Gathering myself and reactivating my skill, I strode out boldly back to the main street. That said, I was careful to keep other people in between myself and that store, lest that woman was looking for me. Once I built some distance from that store, I started to look around properly. That couldn''t be the only tailor shop in this city. There had to be a bunch more. And lo and behold, it really didn''t take long. I was still in the same shopping district with all the buildings on the main street being one store or another. It was pretty much a given that I''d find what I needed quickly. The layout was similar to the other tailor''s, but the clothes on display didn''t look quite as nice. Well, I couldn''t really be too picky after rejecting the one I was recommended. I took a few hesitant steps and entered the store. "Welcome. How can I help you?" This time I was greeted by a man in a simple but stylish white shirt and brown waistcoat combo, with matching brown pants. The top of his dome looked like it could be used to signal a ship, and the short blond hair I could see from sides of his head puffed out, almost like a bristle. He sported a finely formed lip rug, but it was tarnished by the obvious stubble surrounding it. "Ah, umm..." "Are you looking for a dress, or an accessory?" The man was staring at me. Before I knew it, my hand was tugging at the side of my hood. I quickly lowered it to avoid being too rude, but I had trouble raising my face to keep looking him in the eye. Rather, the fact that I had to look up just to look into his eyes when he was sitting kinda annoyed me. "Umm...actually, I want some cloth..." "Look little girl. We only sell finished works. We don''t deal with that sort of thing." It felt like his staring was intensified and threatened to bore holes through me. "Uh, I...I need them as is. I need..." My mind frantically turned, trying to ignore his intimidating presence, I tried to come up with something he would be satisfied with. "What I need is handkerchiefs. Something of a bit of quality. Not scraps or material to make clothes with." "Hmmm...if that''s what you need, then you should just say so. Do you have any specifics in mind?" "Umm...I don''t know much about cloth, so could I see some samples?" "Hmph. Well, I suppose that''s fine. Do you have anything in mind you need at all, or are you planning on looking at everything I have?" "Ah, no. I want something with a fine weave, but is durable." It needed to be used as a filter, but also be reusable. The better it could do of both, the less likely the kids would be in trouble when I wasn''t around. "Fine but durable? You''re a bit demanding, aren''t you?" "Sorry..." My head sunk in further into my hood. (The storekeeper was probably going to get even more annoyed, wasn''t he?) "Nah, it''s fine. As long as you have an idea of what you want. Wait a sec, I''ll be back." Leaving those words, the storekeeper headed back to a backroom. After a few moments, he came back with several bolts of cloth. "These are probably the ones most suitable for what you want little girl." His tone had markedly gotten softer, making me less on edge, but in turn I was getting annoyed at the way he was referring to me. I sucked it up though in the worry that trying to correct him would make him angry. He put four different bolts down on the counter. They were all roughly white. Or rather, more like light grey? I took then in hand one by one, rubbing them between my fingers. "Umm...which one''s the most durable?" "Ah, I''d say the silk from the Florian Silkmoth. This one here" He pointed at the one at the end. The weave were much finer than the rest, and I could feel the softness of the silk between my fingers. It even had a slight golden sheen to it depending on how the light hit the surface. The weave was a clear winner over the rest, and was the most durable to boot. But in turn, the fact that it was silk made me a bit apprehensive. I doubted it would be cheap. "Umm, how much for this one?" "How much do you need?" I measured out a square roughly 50cm on each side with my fingers. It was bigger than what I needed, but it was better than finding out that it was too small. "Huh, that much huh? I''d say it would be three silver plates." "That much?!" "Yea, what do you expect? Florian Silkmoths are an expensive import. I only have this one bolt myself, though I can dye it if you want it in a different colour, it would take time." "Ah no, it''s fine. Could I get ten of them?" "That much? You have the money for that?" I nodded before pulling out the coins from my bag and placed them on the counter. An assortment of gold and silver amounting to three gold coins. "Well, I''ll be. Alright. I''ll get it all ready if you give me a minute." "Oh, and can you sew in the ends so it doesn''t fray?" "Of course. At this price, I''ll even do it as a bonus, but it''ll take a bit of time. It''ll be ready in less than an hour if you want to go check something out." "I''ll do that. I''ll be back later." I moved to leave the store. "Ah. If something crops up, I''ll hold on to it since you paid in advance, but try to get it in the next few days." I turned and gave him a nod before leaving. Even if I got distracted, I doubted I would leave it for more than a day. I wasn''t in a hurry, but the more I waited, the longer it would take for the kids to become self sufficient. Ninetailed_Furball So, surprise bonus chapter! £Ü(^o^)£¯ Didn''t expect that, did ya? ?(?¥î??) So, oh man, what an experience! Scarlet just keeps attracting attention she can''t handle, doesn''t she? She just wants to help some little kids, yet trouble just rears it''s ugly head when it''s not appreciated, doesn''t it? Well, at least for Scarlet. I bet many of you had to pick up your chairs again (^_-)-¡î So, wow, those comments. Some of your discussions were amazing. It seems like a bunch of you are mixed on the future of the Scarlet brand soap empire huh? Well, we''ll see how it goes. Maybe it''ll go off without a hitch. Maybe it''ll collapse immediately. Maybe it''ll be so successful that it turns into the world''s first sweatshop. Who knows! I did like those suggestions though. Some were pretty close to what I''ve already planned, and others were so good I was tempted to switch them behind everyone''s back and claim it as my own! I put a flag on it! Like Everest! (I do not own any flags, no have placed any on any mountains, real, imagined or fantastical) Well, two down, one to go. We''ll see if there''s any surprises at the next store. Until then, I have a poll for you! Yay! (It''s been so long) So this is actually a little unrelated to this story, but I figured I''d put it on. I''ve been working on a new story on the side, but the quality isn''t quite up to this story. In fact, it''s something I just worked on the bus on the side to help distract me when I get stuck with writer''s block (and damn it''s been happening a lot, though thankfully it hasn''t been serious so far). So, the question is, do you guys wanna see it? It won''t affect Reincarnated Vampire''s releases in the slightest, since I work on the other series when working on this story isn''t practical. It''s an adventure comedy, but mostly just whatever comes to mind at the time. No big plans, but more a pure comedy. If it does well, I might consider opening a store and start selling underwear! If it does really well, then I''ll even open a second that buys used underwear to recycle! Anyways, hope to hear from all of you in the comments like usual! Your comments have always been inspiring for me, and even the critical ones help motivate me to work even harder on the next release! Chapter 38 – The Soap Store Exiting the store, I headed back out to the main street. The last thing I needed was a sample of soap to use as a baseline for what I was going to have the kids make. If the quality of soap that was commonly available were of especially high quality compared to what I was capable of making, then there wasn''t any point in bothering. On the other hand, if the quality was pretty dismal, then making high quality soap would in turn attract way too much negative attention, so I needed to hold back. Well, nothing would start without having a good idea of what was currently available on the market at least. Unlike the other stores, I didn''t get any specific recommendations for where to buy any soap, only a bit of advice as to how about to go around in the noble quarters where a store that sells soap could be found. The advice made me feel a little uneasy, but it was logically sound. Someone like me who covered her entire body in black looked suspicious as all hell. I only got away with it up to now because it wasn''t too far off from the popular fashion trends amongst adventurers, something I was really thankful for. I followed the main street until I found a wide street heading north. Here, I lowered my hood and boldly stepped through the intersection and made my way as if I owned the place. My eyes kept flickering back and forth. The buildings had quickly grown larger, more grandiose. Fancy decorations on the walls and visible in the store windows became more and more common. But not only that, the people walking around me were better dressed. Most opted for more formal style clothes rather than the common utilitarian styles favoured elsewhere. But more than anything else, the more I walked through this street, the more people stared at me. I really must''ve stood out here. I kinda wished I bothered to get clothes that would work in this area, but it would''ve been quite a wasted expense, as I''d never wear such a thing again. Not only that, but the clothes they wore showed off skin in ways I couldn''t afford to under the sunlight. At least as I was, my hair covered the side and back of my head and neck well, and my hat put my face into a shadow. Even then though, I had to be careful how I walked, as small mistakes were quickly rewarded with burning pain on my cheeks. But what burned even more was those stared. Nobody really stared at me so much before, and I couldn''t stand it. All I could do was lower the brim of my hat even further to hide my face, but even when I did that, I knew that if anything, I looked even more suspicious, probably making the staring even worse. My pace quickened up as my eyes flickered back and forth, looking for a store that might sell soap. I had to go pretty far into the district to find the store I was looking for. The store had glass windows and I could see a display of perfumes, makeup, and of course, soap. Each item had a small sign that gave it''s name and origin, but there weren''t any prices as far as I could see. At a glance, the soaps were pretty high in quality. They were a bit off-white, but are smooth rounded blocks. Satisfied, I opened the front door and entered the store. "Welcome! How may I have the pleasure of doing business?" A tall man with slicked black hair and a neat handlebar moustache wearing a heavily starched suit greeted me as I entered. Inside the store, the walls were lines with intricately carved shelves, each one holding two or three items spaced out to the point that I wondered if they were suffering from some sort of shortage. (Well, it''s not like there were any duplicates. Those were probably just for display, and what was sold was behind the counter or something.) Aside from myself, a portly man in a gaudy suit lined with colourful furs and embroidered with gold thread was staring at some bottles on a shelf. If he was any indication, this store really was made for some pretty rich clientele. If this was the sort of place that soap was only available at, then I was a bit worried about how to actually sell the stuff. I hoped to find another store afterwards that was more lower end. The little fluffballs all rushed in before the door could close, then they spread out, exploring the place, checking out everything around them. The very sight warmed me up, but I refrained from breaking into a smile. Instead, I turned towards the store employee. "Ah, umm...I was interested in your soap..." "Ah, miss...We have some of the best selection of soap in the city, nay, in the whole country! Allow me to show you what we offer." The tall man hesitated for a second as he looked at me, but it seemed like he decided I was worth selling to. That glint in his eye creeped me out a bit though, so I quickly lowered my gaze, even though it was a bit rude. "My miss, these are our prided soaps. The softest, most gentle soaps in the country. The creme of the crop. You won''t find any that leaves your skin feeling softer, more beautiful than these." The soap bars I was looking certainly looked good, especially compared to what I''ve been making, but his claims seemed to be pretty exaggerated. Not only where they not nearly as white as the soaps that could be bought at the average grocery store back on Earth, but they didn''t seem to be strongly scented either. At the very least, they didn''t seem to have any foul odours though. The essential oil added to my soap would give them a huge advantage, but in turn, that might not be ideal. I needed to think about it more. "Can I examine them?" "Of course, of course. Please, take your time and find the soap that pleases you most!" Thankfully, the sun was almost directly overhead, so there was almost no direct sunlight entering the store''s windows, making it safe for me to expose my skin. Removing my gloves, I picked up each soap bar in turn, feeling their surface, sniffing their scent, and rubbing a little bit of them between my fingers before putting it down and wiping away the residue on an inconspicuous spot on my robes. It seemed like each soap was made at a different location with different base oils, according to the signs each of them had. None of them smelled bad, but only a few had a particularly positive scent to them, and what they had was faint. Not only that, but they were even discoloured. It seemed like the scented soaps added some sort of ingredient to get the scents, but the purity of the volatile chemicals were too low, so they were forced to compromise between aesthetics and strength. At this concentration, the soaps would smell nice as they''re used, but the scent wouldn''t impart strongly enough to stay with the user. I supposed that it could be overcome with normal perfumes, but I personally liked the fact that my soaps were scented properly. Every time I noticed the scent of my soap on my hair or skin was a reminder that I was clean. (That reminds me, I hadn''t bathed for a bit now. I should fix that soon.) "Hmm...how much do each of these cost?" "Ah, miss..." The man hesitated for a moment while he leaned in a bit and looked at me with sharp eyes. I quickly took a half-step back and lowered my face again in surprise. "Ahem, I apologize. It is not a question I hear very often." "Ah, alright. It''s fine. I''m sorry." "No no no. There is nothing for you to apologize for. I am here to answer any and all your questions. If I could not tell you what your heart desires, then what worth would I have?" His exaggerations were pretty good at calming me back down, though they made me nervous for a different reason I couldn''t quite place. He promptly quoted me the price for each bar, making sure that I remembered them right. The cheapest bar was selling for two silver plates. The most expensive an entire gold coin. While at a glance it was hard to tell, but a closer examination and some questions revealed why they were priced the way they were. The cheapest looked good at first, but two things drove the price down. The first was that it was a little harsh. The mixture between oils and lye was a little off, though I wouldn''t have noticed if I hadn''t spent most of a year experimenting making my own. The second reason was because it was a local soap, relatively speaking. It seemed that it was sourced from the next city over. Effectively, the quality and source were the two main reasons for the price as far as I could tell. The better the quality and the further away it was made, the higher the price. The gold coin soap had to be shipped on a boat from a far away country. The scented soaps were a bit more expensive thanks to the additives despite the discolouring and traces of various particles that were missed in whatever filtration step that was used. These scented soaps were definitely the ones I was planning on having the orphanage compete against. Most likely, I could manage to make the soap a little bit whiter than these things, and in addition, the scent would be many times stronger, leaving a lasting impression on the body even after it''s been rinsed off. Now I was confident that it could sell. Depending on how things went, it could sell very well. Of course, this was an orphanage, so selling so well wasn''t really the point. It only needed to do well enough to pay for the orphanage''s expenses, and maybe create a surplus big enough for a rainy day. "Could I get this one?" In the end, I ended up going with buying one of the scented soaps as a sample. The one I chose was rose scented, probably. At least it was some sort of flower. I think. The scent was pretty weak, and mired with the natural scent of the soap, which wasn''t too great in the first place. It wasn''t purely that nice, clean smell of soap that I was used to, but included noticeable traces of other things. The colour was a light pink, and I could see little red flakes embedded inside. It was kinda nice, but I suspected that unlike on Earth, that sort of imperfection was undesired. The feel of it was good though. The ingredients and ratios seemed to be pretty good, though I wouldn''t be able to tell for sure until I tried it out. "Of course, miss. Please give me one moment." The store attendant made his way behind the counter and leaned over, going through some boxes. "Oh? What have we here?" But as I was waiting for the employee to retrieve my purchase, someone else walked up to my side. "You! Show me your face!" The man raised his voice. He stepped in close, too close for comfort. "Umm...I''d rather not" Glancing at him for a split second, I saw that the one who came over was that gaudily dressed man I saw when I first came in. I turned my face away from him a bit as I mumbled. "You! You dare disobey a direct order from me?!" (Why does this guy think he could just order random people around?) I took another glance at him, but the indignation was palpable on his face and disquieted me. Before even considering his words, I had already taken a half-step away from him. "You! How dare you ignore me! Do you even know who I am?!" (How could I? You''re just some fancy dressed rich guy. Why should I know who you are?) Suddenly, a hand jutted out and grabbed my chin, forcibly turning my face to the side. "Oh? Yes, yes! It''s just as I thought!" Forced to look up at the man''s face, I was made to notice how greasy his skin looked. But it wasn''t just his skin. His hair as well. It was slick with oil, but he had used too much and it was seeping down from his scalp and lip rug. Not only that, but every time I took in a breath, I was forced to smell this overpowering perfume that was like a giant garden all crushed and distilled together, including the soil and a few wild animals. Probably a skunk included somewhere. All around us, the little spirits started to fly around. Some were worried, others were fooling around, thinking it was some sort of game. A bunch more were just watching, unsure about what was going on. I felt I could connect with that last group the best. "You, I have never seen such a beauty before in my entire life! How much?" "...huh?" Everything combined together, I was completely bewildered. Each individual thing was so offensive that I wanted to yell at him, but at some point, he completely blasted past annoyance and anger, and I was just confused by the swirling mix of emotions. "I said, how much? No, for someone of your potential, simply one night isn''t enough. I will buy you out for life!" "...huh?" The more those jiggling lips flapped, the more creeped out I got. My eyes tried to avoid his, but all I could see was the shop attendent nervously standing to the side and the spirits as they grew more and more aggitated. "I said, I will buy you out! Now come! Where is your owner?" "...?" My jaw seemed to be working, but nothing came out of my mouth anymore. My mind was starting to form a picture of what he was saying, but it seemed so absurd that rather than help me act, it made me question my own ability to think. "I said come! Or is there something wrong with your head?" His hand let go of my chin, but as I turned to step away from him, it immediately wrapped itself around the back of my neck as he pulled me to the side. Things were going far too fast in a direction completely outside of anything I could even imagine, leaving my mind in the dust as I tried to compute just what was going on. I was way past having enough of this as my emotions became like a churning mix of oil and water, unable to become something coherent. My eyes started to look for the exit, but at the same time my brain worked to figure out how to get the man to release me. (Should I hit him? Or just pull away? Or maybe something else? But if he''s really so important, then if I hurt him, it might bring a whole ton of trouble. Then maybe use [Spirit Form]? Should I reveal that? What if they think I''m a monster then and put a bounty on me?) "Well, I suppose when god gives some bitch too strong of a blessing, he had to take from somewhere." My limbs flailed around as I desperately tried to avoid falling over as he pulled me around by my neck and headed towards the exit. "My lord! Please desist!" "Huh? Why the hell should I?" Finally he stopped pulling, giving me a moment to centre my balance properly. But my mind hadn''t gotten past it''s stalemate, so I quietly let myself stay in that awkward bowing position as the man held my neck. Some of the fluffballs flew under me and checked on my condition. I couldn''t move or say anything. The fear of making things worse by making a bad move had paralyzed me. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the rest of the spirits flying around in a frenzy. "This young miss is a customer!" "And so what? I''m also a customer, and I''m going to buy her!" "My lord! She is not just some whore on the street available to be bought on the spot!" "Of course she is! Just look at her! This stupid bitch might be covering herself with rags, but it''s plain as anything that she''s been sculpted by god himself! Why else is she here if not to buy something to help whore herself out in the back alleys? I''m just giving her the last job she''ll ever need! Just look at her!" A hand reached up and squeezed my chest. "Hyah?!" "Haha! I knew those things were big, but you''re built like a cow! The hell are you doing covering them up? I''ll definitely buy you now, you whore! You''ll never even touch a top ever again!" (Huh? Buy? Whore? Seriously?!) The shock of his his actions left me embarrased, but his words left me seething. Together, I was just plain perturbed, unable to decide what to do. I tried to look at the loud, reprehensible man, but his hand was still on my neck. (What was going inside of his head?! Maybe I should make a break for it?) But if I forced my way out and ran, I''d create a reputation for causing trouble here. In an upscale place like this, especially by hurting someone so flagrantly rich, such a reputation would likely spread like wildfire, and it could get me banned from most of the stores in an instant. Even worse, it could affect the orphanage if they found out I was connected to it. The store attendant, the one that had been helping me, was arguing for my sake. It was probably better to stay quiet and just rely on him to resolve things peacefully. "But I''m trying to tell you, she most likely is not that! And even if she was, this is a respectable establishment!" "Haaa? You trying to tell me what to do?" "No my lord, but I am merely trying to give you a suggestion! It put you in a bad light to be seen dragging a customer out from a store, even more so if she is a common whore! Could you please imagine what would happen if people saw you bring a lowly whore out from an cosmetics store such as this one? They might think that you regularly take whores around with you in public!" "Bah! You know that I don''t do that sort of crap!" "Of course! But the public is ignorant! I know, as I myself am part of the public, and if I hadn''t witnessed this event for myself, I might have thought you brought a whore into this store yourself! Can you imagine what that might do if such a reputation were to spread?" "..." "How about this for an alternative my lord? You leave her be for now, but have one of your men search her out in the back alleys tonight, and have her brought to your residence. That way, nobody will be the wiser." "Keh! Fine! I got it. I''ll leave her for now. But you! You''ll be mine. Don''t you dare let yourself be bought by someone else first!" With those parting words, he threw me to the ground and stormed off, literally kicking the door open and stomped out. "Miss, I applogize for everything that had happened here and what I called you. Are you unhurt?" He came over and took my hand, helping me back to my feet. "Umm..yea..." Physically this ordeal didn''t hurt, but I felt completely messed up on the inside. Being treated like an object like that wasn''t pleasant in the slightest. And to think that someone like me who could easily wipe out large groups of strong monsters in an instant was mostly powerless in front of some crazy guy. "That guy..." "I''m sorry about that. Ever since he took over his house, his actions had gotten wilder and wilder. It has been quite difficult to keep the peace lately." "His house?" "Oh, you really weren''t aware of who he is? He is the lord of the city." (That guy?!) My gaze shot straight at the door that still had his foot print on. The hinges even seemed to have been warped a little as the door stopped right before closing. I was starting to get really worried about this place. It was probably a good idea I moved on once I got the stuff regarding the orphanage dealt with. I just hoped that they wouldn''t get into trouble once I was gone, but they survived all these years before me, so it probably wasn''t inherently dangerous. "Are you new in this city? I am truly sorry that you had to experience that. As compensation, I won''t charge for this. I hope that he forgets all about this soon and it doesn''t sour your impression of our fair city." The attendant handed over a small box painted bright red. Removing the top, I saw the soap that I had asked for tucked inside with some cloth being used as padding. "Umm...thanks..." I bowed my head a bit before opening the front door and looking both ways. That lord was getting into a gaudily decorated two horse carriage. It was lined with gold all over the place like his outfit was. There was a pair of huge, brutish looking men standing guard at the back. One of them noticed me and gave me a scowl, making me jump. I turned the other way and walked away as fast as I could, raising my hood up. I didn''t care if people would think I was suspicious. I''ve had enough of my face being looked at. Or looking at people in general. My chest felt cold and tight as quickly I turned the first corner and entered a side street, then another, and another, until I was in a dark and narrow alley with nobody in sight in any direction. Finally away from any people, I activated [Spirit Form] and sat down, pulling my knees in and resting wrapping my arms around them. The little spirits huddled around me as I fell into contemplation. This city. I was really starting to hate it. There were so many bad things about it. I started to reconsider my journey in general. Maybe I should avoid major settlements? Or maybe I should just go back home and hole myself up. I had everything I ever wanted there. All the food I could eat, an infinite supply of materials to make whatever I needed. Even if it took a long time to get things done, I didn''t have any shortage of it. I didn''t need to sleep, and most likely I couldn''t die from old age. This country was stuck somewhere in the middle ages. I could hole up until it reached a respectable civilization level. Or maybe barricade myself and completely shut the outside world out? My magic was pretty powerful. I could probably put up huge walls and dome in the entire mountain and claim it for myself. I''d have the dungeon all to myself, and enough space outside of it to play with the spirits whenever I wanted. (That sounds pretty good actually) My mind was made up. I was going to abandon all of this and just go home. I didn''t want any part of a world that treated people so badly. To be treated like a mere object for others enjoyment. It was true that I could resist people like that and easily beat them up, but if I did, everyone will be scared of me. If that happened... (If that happened, it would tear me apart. I wouldn''t have anywhere to be anymore, and I''d be stuck shutting myself in again) It was better to just run away and leave it all behind before I could be hurt any further. This world, it wasn''t really any better than Earth. I thought it was a paradise, but it was cold and cruel. The only paradise I had was back home, where nobody could hurt me. "Sorry for making you guys worry again. I''m feeling better now." The little fluffballs started rubbing their bodies against mine while I was deep in thought. "Let''s leave this terrible place and go home." I made to stand up, but heard a small, soft object resound. It was the bar of soap I had bought. It had bumped around and gotten loose inside the box. Just that. Just that one sight made me hesitate. "Dammit, why do I have to do anything for this terrible place?" It wasn''t my responsibility. I had nothing to do with it. I didn''t owe this world anything. It was just the place I ended up. It wasn''t even what brought me here or gave me a second life. But even still... "After this. I''ll fix just this, then go home." With those shaking words, I looked up and took my first, hesitant step back into the fold. Ninetailed_Furball Hey everyone! What a wild ride this chapter was! So many emotions! And confusion! And...soap? Anyways, so, I''ve been reading all your comments from the last chapter, and wow, I didn''t expect such a response regarding my little side project. But all those concerns you have, I understand. They''re very legitimate! I would hate it if one of my favourite series ended up dropping in quality or even stalling because the author bit more than they could chew! Well, I kinda have a backlog of quite a few chapters of the other story already. But despite that, I''ll refrain from publishing it for the next little while. Instead, I''ll gauge my ability to keep writing both stories, and if I feel confident that I can keep going on without causing any trouble on this side, then I''ll post it! I hope many of you guys will have a look if/when I do! That said, it''s going to be a bit different on a lot of levels. Well, at least I think so. Maybe you guys''ll end up telling me that it''s basically the same story but with different characters :P Anyways, thanks as always for reading, and I look forward to seeing all your comments! Chapter 39 – Soap and Kids Without disengaging [Spirit Form], I had made my way through the maze of alleys and side streets before finally reaching the main street. The sun had dipped past it''s apex already, casting an eastern shadow on everything. I didn''t think I spent that much time, but apparently I had. It was still pretty early when I first left that tailor store, but I had spent more time expected looking for the cosmetics store as well as wandering the back streets. Not willing to just disengage my camouflage in the middle of a busy street, I went further south until I found an empty side street, only to pop out the other side back to my original form, minus the fangs and red eyes of course. While that previous encounter left me pretty shaken, the one saving grace was that I hadn''t disengaged that transformation so he probably thought I was just an elf. If he had a freak out by discovering that I was a vampire, then I had no doubt that this city would have a witch hunt...no a vampire hunt. It didn''t matter what other people thought if the city''s lord declared such a thing. That guy was nothing but trouble. I had no doubt about that. I really hoped that was the last time I''d even hear from him. With those glum thoughts circling through my head, I opened the door and entered the tailor''s. "Welcome. Oh, miss. Your order is ready." The slightly unkempt shopkeeper greeted me with a smile and quickly retrieved my purchase from under the counter. "Ten sheets of silk from Florian Silkmoths, all cut to size and sewn to your specifications..." For some reason his sentence trailed off and he leaned in. Unsure why he was doing such a thing, I panicked a little and took a half-step back. "Sorry for scaring you, but did something happen while you were out?" "Huh?" Not expecting something like that, I was a bit blindsided. "You look pretty pale. Well, more than before at least. Are you feeling alright?" "Ah, umm, well, something did, but I''m doing alright now" "Is...that so..." That lie was so transparent it could''ve been used as a window, but he let it off, thankfully. "Anyways, here''s your order. I hope to see you again soon." The silk went into my magic bag before I moved to head out again. I turned to give the tailor a small bow of my head before opening the door and leaving. I had everything I needed now, and nothing else to do for the day, so I headed straight towards the orphanage. Rather than take the direct route, I turned into a side street and passed through the maze of shadowy alleys. I just wanted to avoid the gaze of people, real or imagined. Here in the dark alleys, people wouldn''t give someone in a black hooded robe a second glance, even during the day. At night, even I''d avoid them without using [Spirit Form] after the experience I had gone through. The journey through the winding path took much longer, but I eventually found my way to my destination. "Scarlet!" "It''s Scarlet!" "You came again!" A small group of kids were playing on the street in front of the orphanage today. "You kids been good?" "Yup!" "We have!" "Heheh!" Just the sight of their smiles was enough to make me feel better. Not everyone in this world was trash. No, those shopkeepers were actually pretty decent. (Well, aside from one.) No, even past those three, there was Lucy and the guild master at the adventurers'' guild. And some of the others I had met along the way to this city didn''t seem that bad either. But it felt like I kept attracting the worst people. Was it because I didn''t have any of this world''s common sense? Or maybe it was something different? "What were you guys doing?" "We just came back from making money!" "Yea!" "We got so much!" One of the kids pulled out a small worn pouch hidden inside of his pants and showed me the contents. There were five copper coins, as many as kids in the group. "That''s...great! You must''ve worked so hard!" "Heheh! We did!" "We carried tons of scrap wood away from a carpenter''s shop!" "Yup! We even got to keep them all to make new stuff!" All of the kids smiled brightly as their accomplishments as my smile cramped up. They got excited about chump change that might not even be enough to feed them for a single day. One copper coin each? For what sounded like back breaking work for kids? I knew the labour standards here were so different from Earth that they were incomparable, but just hearing them be happy about such a thing made me frustrated. (Maybe I''ve been facing so much shit because there really are that many rotten people here.) "Scarlet?" "Are you alright?" "Your face is scary..." Some grasped my sleeves while others simply looked up at me with concern. "...!" Before I realized it, I had fallen into my previous gloom all over again. I couldn''t let these kids worry when they were already enduring so much as it was. "Sorry. I was just thinking about something. I''m alright." I gave them the best smile I could manage as they circled around me. "Really?" "If you say so." "Umm, umm...okay..." They kids quickly grew gloomy as well, so easily seeing through my transparent lie. I had to fix this. This was entirely my fault. "...Well, the truth is, I''ve been feeling pretty lonely since leaving yesterday. I wanted to play with everyone more, but I''ve been so busy." "You were lonely?" "You wanted to play?" "Then, if you''re here, you can play now, right?" "Huh? Well, I didn''t have any plans for the rest of the day..." (Well, not any elsewhere at least.) "Then we can play right now!" "Yea! Let''s play!" "Yay! We can play together again!" "Oh? Sounds like a good idea. Let''s all go at it then!" """Yay!""" I grabbed the hands of two of the kids who were hanging on to my sleeves and lead them inside. "Tch!" Or meant to. The boy on my right winced in pain as I tugged on him. "You...let me see your arm!" Before he could respond, I pulled up his thin, ragged sleeve. There was a large bruise all across his shoulder and upper arm. While I couldn''t see it, I suspected the bruise went past just his arm as well. "How did this happen?!" "I, I, umm..." "Oh, sorry. I didn''t mean to yell. Could you tell me what happened?" The little boy looked like he might cry for a moment, so I quickly tried to diffuse my mistake while getting the information I needed. "A pile of scrap fell on him as we were taking it apart. His arm''s hurt pretty bad!" "It''s not that bad! I was able to finish the work!" "Yea, but you looked like it hurt so much!" I ground my molars at this information. This was the entire reason why health and safety laws existed. No, it was why they existed on Earth. No such thing existed here most likely. Even the idea was probably little more than a glimmer on the horizon. "Here, I''ll fix it." I put my hand on the purple skin and mumbled the healing magic cant. "Oh yea! You can use healing magic!" "You''re going to be better now Joey!" "I, I don''t need it! You don''t have to!" But I had a firm grip on his wrist, so any movement he made only made his shoulder throb, preventing him from escaping. Besides. My spell quickly finished and with a rapidly fading green mist, the purple skin returned to it''s natural colour. "There. You''re all better." "...You didn''t have to do that." "Maybe, but I wanted to." "See? You didn''t have to be so stubborn about it!" "Yea! You''re being mean about it!" "Wha?! I, uh..." "Now now. I''m sure he had his reasons right?" Even here, things went way outside of my predictions. "Ah, umm..." But without giving an answer, the boy ran ahead back inside, leaving me bewildered. "What was that?" "Geez. That wasn''t nice. Just because you''re so pretty." "Huh? What?" I stared at the girl who made that comment. "You''re pretty. Real pretty. It''s kinda hard to see cuz you wear that hood, but everybody knows that you''re really pretty Scarlet!" She just kept throwing around words that sounded so alien while giving me a bright smile. "Right? Scarlet''s really pretty, isn''t she?" "Yea! Prettiest in the world!" "..." The only other girl quickly agreed with the first, but the other two boys just looked away. (This...wait, seriously?) Now that I thought about it, the only time I had ever seen my face was when I used that river three years ago to have a look. But it wasn''t like river water, no matter how calm it was, could be used as an effective faux mirror. I only got the general outline, but even then I thought I looked good. (How good would I looked if I had used an actual mirror?) "Scarlet?" "You said you wanted to play?" "Ah, right. Let''s go get everyone." In reality, it probably wasn''t a big issue. Even if I looked as good as a supermodel, so what? What would that mean for me? It wasn''t like I had any plans on going on any dates. Frankly, the very thought of going out with a guy was still pretty repulsive, and it was hard to imagine being able to find a lady''s bar or something to find women who would be willing to go beyond friendship. Or rather, I was entirely unsure if my sexual orientation had changed or not thanks to my new body. Or even if I was capable of being sexually attracted. I was born fully mature in a forest. Just because my body resembled that of a woman''s didn''t mean that it was the same as one. As I was pondering the mating habits of my own race, the kids pulled me inside of the orphanage. "Bwahahahaha! I''ve got you now, weak people! I''ll feast and drink every last drop of your blood! Not one of you will be spared!" "Kyaa!" "Run away!" "Oh noes!" "It''s useless! You can''t run from the Demon Lord! Bwahahahaha!" "Stop, vile fiend!" "You won''t harm the villagers!" "We''ll protect everyone!" "Damn you, heroes! You''ve come to get in my way once again?!" "This is the last time, Demon Lord!" "This time we''ll beat you for sure!" "You won''t get away from us!" "We''ll see about that! Black Death Ball!" "Guah!" "Keh!" "Eep!" "Bwahahaha! How was that, heroes? Terrified of my powers?" "No way! We''re not scared!" "That''s right! We won''t lose!" "We''re stronger than ever! Take this!" """Haaaa!!!""" "Guah! No! Not the sword of light! And three of them! Ahhh...." plop "We''ve done it!" "The Demon Lord''s finally dead!" "She''s gone forever!" """Yay!""" (Haaa, this is it. This really is it!) Despite lying face down and having three kids with a foot each on my back as they swung around imaginary swords, my face was plastered with a grin so wide that my cheeks hurt. It was a stupid imaginary game for kids, yet it was so much fun. It was like everything bad was being cut down along with the ''Demon Lord'' the kids vanquished. I needed more of this. A lot more. No, well, this was the fourth time playing ''Hero and Demon Lord'' today. We did it three times, then I made dinner, then we played it again. Of course, it wasn''t the only thing we had played. Tag, hide and seek, and a few more local games. I was so glad I came early today. I really needed this. "I think it''s ready Miss Scarlet." But like a parent out to ruin their kids'' fun by reminding them about things that needed to be done, the director called out to us in the yard. A scowl appeared on my face, but I quickly wiped it off. "Ah, thanks. Let me have a look." "Of course." "Sorry everyone. Play time''s over for now." """Awww...""" All the kids looked disappointed as I brushed off dirt after laying prone on the back yard ground. They weren''t the only ones disappointed, but it was for their sake, so I couldn''t skimp on this work. (Even though I made Philia do most of it so far.) I went back inside with a large concert of kids towed behind, and they ended up crowding the doors to the kitchen where the director and a few of the oldest kids were working. Though I called it working, they were only maintaining a low fire and slowly stirring a pot, taking turns so that nobody would get tired. I had enlisted their help when they volunteered after I mentioned that I was thinking of getting the orphanage to make soap to sell. Their eagerness surprised me quite a bit. It was an odd feeling having kids be so willing to work, but I brushed it off, as many of them were already working, and this would be far safer and more profitable if it worked out. There was a chair placed beside the wood-burning stove and one of those kids was standing on it, staring at the contents of the pot as he slowly stirred with a flat stick. "Hmmm...looks good. Alright, I''ll take over for this step." The pot was filled with a white liquid, and little yellow things were floating around inside. Giving me a nod, the boy hopped down and gave me space to work. "This next step, I''ll do it by myself this time, but in the future, make sure you get the director''s help, and you don''t do it on your own. Alright?" """Okay Scarlet!""" Satisfied with their words, I turned back to the pot. I removed an ingot from my magic bag and worked it into a pot and a wire mesh filter using magic, then put them beside the hot pot with the mesh filter covering the new pot''s mouth. I could feel the kids staring intently at my every action as I picked up the hot pot with my gloved hands. Unlike how being stared elsewhere made me nervous and unsteady, the stares here instead felt good, and made me want to show off. But this wasn''t the place to do such a thing. Even worse, if the kids tried to copy whatever fancy things I tried. Or if I messed up and got one of them hurt. That would be the worst case for sure. No, instead, I just went the plebeian route and simply poured the contents through the filter slowly, collected the hardened yellow bits and extracted the milky white liquid. Once I shook the filter to extract every drop from the refuse, I put it aside and showed the contents to everyone. "So this is what''s left once you cook it properly. See how white it is? Almost like milk?" Everyone curiously looked inside of the pot. "That''s what milk looks like?" "Really?" "..." The responses really weren''t what I had expected. Milk was such a childhood staple on Earth, I never even considered that the kids here didn''t drink it, let alone had never seen it before. "Huh, I never knew..." My eyes went wide as I looked at Philia. (Even her?!) "...ahem! Anyways, so this is what we''re trying to get at this step. We''ll take this rendered fat, and mix it together with the lye we made earlier, as well as my secret ingredient. I''ll show you how to make that later. Now..." I quickly examined the concentration of the lye water. There was a bucket of it that had was being extracted from a pile of kitchen ashes, but that took time, and I wanted a sample of soap to be finished as soon as possible. I opted to use a leftover lye solution I had prepared back at home, but never got to use. There was probably enough to make a few dozen bars of soap, but since making it was more of a pain than anything. My magic bag hadn''t reached it''s capacity, and things put inside were preserved as if time didn''t move, so there was no harm in making a giant batch to slowly use over time. That said, I needed to filter the contents, and so the silk cloth came to use already. The thing worked remarkably well. It was an insult to even compare it to the poorly woven silk I used for my own batches, as the filtered lye water didn''t even have any visible impurities. I was thoroughly impressed by it''s performance, and hoped that it would last a long time. To ensure that, I also made sure to properly rinse the cloth immediately. Lye was pretty caustic, so it would eat into the silk pretty quickly if not washed off soon. Confirming it''s strength to be was it was supposed to be, I estimated the proper ratio and added it into the pot. Finally, I dug into my bag and took out a small jar, then poured a small amount of it into the pot. The scent of lavender almost exploded in my face as the volatile oil made contact with the air and immediately started to disperse. "Alright. Now then, the next step is to stir it all until everything''s been perfectly blended together." Handing it off to the group of kids that had been helping out, they quickly got to work, one kid holding the pot while another took the stick from the still-warm pot on the stove and started to stir diligently. "So you won''t get tired, just like last time, make sure you take turns stirring, alright?" """Okay Scarlet!""" The group properly called out, but didn''t look away as the soap mixture was being made. While they were working, I started to work on making the next and final piece of equipment that they would need: the moulds. Removing another ingot from my bag, I quickly processed it into the mould. But rather than just any old fixed mould, I made it in two parts. The first was a square U shaped long container with a series of indentations, and the other a series of plates at equal distances making the separators as well as end plates that fit perfectly into the indentations. The separators were all held together with some braces along with handles to make it easy to separate from the container. "Oh right. These are edible as well." Once I finished the mould., I remembered about the leftover fried chunks, so I brought them over to the watching kids. They looked at the small pile I made on a plate curiously. One of them fearlessly grabbed a piece and plopped it into his mouth. crunch crunch crunch Even with his mouth closed, the hard leftovers made distinct sounds as he chewed. "It''s kinda weird, but it''s also kinda good." Even though his review wasn''t very glowing, the other kids quickly grabbed pieces and tried them out. As they ate, small smiles floated onto their faces. I''d never had these things before, and they just smelt burnt and disgusting to me, so I had no idea how normal people would find them. Thankfully pretty decently. As the kids ate their little snack, I went back to the working group. "Hmmm. I think that''s good enough." After a little while longer, I stopped the group. They ended up not having to swap places. I was a bit amazed at their strength and endurance and wondered if that was normal for kids their age in middle ages-like society. (Then again, maybe it''s got to do with stats?) It wasn''t really that important, so I didn''t bother intruding on their privacy by using [Scan] to find out. "Now, pour the contents into this mould" I presented the newly made mould to the kids, and they quickly worked together to pour the contents in, pushing it around, then even levelling the contents using that flat stick without me needing to prompt them. "Alright, that looks good. All we gotta do now is clean up and leave this mould so the soap can set." "How long do we have to wait?" "Well, the longer the better, but for this batch, two or three days should be good enough. For now..." "How about we clean up then get ready for bed? It''s getting quite late." The director gave her unwanted opinion. I was thinking of going for another game to play with the kids, but what the director said was technically true. Ninetailed_Furball Hello everyone! It''s your friendly neighbourhood furball once again! ?©³(?o?)©¿? Sorry for the late submission, but there were quite a few extraneous circumstances involved. One less extraneous one though, was the rewriting of chapter 38. To be exact, I made serious edits to the the noble scene, to the point that aside from the main plot points, it''s almost a new scene! Well, maybe that''s exaggerating quite a bit, but I spent two whole days reworking it, reediting it, and reexamining it to make it more how I and you wanted! You guys really roasted me on that scene in the comments, and all I can say about that, is thanks. Seriously, I''m not being sarcastic or condescending. Really, thanks. If it wasn''t for you, I''d have just left that half-baked scene alone, but with all your flaming and napalming, it made me have a serious look and fix it up. ¦Õ(..) I''m still not quite happy about it, but I can confidently say that as of right now, that scene pushed my writing skills to the limit!. Just gotta get me a nice drill, kick reason to the curb and break that ceiling!(`?¦Ø?¡ä) I''m really thankful as well for all the support I got. You guys really are the best, and it''s thanks to you that I can strive to push harder and grow as an author. Those of you who still aren''t satisfied with how things are turning out, I ask that you at least give me until the end of this arc. There isn''t too much left before the climax. (¡ä?¦Ø?`) That said, once again, I thank everyone for reading my story, and hope to hear from you in the comments like usual!©c(^o^)د Chapter 40 – Bath Time The kids divided up into groups and scattered about. Some went upstairs, others headed to other rooms, then went outside. "Miss Philia, what''re they doing?" "Oh, everyone is getting ready for their weekly bathing." "Huh?" (Bathing? Weekly?!) "T, they only bathe once a week?" "Only? Sometimes the things you say make you sound like a noble." "Ah..." (Is that the norm among commoners?) "Are you going to take a bath as well then?" "...Are you really not the daughter of a high lord somewhere?" "I can assure you I''m not." (Where did that even come from?) "Oh, is that so. Well, I do not know for other places, but at least here, we bathe once a week, and that is by wiping our bodies off with a wet cloth." "Th, that counts as bathing?!" (There''s not way that would get anyone actually clean, would it?) "So then..." As I watched, quite a few of the kids had all congregated in the same room. "Is it alright if I have a look?" "I don''t think there is a single person who would object to almost anything you do." I didn''t really like the way she worded that, nor the little grin she gave me, but I peeked inside the room. The room itself was quite large, large enough for all the kids to use at once, though it would be a little cramped if they did that. Aside from the kids and their things, the room was pretty barren. There weren''t any decorations for furniture. It looked like the only reason why they used this room to bathe was because it had drains, so getting the floor wet wasn''t a problem. The kids themselves were in various stages of ''bathing'', some were still taking off their clothes, others were soaking and wringing rags over buckets of water, and the rest were in the middle of wiping their bodies down. If I had to describe it as quickly as possible, the words I''d use were cold and miserable. "Miss Philia, is the next room used for anything?" I pointed at the door next to this room. "No, it''s one of our storage rooms, but we haven''t used it in years." (Perfect.) Opening the door to the next room, I had a glance around. The room was entirely barren. There wasn''t any junk or even any dust as far as I could tell at first glance. "It''s pretty clean." "Of course. We work hard to maintain the orphanage to the best of our abilities after all." Beside me, Philia puffed out her mostly nonexistent chest while giving me a proud smile. (Am I even allowed to use that joke, considering the size of my air bags?) That aside, I was a bit surprised she answered my little mumble. Turning back to the room, I stretched my arms out and pushed out my mana, suffusing it with the floor, walls, and ceiling. From there, I manipulated the room and pushed up material from the ground below, creating a large c-shaped tub with several divisions that filled up almost all the space in the room. The gap was facing the wall towards the room the kids were in, but otherwise the tub went from wall to wall to wall. The separators divided the giant tub up into smaller tubs, but even those were big enough to be comparable to a typical hot tub. Taking drainage into consideration, I even slightly angled the bottom of the tubs towards the middle of the room, then made a hole for drainage, as well as large piping that connected to the drain in the next room. I removed an ingot of copper and tin, as well as a leather hide. I mixed portions of the ingots to make bronze, then reshaped the resultant metal into a plug and the leather into a gasket. I test fitted it, and they had no problems. The plug I made extra large for both durability and weight, so it wouldn''t easily be knocked loose if the kids ended up playing in the bath. The little spirits were running around, checking all the stuff I had made like usual. Dipping into the tubs, spinning around like they were swirling in water, curiously poking at the bronze plugs. "Can you step inside and close the door Miss Philia?" "Oh umm, sure. Are these what I think they are?" "Maybe? I can''t read mind after all." Once Philia did as I asked and came over to join me in the open gap in between the tubs, I put all the remaining material away. Next I stretched my mana out more lightly this time and turned it into hot water, quickly filling up all the tubs as Philia''s eyes grew as wide as saucers. I had trouble suppressing the grin on my face as I looked at her expression from the corner of my eye. I stretched out my mana for the third time into the adjoining wall between where we were and where the kids were. Once I reinforced the structural supports, I dropped the wall and buried it underground. "Wha?!" "Ahh!" "What the?!" In front of us were the kids, mostly still in the middle of their so called bathing, all staring in surprise at Philia and me. Beside, me, Philia''s eyes were also open wide in surprise, but she quickly composed herself and glanced at me. "Ah, I was thinking. How about I show you all how people bathe where I come from?" "You''re going to bathe with us?" "Really?" "I wanna try it out!" The kids'' reception seemed to be pretty good. "Alright. It''s kinda hard to show you all without a demonstration. Can I get a volunteer?" Almost before I could finish my question, one girl stood straight up, shooting an up as high as it would go, not even bothering the fact that she was completely naked. Rather than her being bashful about it, I felt like I was getting a bit embarrassed in her place. "I''ll do it!" She had a determined look on her face. The other kids quickly got up one after the next, as if they were racing each other. "Umm, yea. I guess I can demonstrate with you then, since you want it so bad." I pointed at the first girl, and she happily hopped over, swiftly weaving her way in between the other kids. All the while her tail was wagging, the long, still wet fur flicking water left and right as her tail swung back and forth to the annoyance of the kids who got caught in it. "Alright then. Let me get ready too." As quickly as I could, I stripped down as well and stuffed all my clothes into my magic bag, then took out a cloth and several bars of soap. "Could you put this somewhere dry?" I turned to Philia and handed over my bag. Or at least I tried to. Her face was a bit rosy as she stared at me. She hadn''t reacted like this before and was making me a bit uneasy. "Umm...Miss Philia?" Leaning in, I tried to get her to respond. "Ha! Oh, umm, what was it you asked?" "...Could you take my bag somewhere where it wouldn''t get wet?" "Oh, sure. Right away!" Holding my bag to her chest, she quickly turned to leave, only to realize that there were pools of hot water in between her and the door she entered from. Immediately after realizing her mistake, she turned and made her way to the door for the next room and exited. It felt like it wasn''t my imagination that her face was getting red. "Umm...alright then. Now let''s go to the demonstration." I turned to the triangle eared girl, but she was as still as a statue as she stared at me. "Umm...you alright?" Leaning side to side, inspecting her, the only sign that she was still alive was that her chest was rising and falling as it should, and her eyes were following my movements. Straightening my back, my eyes caught on to the stillness of the rest of the room. Everyone there was staring at me, frozen as a statue. Looking closer, I saw that their cheeks were a bit red as well, just like Philia''s. I was pretty confused at the scene, but nothing would start if they stayed like this. Not having any ideas, I tried plopping my hand on the girl''s head. "Hey, you awake?" "Hya?! I, umm...I''m sorry! I, I was..." She finally reacted after having her head stroked for a few seconds. As if by magic, all the other kids started to move as well. Many of them turned away, while peeking from the corner of their eyes, while others grouped up and watched me even more closely, as if they were anticipating a show. (Well, in a sense this is supposed to be a show.) "It''s fine. But let''s hurry and start, or some of you are going to catch a cold." All the kids were still naked, with quite a few''s skin was still glazed with water. I really needed to speed things up. I levitated a bucket over from one of the kids, then guided the girl to sit on it facing our audience once I emptied and overturned it. Next, I levitated some of the hot water from the bath and splashed it on the girl''s head, pushing the water around with my hands to make sure it seeped all the way to the roots. Her hair was pretty short, so a single splash ended up being enough. Taking one of the bars of soap I had made beforehand, I rubbed it between my wet hands, lathering it up. Once I was satisfied, I rubbed my hands through the girl''s hair, giving her a bit of a scalp massage as I went. (Ah, it hadn''t been so long, but this is so nostalgic.) I couldn''t help but think about all the time I used to do this for Alicia. Every night I''d wash away the dirt and sweat off of her hair and body just like how I was doing it for this girl. "...Scarlet?" "Eh? W, what is it?" The girl turned to look at me from the corner of her eye. As I tried to ask her what was wrong, to my surprise, the words that came out strangely shook. "Did I do something wrong? Why are you crying?" "Huh?" Only then I realized that there were tears running down my cheeks. (This isn''t good.) I took a deep breath and closed my eyes, forcibly calming myself down. My chest felt warm, as if to support and encourage me. "No, I''m fine. I was just remembering something nice." "You cry when you think of good things?" "Sometimes." I gave her the most gentle smile I could. But contrary to my expectation, she quickly stiffened up, then turned back and faced forward. (Did I just mess something up?) "Umm...I''m going to continue." The girl didn''t say anything, but answered with a stiff nod. Sighing, I went back to the scalp massage. "Alright, now close your eyes tight as I rinse the soap off." Giving my warning, I levitated a larger ball of water, then slowly trickled it down from above, using my hands to push it around and sweep away the lather from her hair. When I was done, I took my cloth and lathered it up with the same bar of soap, then gently scrubbed her back with it before rinsing it off. "Now, I think you can do the rest on your own?" I handed the bar of soap to the girl. I thought I could see disappointment flash across her expression, but I might''ve just imagined it as she quickly put a bright smile on her face. "Thank you so much Scarlet!" "Now everyone, that''s how it''s done. Don''t forget to wash your whole body though, not just the head and back. Once you''re finished washing, the next step is to soak in the baths. It''s the best part of bathing, so don''t forget!" """Okay!""" The kids all came to gather as I handed out several bars of soap, then several kids scooped out hot water for their buckets then they all went to start washing. I watched with a smile as they clumsily went about washing each others heads. "Oh, and be careful you don''t let any of the soap get into your eyes. It hurt a lot." "Gyaaa!" Just as I finished saying that, one of the kids yelled out. There was lather dripping down all over his face, and his was holding his eyes with his hands. The amazing timing made me freeze for a moment before I went over and helped him out, rinsing off his face with fresh water. After that, everything more or less went smooth, so I concentrated on myself. Taking the last bar of soap, the one I had bought earlier in the day, I tried using it. As expected, it lathered up pretty well and had a good feel overall, though the random petal particles were a little annoying. The scent though was entirely lacking, and was completely overpowered by the scents of the other soaps being used. The room smelt somewhere between a flower garden and a dessert festival, murdering the weak scent of this bar. But the feel of it as I rubbed it into my hair was decent. Still not as good as the shampoos on Earth, but it didn''t lose out to my own recipe. "Umm...can I wash your back Scarlet?" Just as I was wringing out my hair after rinsing it, the girl who''s hair I washed came up with a lathered up rag. "Oh, sure. Thanks." Making sure that all of the strands were pulled out of the way, I presented my back to the little girl. Her little hands pushed the rag up and down as she carefully scrubbed my back. It was a strange feeling. I couldn''t remember ever having my back washed by someone, but it wasn''t bad. "Thanks. That was really nice." Once she poured water down my back, I turned and gave her a gentle smile and pat her head. In turn, she gave me a bright, full toothed grin. When I turned to finish washing myself up, I noticed that the kids were all looking my way. Each of them had a slightly different expression, but I couldn''t help but think that quite a few looked envious. The envious ones were mostly looking at the girl who washed my back, who in turn looked like she was on cloud nine, not even noticing the fact that she was stared at. I was a bit baffled that so many of the kids were envious of someone who just washed my back. (This means I''m popular, doesn''t it?) It wasn''t like I wasn''t entirely unaware about it, but seeing how the kids were reacting here just made it click. My feelings on the matter on the other hand were pretty mixed. It was nice to be liked, but I was pretty nervous about how the kids were acting because of it. "Umm, everyone! If you''re finished washing, then hurry up and enter the baths! You don''t want to catch a cold, do you?" """Okay!""" Forgetting entirely about what just happened, the kids quickly scrambled over to check out the large, wall to wall bath tubs. But that was all they did. They just stood there at the edge, looking at the hot water. "Oh, right. I forgot. Can you guys step away from them for a second?" Heeding to my words, they made some space. Without wasting any time, I quickly produced a series of steps along with handholds to let the kids get in and out of the baths. I had forgotten the high walls would make it hard for kids to get in. The older kids wouldn''t have had much trouble, but they were in the back since they initially made way for their younger counterparts. Due to that, they were unable to do anything until the smaller kids made way. The kids quickly entered the baths, a few at a time. As expected though, they quickly devolved into playing around in the water rather than relaxing quietly. (Well, this is basically a giant private bath, so it''s not a big deal.) Quickly finishing up my own washing, I joined in with the kids, entering a segment with fewer kids. I leaned against the far wall, soaking up all the way to my shoulders. I closed my eyes to enjoy myself as the kids played. "Umm...can I sit with you?" That girl once again came over and asked nervously. "Huh? Oh, sure." It wasn''t like I had a reason to refuse. But contrary to my expectation, instead of sitting to my side, she sat down squarely on my lap, and leaned her back against my chest. I couldn''t see her expression from this angle, but it felt like she probably had a big smile on her face right then. "Ahh! That''s cheap! You''re doing it again Flix!" One of the kids pointed at the girl on my lap. "That''s right! No fair! Me too!" "Yea! I want to sit with Scarlet too!" One after the next, the kids came over. This time jealousy was quite apparent on their faces as they vocalized their wants. "Heheh! You guys are just too slow!" But rather than trying to diffuse the situation, the girl just boasted and aggravated the other kids. "Why you!" "That''s so unfair!" "You guys. While everyone isn''t possible, a few other can sit with me, can''t you? And you can take turns as well, so everyone can sit with me at some point." It felt dirty the way I had to word it, and goosebumps crawled up my back. It was the sort of thing the type of characters I hated often said. The ones there were overly popular in their universe and often treated people who liked them like objects. Here I was saying similar words, but I couldn''t think of any other way to placate the kids. But a saviour appeared at the corner of my eye. "And also, there''s Miss Philia! How about a bunch of you sit with her once she''s finished washing?" "Wha?!" Surprised at me suddenly mentioning her, Philia froze in the middle of washing her body with a bar of soap that was haphazardly left on the ground. "Wouldn''t Miss Philia feel lonely if nobody sits with her when she comes over to take a soak?" (SOS! Please help! I''ll die at this rate!) "I won''t be lonely. I''ll be fine while you take all the attention Miss Scarlet." "Now now, there''s no need to be reserved here Miss Philia. I''m sure a lot of the kids want to sit with you as well." The kids looked back and forth between the two of us as we smiled at each other. It felt like her glance dipped slightly for a moment, but I couldn''t tell for sure at this distance. "Oh, but I''m sure that it would be great to allow the kids to enjoy your bountiful heart." My smile cramped a bit at the way she worded her line. Whether intentional or not, it felt like she poked me with a sharp instrument just now. My eyes flicked down slightly as Philia continued to scrub herself, and I saw that her chest really was pretty flat. It wasn''t exactly nonexistent, but it was a far cry from what could be considered generous. (Was she maybe...?) "Oh, but I also have a heart to share as well. Please, come and join us. I''m sure the kids would love to be with their favourite director as well." If she was, it was unjustified resentment! I didn''t max that particular slider for my new body to have AAA rated air bags! I didn''t even notice that the gender label had switched to female! sigh "I''ll be there in a moment. For now, I''m sure that quite a few of you children can sit comfortably with Miss Scarlet, can''t you?" After a moment, Philia finally acquiesced. Grateful, I let out a sigh as well. "It''s like Miss Philia said. There''s enough room for several of you kids." As if my words was the bang of a race''s starting gun, the closest kids all rushed over, finding a spot wherever they could. Three kids on each side leaning on my outstretched arms, another pair on my lap squeezing in between the small gap between the middle and sides, and a final pair sitting on my shins, not quite happy where they were, but more satisfied than the kids who couldn''t find a spot at all. Me on the other hand, I was a bit nervous and frustrated. There was no way for me to move anymore without pushing one of the kids aside. To my annoyance, the directer chuckled quietly as she looked on. All I could do was sigh and hope that none of the kids would get overheated while waiting for their turn. In the end, due to me not having the foresight to properly make the kids rotate quickly enough, I was forced to end the session early as some of the kids were developing symptoms of heat stroke. It got quite a few complaints, but Philia reminding everyone that it was past their bedtime managed to seal the deal for them, even if a bit, or rather, very reluctantly. Once I fully dressed myself, I helped out getting the kids to bed. They spent quite a lot of time thanking me for various things, not the least of which the furs I had provided to keep them warm at night. Seeing their happy faces as they lay in their beds brought warmth to my chest and a smile to my face. When all the kids were tucked in bed and the shutters all were closed on the upper floors, Philia and I headed down to the first floor. "...Do you want to stay the night, Miss Scarlet?" I looked at her wide-eyed. It was like she could read my mind. "Is that fine?" "I think the children would love it. I as well wouldn''t mind the extra company either." "If, if it''s fine then." "It is more than fine. But..." "But?" "Perhaps you can accompany me for something to drink before we head to bed ourselves?" "Umm...alright..." I struggled to squeeze the words out. Rather than simply reading my mind, it felt more like reading me like a book. The more I got to know her, the more amazed I was. We headed to the dining room, and Philia had me sit down at one of the tables. After a few moments, she brought over a tray with two cups and a teapot. "Would you like some tea?" "Ah, no. No thanks." With a nod, she placed the tray on the table and put a cup in front of herself, then poured the tea. It didn''t go unnoticed that there was only enough water for one. Maybe she already realized that I didn''t enjoy the tea she served last time? The grassy scent from her cup didn''t help the image that it was really just some boiled wild leaves. She slowly took a sip while I did my best to avoid fidgeting. "Now then, what is it you want to ask me?" Once again I froze, but I quickly composed myself and sorted out my thoughts. "I...things have happened lately. Things that make me question what I''m doing." "Something...aside from the good you''re doing here?" "I uh, yea. For some reason, I''ve been attracting a lot of attention. The bad kind." "...And you haven''t done so in the past?" "I...lived alone for a long time. Even when that changed, it was only me and one other. I''ve only seen other people, lots of other people, for the first time in a long time." "Am I right to presume that you hadn''t come in contact with others since you were a child?" Rather than a child, since my last life, but there was no way I could say that out loud. In the end, rather than vocalize the lie, I just nodded. "I see. Then perhaps it''s because you don''t know your own charm." "My...charm?" The very word felt foreign to me. It wasn''t like I didn''t know it, but it felt like a word that had nothing to do with me. Merely association with it felt weird. "I''m sure you''re aware that you are well liked here." "I''d be blind if I wasn''t." The way the kids looked at me, the way they smiled. It was obvious. They''ve opened themselves to me in a way they would only if they liked and trusted me. "chuckle That is true, isn''t it? But I''m not talking about that charm. That is the charm of who you are inside. But those that look at you with ugly eyes, they see the charm on the outside." "..." (Was that it? Was it just that?) I was aware that I had a bombshell of a body. It was impossible to not notice. Not only that, but while I never bothered to look in a mirror, I had seen my own reflection in a river once. I was definitely very pretty. "Hmm...you really that unaware of your own beauty, aren''t you? It''s a shame we don''t have a way to show you here." But a light bulb flashed in my head. They might not have a mirror in an orphanage, but it wasn''t hard to make one. Mirrors were just a flat, shiny piece of metal with a glass coating to protect it. I quickly removed a silver ingot and flattened it out, separating a part of extremely flat metal the shape and size of a hand mirror, then touching the ground, I brought up some purified earth, reshaped the structure then thickly layered the sheet on both sides, as well as made a thick frame to hold it all together. In the end I made a proper mirror rather than something quick to use immediately. Pulling down my hood, I turned the new mirror towards me, I gazed at the reflection...and froze. ... ... ... (...I...wha...) I couldn''t move. I couldn''t look away. I couldn''t do anything but look at my own reflection. My emotions swirled inside me as my body was as still as a rock. From attraction to fascination, from affection to excitement, from longing to allure. All sorts of feelings bubbled up as I stared into the mirror, but the one that made me most uneasy, was lust. Ninetailed_Furball Hello! Once again it''s your fluffly little author!(¨R?¨Q)/ Today''s chapter didn''t have much going on, but I hope you enjoyed all the fluff! I know I enjoyed writing it! But that reveal at the end? What''s with that?! So shocked?! No? Not really? Well, I suppose there wasn''t anything to be surprised about aside from maybe Scarlet''s reaction. Now that she knows how she looks for sure, how will she react? Well, unfortunately I ran a bit long in this chapter so you''ll have to wait until the next to find out. Not much more to say, but thanks as always for reading. Your comments as always helps motivate me to writing more and better! I wont shy away from anything you say, for everything can be used to make my story better and your enjoyment even greater! See you next time space cowboy! (/?¥î?)/ Chapter 41 – Beauty and Love Ahem!" The sudden sound broke me out of my reverie. Looking up, I saw Philia with her face turned sideways, a fist covering her mouth. But her eyes were turned directly towards me and her cheeks were noticeably rosy. I wasn''t sure how much time I had spent staring at my own reflection, but considering that Philia''s cup was empty, it must''ve been for a significant while. To be enraptured by my own appearance. It didn''t feel good at all. I didn''t hate myself, but I couldn''t say that I liked myself too much either. Calling me a narcissist would''ve been quite far from the truth, yet I acted just like the character the word came from. Philia as well, she was trying to be polite, but couldn''t stop staring at me. Maxing out the appearance slider all those years ago was probably a bad idea. Thinking about normal distribution, the vast majority of people would fall under average, or slightly above or below average. Outliers would likely only be a bit further from that, yet I put myself at the very end of the scale. How rare was that? One in a million? A billion? Even rarer than that? In this world with it''s low technology level, the population would probably be low as well in comparison to Earth. If the rarity was one in a billion or even more than that, it was possible that there wasn''t a single person as attractive as I was. If worse came to worse, then it was possible that not only was I completely unique on that front, but there weren''t even any people that came close. The very thought wasn''t encouraging at all. Beauty had a power of it''s own. A person with the right skills and sufficient will could easily weaponize it. On the other hand, someone without enough skill or will would be dragged around by it. I had no illusions to believe I fell in the former camp, and had enough reason to believe I was closer to the latter camp. If my beauty was only going to bring me trouble, I didn''t need it. I was already hiding my fangs and eye colour with [Alter Silhouette], so it wouldn''t be difficult to change my face a bit to be less attractive. I didn''t have the confidence to properly sculpt my face so I might just blow way past ''common beauty'' and instead hit the uncanny valley. That said, it was worth the risk. I was already hiding my face, so being a little ugly wouldn''t be so bad. "Ahem!" Philia''s forceful cough broke me out of my line of thought. Raising my eyes on her again, it felt like her cheeks were a little redder than before. "Ah, sorry. This is distracting, isn''t it?" Lowering my face, I started to lift my hood up and cover myself. For now, this would do. "Oh, no. It''s fine. Or rather, I''d prefer it if you don''t hide yourself." My hands froze at her words, but I couldn''t take her words for granted. She was probably just being nice about it. "But, it''s too much, isn''t it? How I look?" "Your appearance really is pretty excessive. I''ve never even heard of someone with beauty like yours" My eyes fell to the table. (That''s right, isn''t it? It''s just too much.) "However, I think it''s something to be proud of!" "Huh?" "Maybe I''m not wording it quite right. But I don''t think your beauty is something to be ashamed of. It''s probably closer to a curse than a gift, but even then, it''s a part of you. It''s one aspect that makes up who you are!" "...but people change aspects of themselves they don''t like. They wear makeup to change their face, they wear clothes to change their bodies'' shape. Some even make more permanent alterations to get the changes they want." Such things were especially common on Earth. I didn''t think many people were happy with how they looked, so they put in the effort to change that, even if it meant going under the knife. It was pretty ironic though, that while people weren''t happy with how they looked, it was also common for people to simply not do anything about it. "It is true that people do those sort of things. Even a lot of people do, but I also believe that those who do it the most are never able to love themselves." (Is it even possible to love oneself without becoming a narcissist?) "..." "Miss Scarlet, I believe you are the sort who find it easy to care for others, but you find it difficult to care for yourself. Am I right?" "It''s been a bit hard lately, but I care for myself pretty well. I have fun and enjoy my life whenever I can. Until a little while ago, that was almost every day." (The good old days in the dungeon. Facing off against monsters, sharpening my abilities and levelling up. Playing around with the little fluffballs like a little kid. Spending time with Alicia. Doing anything with her was fun.) As good as those times were, I was forced to abandon my home. The pain of staying there was too much. Just thinking about it made me clench my teeth and squeeze my fists. It took everything I had to stop the tears from falling freely. "I don''t know what it was that had happened in the past to make you abandon what you enjoyed, nor will I ask. But I will say this: you don''t love yourself. Even more than that, you don''t think much of yourself at all. You feel there is little value who you are, so you do little that is needed for yourself." "I..." Getting up, Philia made her way around the table and looked close into my eyes. "Miss Scarlet. You are loved. Your actions have made others love you. So you need to love yourself, for who you are. Because you deserve it." My hands shook. (Because I deserve it?! For who I am?!) "You...you don''t even know..." "Perhaps. Or perhaps I know more than you think." "There''s no way...you say I''m loved?! The only one who loved me is dead! I''m not loved! I don''t deserve to be loved! I couldn''t save the only one who cared about me!" "It''s not true. Because I love you." "You...! You don''t even know what I am!" I lost control over myself. My swirling emotions overwhelmed me. My eyes lost focus, my mind grew clouded. All at the same time, my transformation fell apart, my fangs and eyes painfully returned to their original shape against my will. My features changing without going through the proper procedure was painful. My fangs and eyes hurt like someone was trying to forcibly reshape them with their bare hands. My vision warped, the light and colours swirled around as the small changes were amplified with the sensitivity of my retinas. But I didn''t care. I was angry. Furious. She thought she loved me. But it was all a lie. This body, this face. It was manipulating her emotions. The very fact that her cheeks were so red ever since my hood went down was proof of that. Her words didn''t mean anything if my beauty forced her to think of me in certain ways. My looks changed peoples'' thoughts, even when I covered myself. I manipulated others without even realizing it. Without even wanting to. I was something that manipulated peoples'' minds just by being seen. It was no better than brain washing. But despite that, despite my yelling, despite my changes, Philia didn''t flinch at all. Instead, she raised an arm and wiped my tears from my face. My face shot up at the unexpected sensation. Philia gave me a gentle smile and spoke more gently than I thought was possible. "I know. I know what you are. But I don''t care." "Even though I''m a blood sucking monster?! I could empty you like that tea cup at any moment!" "You are you, and that''s what I came to like. If you chose to do that, then I would accept it. At the very least, I would die knowing that the orphanage was in good hands." "I...but...no. Your feelings are being manipulated. There''s no way..." "You mean by your beauty? But what''s the difference between that and being swayed by sweet words? By kind actions? We manipulate each other all the time to get what we want. The only question is intent. And I can see that your intent is only to make others happy. Because you find it difficult to be happy when the people around you aren''t." Like a baseball shattering glass, my defences were broken in an instant. All my arguments were gone. All I had left was this confusion of swirling emotions as I was unable to pull away from Philia''s heated gaze. Paralyzed with indecision, I couldn''t do anything as she slowly came closer to me. Little by little, her face drew in, blocking out anything and everything else. Something soft and warm touched my lips. The feeling was pleasant, somehow it made me feel a bit warm, yet just as my mind was registering that warmth, the softness on my lips disappeared and Philia''s face pulled away. "You may not like how you look, but I do. The children do. I''m sure that person who loved you did as well. There is nothing wrong with how you look." With a gentle smile, she took a step back, then another. Slowly, she made her way back to the other side of the table and gathered the tea set before turning to leave the room. Just as she reached the door, Philia turned back to me. "Now, you may not love me, but you should at least learn to love yourself. Anyways, thank you for letting me have that little gift." With a mischievous grin, the little orphanage director left me behind, slumping down in the chair, mind unable to catch up to the last handful of seconds. My hand rose up to touch my lips. "...that was my first kiss...ever..." Time passed by while I was in a daze. Eventually, I was able to pull myself together enough to stand up. Even then, my mind refused to move on from what I had just experienced. That feeling of a woman''s lips on mine. The first time they had touched another¡¯s in all my memories. It was strange. It was alien. It was... "It was nice..." I never really thought too much about romance. No, I did as a teen like most in my previous life, but once I became an adult, it just stopped mattering. My parents bugged me once in a while, but aside from that, romance wasn''t really something that had to do with me. Those feelings didn''t really change since being reincarnated. Rather, I had more reasons to think that such things had nothing to do with me. I was now a woman, yet the thought of getting together with a man wasn''t pleasant at all. Or rather, it was difficult to even imagine it. Maybe it was because I''d been dismissing the entire notion off hand from the start. In a similar vein, I had done the same in regards to being with a woman as well. Maybe it was this body. I might have become a woman, but first and foremost I was a vampire. It wasn''t like I didn''t feel arousal, but it didn''t trigger in ways that I imagined it would for a woman. Not only that, but thinking about it, I''ve never had a period before. Was there any meaning to being a woman as a vampire? Did vampire men exist? Was reproduction even possible for vampires? If it wasn''t, then was it even possible for me to properly copulate? I presumed it was possible, since it seemed like I had the organs necessary, yet I had never actually explored my body in that way. Exploring the dungeon had always been my priority, and when that gave way, Alicia became my new priority. When that happened, exploring my own body became impossible. (Should I try it out?) After a few moments, I shook my head. Doing so in someone else''s home was just plain rude, and there were much more important things at hand. I wandered aimlessly throughout the ground floor of the orphanage. Randomly entering a room, looking around without actually focusing on anything, then moving on to the next room. Philia had given me a lot to think about though. Aside from that kiss. No, well, that kiss was something to think about too, but only a bit. Frankly, even if she was serious about it, I doubted I could give her a favourable response. To be with her, I''d either have to take her with me on my travels, or stay at the orphanage for the long term. Neither prospects felt workable. First of all, if I took her with me, the orphanage would collapse almost immediately. There wasn''t anyone else to take over her duties. At best, we might be able to find someone who grew up here but moved on, but the fact that nobody stayed to help out meant that either they were unable to stay, or didn''t want to stay and help enough. Most likely, it was the former considering what I''d seen so far. I wouldn''t have been surprised to find out that the graduates sent over their spare earnings to help support this place. The latter would most likely single-handedly save this orphanage in the long term, but I couldn''t see myself taking root here. No, not with the attention I''d been getting, it might instead replace the financial problems with more serious problems. Neither were viable solutions, and that hadn''t even started to take into consideration my own feelings on the matter. No. Even on that front it didn''t matter. Being with Philia wouldn''t benefit either of us. She didn''t need a distraction and problem maker like me here, and I already had a home. A good one at that. Staying would only bring trouble. Something this place couldn''t afford to have. Once I finished things, I had to leave. But that said, there was what Philia had told me. She thought that I should embrace who I was. Love myself? Was that a good thing? Was that alright? Even my appearance? The thing that I just cheated to get without even putting any thought into? I hadn''t earned it, nor had I got it fairly through the genetic lottery. But more importantly than that, was the result of all that. The looks people gave me when they saw my face. When they noticed what was underneath these oversized robes. Beauty was one thing, but when it reached the level I had, especially in a world where the internet and magazines didn''t exist to let people get used to seeing especially attractive people. (...would that really be enough in my case?) I couldn''t confidently say it was, but it might''ve lessened things. My hand reached up and touched my face. I couldn''t really translate the feeling to what I saw, but the image was still fresh in my memory. This face. This body. The allure of it is just crazy. But between the two, the face was especially bad. There was no doubt it would bring me no end of problems in the future. Especially the more aggressive men. It had happened twice already in three days since coming to this city. In this world where fighting monsters seemed to be pretty common, aggressive men were probably quite a lot more common than on Earth. Did that mean that I''d be facing such aggression and abuse more often just because of my looks? If that was the case, it was best to change it. Causing and getting into trouble just because of something like my appearances went against what I wanted. It wasn''t enjoyable at all. Rather, already I had suffered quite a bit because of it. So if something as small as changing my face a bit would prevent it from happening again, then it was a small price to pay. No, it was almost free in comparison. (But...) Those words Philia gave me rang in my mind. ''You may not like how you look, but I do. The children do. I''m sure that person who loved you did as well. There is nothing wrong with how you look.'' Alicia. Did she like my face? She touched it a few times, and once she learned [Mana Perception] she spent a lot of time just looking at it. How much of it did she see? How clear was my face to her senses? No matter how much I thought about it, I couldn''t dismiss that she may have seen enough. In that short period of time, Alicia had managed to gain quite a few ranks in [Mana Perception]. But while there was no way it was high enough to see me clearly, combined with how she memorized the shape of my face through her hands, it might''ve been more than enough. If it really was, then...she probably did like it. She spent so much time looking at me, like it was a hobby of hers. And if she really did like it that much, was it right for me to change it? Most of this journey was to find a way to bring her back. But if I changed myself from what she liked and loved to something else, she wouldn''t be happy at all. And also... (I should love myself?) I had no doubt Alicia would say that I should. (But how?) I didn''t even understand what it meant to love oneself. There was hubris, narcissism, selfishness, vanity. Those were all forms of loving oneself...probably. But it was plainly obvious that those weren''t what Philia meant by the term. Simply put, I didn''t know. What was loving oneself? How to love oneself? After brooding over it for a few minutes, I shook my head once again. Those thoughts weren''t productive at all. I just didn''t know how to even start thinking about it, so it was better to use my time on something else rather than run around in circles. Instead, I resolved myself. My appearance had brought me quite a bit of trouble in such a short amount of time. Changing it with [Alter Silhouette] was a quick solution to avoiding it in the future. Philia''s words made me hesitate to simply doing that. Was being accepting my looks a part of loving myself? Was liking the parts of myself that others liked a part of that? (No, maybe not others in general. But Alicia? Philia? The kids?) I didn''t care about currying favour amongst strangers, and even just gathering their attention wasn''t pleasant, but people I knew, that I liked? Maybe I really though of myself too lowly? Maybe it was as Philia said? I needed to love myself. I was loved, so I deserved that much? However I didn''t know what that meant. But while I didn''t really understand, maybe I''d figure it out by bumbling in it''s general direction? If that was so, then changing my appearances more than I absolutely had to would be counter-productive. For Alicia''s sake. For Philia and the orphans'' sake. No, for my own sake. That said, my fangs and eyes, I''d continue to conceal, but that was the limit. If I discovered that the general populace didn''t mind vampires, then I would stop hiding those as well. But until I had a firm understanding of it, it was best to hide at least that. And for now, taking pride in how I looked...was beyond my ability. I just couldn''t do it. I hadn''t reached that point in any sense of the concept. But even more important than that, if I did take pride in it and showed it off, then everyone would stare at me. Just thinking about it made me shudder. There was no way I''d be able to go around without hiding my face in public. Well, that didn''t change things in the first place, and it wasn''t like I could afford to during the day, considering the burns I''d suffer by doing it. In other words, nothing would really change for me. That thought was a bit disheartening to say the least. But anyways, if I couldn''t really come up with anything to improve my own situation, then improving the kids'' was my alternative. I went to the kitchen and had a look at the soap mould that was lain to harden. A cursory glance suggested that the hardening was progressing well. The colour, texture, and scent were all good. In fact, maybe it was too good. Compared to the soap I had bought, it was much more strongly scented. Appearance as well was impressive. The filtering that we had done with my own lye water was a bit astounding, and the results showed itself. The soap was very close to white, and there weren''t any visible particles mixed in either. The end result had both the scent and appearance to be quite a bit superior to the soap I bought. Bringing down the quality a bit didn''t sit well with me, but not doing so brought on too many risks. And it wasn''t like the kids needed to get rich off of this either. It just needed to sell well enough to pay for daily necessities and maybe the occasional special purchase. The easy route was to reduce the essential oil concentration. It would also make it easier for the kids to produce, since they would need less material to distill the essential oils. For that matter, they still needed a method to make it in the first place. I had just provided the oil myself for the first batch, but for this to be sustainable, they''d have to be able to make their own. I made my way around and quickly found an empty storage room. It was on the smaller size, but like all the other unused rooms, it was well taken care of. It was next to a larger room that seemed to be used for indoor playing. That room was one of many that had a fireplace. The smaller store room didn''t, but that wasn''t a big problem for me. Stretching out my mana, I pulled up earth from the ground and reshaped the outer wall, creating a reinforced duct that connected the larger room fireplace''s chimney with this room. From there, I made the framework for both a cooking stove and the steam distiller. Taking out some ingots, I got to work on the main components. The lower removable chamber of the distiller was made from steel, and the upper fixed chamber was made from the light blue metal I found on floor 87. It was light, and definitely very durable. I also hoped it would resist corrosion, while the lower chamber could be manually maintained. I wanted to avoid using the blue metal for anything overly visible, as I had no doubt it would be considered an expensive metal. I personally had little use for it so in it went, but it wasn''t good to attract attention when I could avoid it with little effort. Thus the lower chamber was steel. Extending a spout for the vapour from the top, I transitioned the metal into copper, which then sloped downwards to an open space perfect for a container. That container, which ended up being glass with a small nozzle at the bottom with a simple twist valve. Distilling essential oils tended to leave quite a lot of water mixed in. The easiest way to purify it was to use magic to evaporate only the water, but that wasn''t a skill that could be considered realistic for the kids to have. Not even Philia knew how to use magic from what I saw. Since that was the case the valve would let the denser water out while retaining the essential oil floating on top. The water would still be scented, so it had a use as well, though I wasn''t sure what it would be. Maybe they could sell a skin rub or bath additive? I filled in much of the empty space with stone with lots of air mixed in. The igneous-like rock would do a great job insulating and protecting the main chambers. Beside it, the cooling pipe was reinforced with a bunch of extra copper rods and held in place, then everything but the nozzle was hidden inside of a stone chamber with only a small hole to add water for cooling. I was a bit worried that if a distiller wasn''t known technology in this world, making it easy to see without damaging the setup could be cause for concern. Or it was just my paranoia acting up. But it wasn''t much effort to get it working like this, so I did it anyways. Next, once I made sure that the two chambers fitted in together and was easy to secure, I made several copies of the lower chamber and the glass container for backup. Finally, I set up the stone stoves so that multiple batches of oil and fats could be rendered at the same time. While lard was used this time, maybe the kids would switch over to some other, cheaper oil? I didn''t now, but it was best for me to teach them it at least. If it ended up being better for them, then these stoves would be a waste, but I didn''t mind so much. Altogether, the setup looked good. Some quick checks confirmed that there didn''t seem to be any problems. All I had to do was test it all and teach the kids how to use it. Ninetailed_Furball Hi everybody! It''s your very furry hairball again! Sorry for the late release. I couldn''t stop writing the next chapter to finish this one. How does that work? Quite simple, but I''ll tell you later. Now then, wow. That heated up quite a bit, didn''t it? How long has Philia been feeling this way? Maybe she really was brainwashed by Scarlet''s looks? Does this mean that the Philia X Scarlet ship has sailed?! No. No it doesn''t. I''m sorry if you see this as a tease, but it hasn''t. I''ve securely moored that ship. Now, that aside, I have an announcement to make! You guys had a petition going on in my last chapter''s comments, and well...ask and ye shall receive! Presuming I like it enough. Actually, even some of this chapter was partially inspired by the comments. That, and I''ve been working on a submission for the Yuri Garden contest. I''ll post a link to it once I submit it, but writing a yuri story turned this chapter into a bit of yuri as well it seems. I DO NOT REGRET though. But sidetracking aside, my announcement. The next chapter will be a perspective change! You guys have been asking for it, and I ended up writing a large portion of it before I even finished half of this chapter. I plan on releasing it as a bonus chapter this weekend, but no promises! Life tends to hate me. Especially when I bite back. But anyways, look forward to seeing inside of someone else''s head for a day! Thanks as always for the comments. They really are inspiring and motivate me to keep hacking at it! Chapter 41.5 – Nighttime Musings The nearing middle aged dwarf buried herself under her thin bed sheet as she pressed her face into her hard pillow. (I did it! I really did it!) Her small body wiggled around on the bed restlessly as her mind kept re-experiencing that one moment a short while before. (I really kissed her. In all my 73 years, I finally kissed someone. And it was someone so much like the legend. And it was a woman at that. To think I would end up kissing a woman...) But no matter where her thoughts took her, her heart beat like a stampede and her face hot like the sun. Philia felt those feeling so strongly for the first time in her long, slow life. She felt like a youthful girl chasing her first crush. The young woman who appeared out of nowhere and found her way into everyone''s hearts, even deeper than the person herself even realized or would acknowledge. The woman who''s heart, on the surface, seemed greater than any she had ever seen, far greater than most who were lauded for their generosity. Yet her self-esteem was so low. She saw her own gifts as curses, and even blamed herself for them. It wasn''t possible. It didn''t make sense why she would blame herself for them, but she still did. Even if, on the impossible chance that it was somehow her doing, it wasn''t something for her to be blamed for. No, Philia refused that thought. Seeking out beauty excessively was a fault, one that many had. But Scarlet didn''t seem to be the sort to be too concerned over it. She kept herself clean, she smelled nice due to her scented soaps, and she put a bit of effort into her appearances. But it was obviously much less than what Philia suspected that the nobility did, despite Scarlet having many of the same rumoured habits. No, even before that, Scarlet was surprised by her own beauty. That wasn''t the reaction of someone who obsessed over it. It was someone who cared little of it. Most likely, Scarlet''s habits weren''t related to beauty, but were to satisfy something else entirely. If so, then there was no way she would''ve been the sort to have ever went to great lengths to change herself for the sake of vanity. So thus, Philia firmed her belief that Scarlet wasn''t to blame for her appearances. No matter what she had gone through in the past, even if she somehow did the impossible and changed her appearance, she had no reason to be blamed for it. But there was also the matter of her race. For a while, the dwarf had the niggling suspicion in regards to it, but due to their rarity, she wasn''t able to connect the dots until Scarlet transformed in front of her eyes. It took all her will to suppress the surprise she felt when she saw those red eyes and fangs returned and revealed her true nature. While it was a surprise, the words she gave still came from her heart. As callous as it was, she really felt that if the vampire in front of her couldn''t hold back from sucking out her blood until her body ran cold, Philia felt that Scarlet would feel responsible and take over the orphanage in her stead. If she were to stay, the directer felt that the future of the orphanage would be much safer than in her own hands. That said, she still believed that it was far from an ideal course of actions. Or rather, it was a pretty terrible way for things to go. The orphanage might be better off of it, but she believed that the vampire would likely be crushed by the guilt. And as a faint, secondary notion, Philia also felt that she would prefer not dying over this, even if she had already resolved to devote the rest of her life for the orphanage. Aside from that, Philia felt that judging a person based on their race was foolish and short sighted. Vampires had a poor reputation, but she believed that individuals deserved not to be shackled by their peoples'' reputations. She did concede though, that her thoughts may have been effected by the belief that the legendary Scarlet was a vampire as well. While it was an often suppressed belief, Philia felt that it seemed to be most common though amongst those who carried parts of her legacy. She felt it ironic that from the race with one of the darkest reputations, came one of the most generous and benevolent individuals. (Even so...) The gaunt dwarf thought back to the day the two met. It was a wholly unremarkable day. At least, little different from the more recent norm that had started since a little while ago. Things had grown more difficult as of late. The donations had dwindled, and support was growing harder to come by. To make matters worse, one of the children had gone missing days before. But watching over dozens, it wasn''t possible for her to spare the effort to search for a missing child. If the children couldn''t find any clues while they sought out work or begged, there was nothing she could do. On that day, a suspicious looking stranger came. But contrary to her expectation, she had saved Flix and Torii from dangerous men. Philia couldn''t help but wonder if those men were connected to the missing child. Or maybe this suspicious woman was. But it grew quickly apparent that this strange woman had nothing to do with any of it. She was simply a kind-hearted traveller. Most likely a rich one. Yet her actions and habits contradicted each other. She would talk like a sheltered noble, yet be able to do the work of experienced servants. Her dress was poorly made, yet the glimpses that were visible suggested that her skin was unmarred by labour. Untouched by even the sun. Of course, that latter bit was likely because she was a vampire. The strange woman took steps to avoid drawing attention to that fact, yet the very act made it more and more certain in the dwarf''s mind. She would talk with a closed mouth, yet if one looked closely, fangs could be seen. Her hat and hood were worn low, yet her crimson eyes were visible to those standing below her. She set up many precautions, but the execution was half-hearted. It was only enough to fool casual observers. Not someone who worried about the identity of a person who had entered her home. Simply put, she was a bit careless. But the way she freely gave away food, how she laboured for the sake of the childrens'' smiles, how she fixed up the orphanage with magic and supplied soft furs for all the childrens'' beds. Despite doing all that, she disappeared before anyone realized what she had done. Yet she came back the next day as if nothing happened. Of course they wouldn''t have forgotten. A single person appearing out of nowhere, bringing joy and happiness, generously giving away gifts like it was nothing. It was likely that nobody in that orphanage would ever forget. And it became apparent to Philia: this person was pretty aimless. This person, who carried the same name as the legendary person that inspired the creation of the very orphanage Philia lived and worked in, had very little direction in her life. It felt to her like she had a hole in her heart, but rather than deal with it, she was ignoring it. She put it aside until something makes itself known. But she didn''t know how or where to find that something. And thus she was aimless. Her destination was shrouded in mist, so she didn''t know which way to go. It was so unusual. A person with power and resources, yet gave both freely because she was so directionless. Because they held little value in her eyes. To Philia, it was like discovering a person was a genius, but couldn''t find anything she wanted to apply her talents to, so she simply helped out nearby problems for the meantime. But rather than feeling frustrated at such a genius not applying herself to something grand, Philia found it endearing. A little girl that needed help but didn''t know how to ask. Perhaps to her a little sister? As she watched the slightly childish vampire, that endearment had changed. Somehow, in only a few days time, her feelings had changed to more than simply endearing. When she thought about it, she became certain. It was when Scarlet was in the bath. When Philia saw her wash Flix, the image of her being a little sister was shattered. That motherly care, the way she washed the little orphan with experienced hands. Altogether with that transcendent physical beauty that she had only seen hints to. It was then that her feelings had blossomed. And it was then that she realized something: Scarlet wouldn''t be able to reciprocate her feelings. Philia''s observations had caused her to reach a certain conclusion. One was that Scarlet wouldn''t stay in this city for long. She had no reason to at least. That thought was solidified when after the bath and the children were put to bed, the two spent some time to talk privately. There came some more realizations. The first, was that Scarlet was terribly naive when it came to interpersonal relationships. Especially the more intimate ones. Philia was similar in that regard though. Specifically when it came to romantic relations. She herself had never really been in one, and came to believe that she would never experience feelings related to romance in her life. But Scarlet was slightly different. She didn''t think romance was unrelated to her life. She had never known it''s existence or had forgotten about it in it''s entirety. Romance and attraction weren''t to her things that other people experienced like for Philia. They were things she had no relations to at all. At the very least, that was the impression she got, the way the silver haired vampire reacted when she was told that she was charming. The expression she made suggested that it wasn''t a word she could associate herself with. Despite the fact that her charm was truly exceptional. Perhaps boundless. Despite all that, Philia had developed a childish crush on her. Her entire life revolved around the orphanage. From her earliest memories being raised by the previous director, choosing to stay to help care for her younger siblings, then becoming the new director when the predecessor had passed. From foster sister to foster mother, the only love Philia had ever known was familial. No matter how much she desired romantic love when she was young, it eluded her. When she finally knew it''s heat for the first time, she couldn''t not act on it. She couldn''t bear to let the chance go. The surprise and confusion on the young beauty''s face made the dwarf''s heart pound even harder. The fact that there wasn''t any obvious rejection made her face redder. But in the end she thought to herself. (Soon, my heart will feel like it''s being shredded. But until then, until then, I''ll relive that one moment over and over. My one and only love.) The nearing middle-aged dwarf squirmed in bed like an adolescent in her first crush. Because that''s what it was: her first crush. And as all first crushes went, she understood deep down, it wasn''t meant to be. =========================================================== "Just who was she?" Once again, Martin Vermouth wondered as he closed up his store, [The Inner Beauty]. The day earlier, a girl in shabby looking clothes arrived to purchase soap. It was unusual to see such a person want a commodity only the rich or noble would desire. But unlike a thief, he saw that her hair was clean and glossy. It was well maintained beyond what most amongst even the aristocracy were capable of. And what little of her face she allowed to be seen under the wide brim of her hat suggested a life that knew not of labour nor hardship. Skin that was fit for a true princess. To Martin, it was worth the risk. No, the risk was in displeasing such a customer that hid her true identity. In his mind, it was impossible that she was anyone ordinary. Those clothes must have been some sort of guise to hide her true identity. Confirming his thoughts he assisted and guided her, showing his prided stock of soaps, the best the city had to offer. He was convicted of that fact. To his astoundment, though he deigned to show it, the girl acted not like a customer he had borne witness to. The way she examined the shape, the colour, the texture, even the scent of the unscented soaps. The way she studied them was not like any patron he had served in the past. No, if anything, it reminded him most of an artisan examining their rivals'' wares. As she did, Martin''s nose descried the scent of milk and honey, along with an unfamiliar flower and fruit. Principally the scent of milk and honey enticed his attention. Perfumes were very common amongst the upper class, and even those that were not exhibited products of similar effects. But milk and honey could not be used in such a way. Aside from slathering both directly to the skin, such an outcome wasn''t achievable. But if that were what she had done, then there would have been telltale manifestation of such practice. Contrary to that, the scent, while not strong, was clear and distinct. His only conjecture was that it was the corollary of the soap which she wished to sell. If his augury was right, then it was imperative that he not offend her. For if he could propitiate her, then he may be able to secure a new product not seen elsewhere in the city. But if he was unable, then his woe instead would be for a rival store to win an privileged contract with her. His intuition rarely failed him, and he accredited it to be one of the most august reasons for his success. For that, Martin was especially dismayed when ill fortune reared it''s ugly head. Marquis Bacchus, the lord of this city, was well known to bear quite a few vices, and lacked the sobriety to not indulge in them too often. As ill fate had it, that selfsame lord was perusing through the store''s wares at the time this unknown customer had arrived. Even worse, he had noticed her presence, yet had not the presence of mind to perform etiquette befitting of his position. Martin looked on in dismay as Lord Bacchus openly harassed and abused this mystery customer. But all prayers that he would lose interest went unanswered. As if to scorn him, the marquis escalated his actions. At the eleventh-hour, when Martin feared that something irreversible would develop, he stepped in to pacify the uninhibited lord. Martin only barely managing to convince him to at least delay his activity so that his enterprise wouldn''t enter the prying eye of the public. Martin assuaged his distressed patron in the hopes that she would not be dissuaded from continuing business with his store, though he found it difficult to presume such a happening. As she left, he hoped that his words would not simply delay the predicament, and that she wouldn''t find herself further violated by the hands of the city''s lord. sigh Martin truly wished to see what form of soap this visitor desired to sell. He hoped that she would come again. Even more than to acquire more money or out compete his rivals, but to see what if she had something that would shake his very heart. =========================================================== "Here''s today''s reports." At the adventurer''s guild, the receptionist Lucy lay down a box of wooden planks beside the guild master''s desk. Straightening her back, she glanced out the open window and peeked at the stars that were visible. "Ah, thanks...you got something else?" Florian looked up at his subordinate. She was strangely sombre for once. While he wanted her to return to her night shift duties, as there weren''t any other staff to watch over the front counters this late at night, she looked a bit too distracted for him to feel comfortable to not address her issues. "...What do you think of her?" "Her?" "Scarlet. The one you tested a few days ago." Just when he was wondering what she was taking about, a surprising name came up. That name, that brought quite a few surprises lately. "Her huh? If I had to say...I dunno." "You don''t know?" Finally, Lucy turned to face her superior. "That girl. She''s got a lot of secrets." "Most do." "Not like her. Stop being coy about it." "..." Lucy turned away from Florian again. When she thought about that strange adventurer that suddenly came from nowhere, her emotions swirled around and confusion overtook her. That girl hid her face, yet what little the catkin receptionist saw enamoured her. But at the same time, the young adventurer distinctly kept her distance. Not only to the staff, but even to other adventurers. "She partied with anyone yet?" "I haven''t even seen her talk to any of the other adventurers. Do you think she might be scared of it?" "Her? She''s probably strong enough to take on a wyvern solo. Maybe even a small dragon. What''s she got to be scared of?" "You know that being able to beat monsters has little to do with being able to talk to people right?" "Izzat so?" Lucy looked at her superior in exasperation. The man wasn''t as bad as some, but in the end, he was a muscle head that got his rank purely due to his achievements while he was an active adventurer. People like him were good at keeping the order and making other adventurers listen, but aside from that, sometimes she wondered if his head was filled with cobwebs. He was still better than some, she admitted. A few guild masters had the reputation of regularly getting into drunken brawls with other adventurers or being unable to finish their paperwork on their own. At least her boss maintained order and managed to do his work reasonably well. "That girl, I wonder just where she came from?" "Y'' can try asking." "I doubt she''d answer." "Y'' never know." Her eyes half-closed on his words. "No, it''s pretty obvious she''d dodge the question. That girl hardly says anything beyond the bare minimum. She''s incredibly strong, she''s extremely smart, yet she''s one of the quietest people I''ve ever seen. She''s the complete opposite of a certain someone." "What? Y'' wanna say something, come out and say it!" "sigh That''s not the point." "Just shove it. Is she gonna to stay for long? I think I can pull something good out for her to do." The guild master grumbled while peeking inside one of the drawers on his large, sturdy desk. "I don''t know, but..." "But?" "I don''t think she has much reason to stay." "...Guess I won''t bother then." "...Do you think she''s a noble?" "Does it matter if she is?" The rabbit eared guild master lightly glared at his cat eared receptionist. "Maybe? I mean, nobles hiding their identities and becoming adventurers isn''t unheard of." "Yea, sure. But ones that strong are real rare. If she was one, then she''d be a part of some knighthood or something, not be some no name adventurer. At least when she''s that strong." "Maybe you''re right. She finishes all her requests so quickly as well. If she wanted, she could do two in a day...how strong do you think she is, anyways? You said you thought she could take down a small dragon?" "Hmm..." Florian leaned back in his chair while rubbing his eyes. "If ya put a knife to my throat, I''d say she might be as strong as an A rank. If she was in a party, maybe even an S rank." While she doubted even if someone did put a knife to his throat, it would be enough to coerce the giant bundle of muscles into doing anything, but Lucy let it pass for the time being. "Even though she was just a G rank a few days ago." "That don''t mean shit, and y'' know that." "I just wanted it to sound impressive." "Leave that for when y''re gold digging." "Wha?! That''s why you still don''t have a girlfriend!" "Th, that''s got nothing to do with anything! Why don''t y'' just shut the hell up you slut?!" "A what?! At least I''m not middle aged, or still a virgin!" "Th, that one''s off limits damnit! Y'' know I hate it when people mention that!" "Like I care! You stupid, short-sticked buffoon! You couldn''t make a girl feel anything if your life depended on it!" "Waaah! Shut it, you damn whore! How about I get a pole installed so you can go shake your ass at someone else!" "Wha?! That''s it! You limp-dicked bastard!" Once again, the two beastkin adventurer''s guild staff members ended up in a fight. As it was virtually a weekly occurrence, none of the people still working in the nearby buildings nor the people passing by on the streets paid it no mind. =========================================================== "Ehehehe..." Hugging her soft fur blanket, Flix giggled to herself as her tail wagged in her sleep. "Scarlet...ehehehe..." If anyone in the bedroom was awake to witness this behaviour, they might have been creeped out, but fortunately for the little foxkin, everyone else was far too much asleep for that. "Mnya. Mnya. Ehehehe..." That said, if they were to see her, they most likely wouldn''t have been able to guess that the cause for it was in fact quite innocent. For Flix was simply dreaming that she was sitting in Scarlet''s lap, having her head pat as she hugged her. An innocent dream, but one that no witness would''ve guessed. Ninetailed_Furball Hey everyone! Time for another message from your everyone''s favourite hairball! Sorry for the delayed release. I said it would be a bonus chapter, but in the end it wasn''t. Hope everyone can forgive me on that! m(_ _)m That said, I hope you all enjoyed this little peek into the other characters! To be honest, I hadn''t planned to make this chapter in the first place, so it took extra time to come up with what to even write. Not like I regretted it! It was pretty fun to dive in like this! Though because of that, the chapter was a little shorter than usual. Hope you all enjoyed it despite that though! (¨R?¨Q)/ So who''s perspective did everyone like the most? Who''s surprised you the most? Should I do this sort of thing more often? Well, I don''t have the material, so it probably won''t happen too often anyways. ¡¥_(¥Ä)_/¡¥ Oh, and I made some changes to the previous chapter. It was pointed out, and after reviewing it, I agreed that Scarlet''s motivation to not change her appearance was too weak and out of character, so I changed it! The lines I changed are about 3/4 down, after the line {Instead, I resolved myself.} Hope you guys like her new reason! Now then, I hope to hear tons from everyone like usual! And may the force be with you, always! Chapter 42 – Female Companionship I sat at one of the dinner tables, and pulled out a jar of blood from my bag. I was thinking back to what Philia had said to me as I drank. She had said that my appearances was a part of me. Technically that was a given. It was my body, and while it was vastly different from my previous one, it was mine. (But still...) This body was fabricated. It wasn''t born in any normal sense. I didn''t have parents in this world, didn''t grow up. Hell, I still had the memories of my previous life. I may have lived three years here, but I hadn''t lived my life like a normal person would, or where a normal person could. Finishing my meal, I put the jar back and pulled out a crumpled piece of paper from my bag before carefully spreading it out on the table. It was covered in dirt and stains, with an uncountable number of creases, but perhaps testament to it''s otherworldly origin, it was in surprisingly good condition despite that. The letters hadn''t bled or faded, and there weren''t any tears aside from the original one when I got it. The surface was slightly glossy like copier paper and aside from the stains from dirt and blood, the sheet was almost whiter than anything else I''ve seen in this world, the black ink darker than the dark void between stars. Tracing my finger, I read what was on the long sheet of paper. The memories filled me as I thought back to what I was thinking before I had been reborn in this world. The thoughts I had when choosing the options that ended up becoming my new physical form. It was a stark reminder oh how little thought I had put into this, how much I underestimated what I was experiencing. The entire thing was so dream-like, I hadn''t taken it seriously. Thinking back, I had gotten extraordinarily lucky. Since that was all real, the consequences of getting caught must''ve been significant. Maybe I''d have been punished and reincarnated as an insect, or if the ones managing my reincarnation thought I had committed too grave of a crime, then my soul, or whatever form I had taken back then, might''ve been destroyed, never to be reborn again. But just being alive with my memories intact, was glad. Even if a part of me continued and lived on in a new body, it wouldn''t have been me. Without my memories, without my thoughts, it would''ve been a different person. Even though it would''ve been a more literal piece of me that lived, it would''ve felt less so than if it was my own offspring. I was hesitant to say I had no regrets. No, I definitely had regrets, but given a second chance, I would''ve still done the same thing. Maybe...been a bit more conservative on the options. But even still, the good probably outweighed the bad. While I was still worried about peoples'' reaction to me being a vampire, the advantages were still better than most other races I could''ve picked. Thanks to it, I managed to survive without a community to rely on and had gotten the power to help others I had encountered. It might not continue to stay true throughout my current life, but the positives definitely outweighed the negatives, and I wouldn''t go back on it. Still, my choices had consequences, and I didn''t doubt I hadn''t gotten even close to the end of them. Even aside more repeats of the trouble I''ve gotten into the last few days. There were probably countless unseen pitfalls due to my choices when designing my new body that I was to encounter in the future. My beauty being one was definitely outside of my expectations, and that one would likely last me my entire life. At the very least, some others weren''t so bad. I felt I had adjusted to becoming a woman quite well, though I didn''t have to worry about some bodily functions thanks to my race. That said, I still couldn''t see myself dating or getting married to a man. Even the thought of it made a shiver run up my spine, let alone what came after marriage. That said, the way Philia kissed me suggested that in some ways, despite how backwards the technology and society was, some things were quite progressive. My fingers slowly ran across my lips as my mind went back to the feeling of such warmth and softness pressing against them. That really caught me off guard. I had no idea she had thought of me in such a way. My chest filled with a complex swirl of feelings. On one hand, I was happy that I had gotten to experience such a thing for the first time between both my lives, on the other hand I didn''t feel like I deserved such a thing, nor give a proper response to her feelings. Even more so since I had barely even considered staying for in this city for long. I had too many reasons to move on, not the least of which to avoid being seen by that lecher of a lord again. The thought of having a proper female friend was really appealing, but I would only bring trouble by staying and being one for Philia. But it really surprised me. I knew that women tended to be more intimate between each other than men, but to be that much more so? Or maybe it was just how things were in this world? I really had no baseline to compare, so I couldn''t judge anything on that regards. Well, the feeling was nice, and it was better than how distant people seemed to be from what I had read of Victorian times. Not like I knew how to handle such intimacy, but it felt nice once I had the time to process it. I was really glad that she didn''t act that way because she lost to her lust from looking directly at my face. It was a good feeling to know that people wouldn''t just lose control over it. My own experiences might have been pure flukes, or were caused by something completely different. My attributing what had happened to my appearances was probably wrong. Or at least it didn''t play such a big part as I had thought. But even still, I wasn''t comfortable with the thought of being stared at. People who stood out too much would be stared at. That was no different in this world as on Earth, but fortunately wearing an oversized jet black hooded robe wasn''t enough to look suspicious on the streets here it seemed. Tugging at the hood that covered my face, I smiled a bit. Lately, this thing had become less of protection from the sun and more closer akin to a safety blanket. I didn''t think that I had regressed or anything, but I definitely wasn''t as comfortable with myself as I had thought I was. "Hair colour: silver?" While I was buried in my thoughts, someone leaned in from the side. "Ah, you''re awake already?" "It''s morning already." The pointy eared girl looked at me like I just told her the obvious. (Well, I did, actually.) "Eye colour: red. Skin colour: pale. Height: manual...what''s that bar supposed to mean?" She looked back at the sheet and read off of it one line at a time. "Ah, the bar indicates the range of possibility and the circle on the bar tells how far along on it was selected." The girl turned back and tilted her head to the side. The way she did it was pretty cute, but something a bit more important struck my realization. "You...you can read it?" "Not that bit." She frowned and looked back at the sheet. "Physical attractiveness: manual...that bar again? Ummm, is this describing you Scarlet?" "Ah? Ah, yea, this is my information." The girl''s eyes sparkled and quickly went back to the sheet. "Ah, no, I mean, the rest of it. You can read the words on this sheet?" Uneasy about having so much of my information being read, even by a kid, I quickly asked my question again. The girl looked back at me and tilted her head once again. "These words right here. You can read them?" I pointed at one of the lines and asked her again. "Eye colour: red. You mean that? Anyone can do that." "Did Miss Philia teach everyone here how to read?" If she did, then that was pretty incredible. One person teaching dozens all the while taking care of them and doing everything to keep the orphanage running? But contrary to my expectation, the little girl shook her head. "Then, who taught you to read?" "Nobody." The answer baffled me. It just didn''t make sense. My mind refused to acknowledge such an answer. "Then how can you read? Did you all go to school for it or something?" She shook her head. "You can read too, right?" "...yea, I can." "It''s the same thing. You can read it, I can read it. Everyone can read it." Her answer didn''t make sense. She described it as if it was a given she could read. That anyone could read. But they hadn''t gone to school. She claimed to not have even been taught how to read, but that wasn''t possible. There wasn''t any way for her to learn. (But if she never learned...) "I''ve got a favour to ask. Can I examine you for a bit?" I grasped the girl''s arms, holding her just below the shoulders lightly but firmly as I asked. It might not have been particularly important, but it was something that shattered my concept of common sense. "Examine?" "Yea. I want to have a look at something inside you." "It won''t hurt?" "It won''t. You won''t feel a thing." "Okay! But if it''s a favour, you have to do one for me too!" Once I reassured her of that, she didn''t hesitate to agree. "Of course. As long as it''s something I can do." "It''s easy! I want to sit on your lap!" "Huh? My lap?" "Yup! Can I?" I didn''t really see how this was a favour, but she gave me the puppy dog eyes as she asked, making it impossible for me to refuse. "Umm, sure." "Yay! Can I do it right now?" "Ah, yea. I can examine you while you''re sitting on my lap." I pushed my chair back from the table to open up space for her and spread my arms wide as an invitation. "Yay! Thank you so much!" The girl practically hopped onto my lap and wrapped her arms and legs around me while she buried her face so deep into my chest that I was worried that she''d suffocate herself. But her large bushy tail wagged so fast that I had to grab my reincarnation sheet as it threatened to be blown away. Unfortunately for me, my anatomy made it difficult to see the girl properly as she held me tightly and pushed up my chest with her face, but I at least had a clear view of her tail. As fast as it was moving, it wasn''t a problem for my eyes, and I managed to activate [Scan] on her without problems. The girl''s information showed up properly in a window only I could see. I scrolled through it and noted her name when it showed up. (Flix huh? I need to remember that.) This girl had taken particular interest in me. No, she probably really liked me if Philia''s words were any indication. It was especially apparent with how happy she looked, if her tail was any indication. But that wasn''t what I was most interested in. Going deeper, I found the section for hidden skills. There, I found what I was looking for. Flix had a hidden skill called [Literacy]. Like all hidden skills, there wasn''t much to read that I could decipher without spending a lot of time on it, but if the name was any indication, it let her read and write without the need to learn to. Frankly, it felt like cheating, considering it took a year of hard work to do so on Earth, and many still couldn''t do it competently as adults, let alone do it at a high level. (Though I have the [Local Language] skill, so I didn''t even need to learn that.) The very existence of this skill, and as a hidden one, suggested that it was something everyone was born with. Checking myself, I found the exact same hidden skill as well. I had always thought that [Local Language] was responsible for letting me read the language, but it seemed it might not have been so. This new-found knowledge was pretty enlightening, though it had almost no value at all. At least it explained why in a world that seemed like the average person was poorly educated, that writing was so prolific. I hadn''t even given the fact that the requests at the adventurers'' guild was written down a second thought. But thinking about it, it was strange. Most people here should''ve been illiterate. At least my curiosity was sated. "Alright, thanks Flix." Without warning, the little girl''s hug became a little tighter and her tail wagging sped up a bit. I was only trying to give my appreciation, but it looked like it was received better than I expected. "Anyways, I think that''s enough, so can you let go?" But just as quickly, her tail froze up as her hug got ever so slightly stronger. Flix upturned her head and peeked at me between my breasts. "Do I have to?" She gave me those puppy dog eyes again. It was as if she was on the verge of tearing up, and the very act felt like my heart was on the verge of tearing up. "Well, maybe we can stay like this for a little longer." I averted my eyes, unable to take it any longer. "Yay!" Once again she buried her face in my chest and her tail started to wag quickly again. The strength she put into her limbs and tail might''ve been a bit straining on her small body as her breathing grew audible with her quick and deep breaths. Unable to move or do much in this situation, I wrapped my left arm around her back and pat her head with my right hand. Flix froze for a moment before squeezing me even tighter and wagging her tail even faster. I was a little worried that she''d tire herself out, but since she was enjoying it so much, I opted not to ruin her fun. "Ah! Flix''s hogging Scarlet all to herself!" As I heard footsteps coming down the stairs, a voice called out as the first of them reached the dining room. The little girl on my lap froze for a moment before turning her head towards the voice. I couldn''t see her expression, but she wrapped herself around me even tighter than before. Once more, I was glad of my high stats. This much force wasn''t anywhere near enough to hurt me, though I was worried that it would cramp her limbs up. On the other hand, the kids that showed up flinched before gathering themselves. All as a group, they surrounded Flix and me. "C''mon Scarlet, play with us too!" The kids grabbed my sleeves and pulled me in every direction, but the little girl tightened her grip even further. "Ah, ummm, are all you kids waking up now?" "We are! You can''t see the sun, but the sky''s getting brighter!" "Brighter? Now?" Flix had been with me for at least an hour, if not longer. I''d been indulging myself in the nostalgic feeling of petting a child, but when I thought about it, it was strange that nobody else had come down the stairs when Flix had. "You...do you always wake up so early?" "Umm...no...not usually..." The triangular eared girl poked her face between my breasts, but after looking into my face for a second, she averted her eyes as she answered. "Then how come you came down so early?" "Umm...I woke up because I needed to pee...but I saw you when I was going back to bed..." I didn''t notice that. I must''ve been pretty engrossed in my thoughts at the time. "Aren''t you sleepy then? You can go back to bed for a while." "No! I''m fine! Can I stay like this? It''s a favour, right?" (She''s pulling such a thing like that?) I thought it was a bit odd how much she liked this position, but while normally I had no reason to refuse it and wouldn''t mind indulging her, she wasn''t the only kid here demanding my attention. "I think Miss Scarlet wants to make breakfast for everyone. Since everyone will be waking up about now, how about you continue that later, Flix?" Peeking from a gap between the kids, Philia had shown herself with a gentle smile and came to my rescue. "Mmm...okay..." The reluctance was so palpable that I felt like I could draw a face in it with my finger. But after a few moments, she quietly got off. The other kids looked conflicted. They obviously wanted to play, but the mention of food made them hesitate. Personally, I didn''t mind either and I had already eaten, but between the two, I thought that making breakfast would be a better choice, and it would be a waste to discard the chance Philia gave me. As I made my way to the kitchen, the kids all followed me like ducklings. It was cute, but could easily become troublesome. "So, who wants to give me a hand?" """Me!""" The answer was unanimous. After breakfast, many of the kids left the building to go earn some money, albeit reluctantly since I was staying. I had to reassure them that I wasn''t going to leave while they were gone, and I''d still be there when they came back. While they were out, I helped out taking care of the kids that were too young to do minor chores or even sit on the streets to beg. Fortunately there wasn''t many of them, only three that were that young. It seemed like since most of the kids here were the kids of adventurers, most of the time the parents would refuse more dangerous jobs until their children grew old enough that they didn''t need constant attention. But jobs like that weren''t so abundant that every adventurer with a child could do exclusively those, and even those that could might hit some especially bad luck, leaving behind the child with nobody to care for them. "I can''t tell you how much I appreciate what you''re doing for us." Philia looked up as she leaned against me while we were sitting on a bench in the orphanage''s back yard. The three tiny kids were in our arms taking a nap while we stared at the small dirt field across from us. "I''m not doing anything special." Everyone had been thanking me so much lately. It was nice to be thanked, but sometimes it felt excessive. They were letting me stay and in turn I helped out. It wasn''t anything to be praised for. "It''s because it''s not something special that I''m thankful for it." I turned my head to my side. The director was looking directly up at me wearing a gentle smile on her face as her head rested on my arm. I quickly turned away. Looking at her face from so close made my heart race. This kind of intimacy was such a foreign thing for me, I wasn''t able to deal with it properly. If this was the norm amongst female friends in this world, then I was worried about what would happen if I were to make more friends. "You know, that doesn''t really make much sense, at least to me." "Maybe not, but that''s how I feel. You could be doing any number of extraordinary things to be thanked for, but instead you are helping me take care of the children. For me, that is something to be thankful for." "I''m only paying back what I owe. You''re letting me stay after all." "Perhaps, but not only are you donating enough food to feed everyone, but you''re also cooking everyone''s meals, playing with the children, and even helping me with the little things. From my perspective, simply staying the night doesn''t balance things out in the slightest." Having refuted my argument so completely, I stayed silent as I looked at the two little kids in my arms, adjusting their position slightly so that neither of them would slip into an awkward position as they had their nap. "You''re quite thoroughly a mother to these children already." From the corner of my eye, the director''s gentle smile was directed towards the kids in my arms as she held the third in hers. I felt like I had been told something similar a while back. "I''d prefer it if it was a big sister though." "People don''t always get what they want most." "You...!" As I turned to argue back, Philia quickly rose her body and her lips met mine. My entire body froze at the unexpected sensation and my mind went blank. Rather than simply pressing her warm and soft lips against mine, I felt a pulling sensation as she sucked on my lips. Suddenly, something hot and wet intruded into my mouth and touched my tongue before Philia''s face moved away from me. The older lady sat back down, turning her fact to the kid in her arms while her face became cherry red. My own felt like it was so hot it would catch on fire at any moment. By the time I could move again, Philia had already returned inside and the kids in my arms were trying to attract my attention. (If this is what friends between women are like in this world, I don''t know how I''ll survive it.) Ninetailed_Furball Hi everyone! (¨R?¨Q)/ Sorry for the late release. Feels like it''s been happening a lot lately, but at least I haven''t missed any days yet! (Aside from the bonus chapter, but we don''t talk about that (>_<)) That said, this chapter was quite unexpected for me. The events in it were supposed to be much shorter originally, yet somehow what was supposed to only take up a quarter of the chapter ended up taking up almost the entire thing?! I was supposed to get to the next day by the end of this chapter, yet we''re not even halfway?! ¦²(©b§Õ©b;) Well, I did kinda go a bit overboard with Scarlet''s inner monologue. That, and Philia''s little scene. (¡ä?¦Ø?`) Did you know, originally Philia wasn''t supposed to have any yuri scenes at all? She was just the director and was a completely minor character that would only have a few minor scenes but otherwise be a background character! ¦²(?§¥?) But you guys really took on to her, and after that petition so many of you signed, we got that nice yuri scene. After that, I couldn''t help myself but include another! Ah, and my yuri juices just won''t stop flowing either. Am I going to have to write another soon? Well, you guys seemed to like it before, so I may go and do a bunch more. But I didn''t tag yuri or GL on this story. What to do? ©´(''¡«`£»)©° Anyways, after some comments on the last chapter, I figured I''d put on a late poll! It''s nothing special, but I figured I''d want to quantify what you guys thought. Which of the perspectives did you like the most in the last chapter? Oh, and I put so much effort in some of the names, yet nobody noticed? (£Ô¨Œ£Ô) I hope to see you guys in the comments again! Just like how you enjoy my story, I just can''t stop reading your comments! It makes me so happy that you guys are so talkative! ?©³(?o?)©¿? Chapter 43 – Orphanage Days The fluffballs circled around me in a slow orbit. It felt like they were laughing at how ridiculous I looked. Once I managed to calm down, I gave them an annoyed glare before going back inside. Most of the kids soon came back and I went to teaching them a bit more about soap-making. First, we started with using the new equipment I had made. Fortunately Philia wasn''t mad that I used a room and set it up without her knowledge. The room wasn''t being used as I had thought, but I still wished I had the foresight to properly ask permission beforehand. The stove itself the kids caught on quickly, but the distiller took a lot more time. The very idea of it looked difficult for the kids to grasp, but after several explanations and a few demonstrations, they managed it, and we made another batch of soap, this time using some spare animal fat I had left around in my bag along with the lye we had let sit the day before. For the essential oil, I considered for a moment to use the flowers the kids gave me before, as they were perfectly preserved in my bag, but chose against it. It probably wouldn''t have been taken very well, as they were gifts. The kids gathered a bunch of wild flowers and we used that as a basis. The scent was was a bit indistinct, but it served it''s purpose for teaching the kids how to use the distiller. I just had to stress the importance of using only one type of flower for making the oil per batch. Mixing can be done afterwards if a good combination was found. Using the ashes from all the fires we had burned that day, we threw that into a pot to make the next batch of lye. After the day''s soap making was done, we moved on to dinner before we played around until the sun started to set, and the kids went to bed. That night, I went around, making adjustments to the equipment, then enjoyed some time in the bath on my own. I didn''t bother trying to get the kids to bathe more often than they were used to. On the other hand, I wasn''t restricted to their routine. Taking the bath made me notice a few details that needed adjustments, so I added things like several types of hangers and holders for various bathing equipment. I spent the rest of my free time that night playing with the little spirits until the first of the kids woke up. The next day, I managed to convince Philia to do some shopping for me. As I was starting to run low on cash, so I handed her a bunch of those mana imbued crystals I had gotten in the dungeon for her to convert. What I had her buy was any sort of cheap oils she could find, milk, and honey. As I waited for her return, I went around doing some basic cleaning, mostly just sweeping the front and back of the building, as I had to care for the youngest kids on my own being the only adult around until Philia came back. By the time she did, the sun was already setting. She apologized profusely that she couldn''t get her hands on milk. It seemed like there weren''t many places that sold it, and it had to be ordered beforehand because milk was brought in from outside of the city from a nearby village. For me it wasn''t a big deal, as I still had a bunch left of it as well, and I did my best to placate her on that. But it seemed Philia was uneasy at the idea of me providing so much of everything. Only repeatedly mentioning that it was temporary and that they would have to provide all their own ingredients in the future was what made her quit the subject, but she didn''t stop being hesitant over it. That night, after I finished my nightly jar of blood, I started work on something I had been putting off lately. Just thinking about it brought a swirl of emotions and depending on which direction it took me, brought me back to tears, paralyzed from doing anything useful. But if I didn''t risk that, I wouldn''t be able to do what I had promised. What I needed to do. I was going to bring back Alicia no matter what. It was what I had promised both her and myself. As long as the possibility existed, I was going to move to to make it a reality so that one day we could walk together side by side. While it hadn''t actually been a while, it certainly felt like it. Going through the master skill list, trying to find the bits and pieces I could use to create the new skill needed to bring Alicia back. My options were to put her soul into an existing body, into a body I make myself, or find a way to wake her up without a body. The first I was against, and would only resort to as a last resort. Any body that already existed would be that of the deceased or a non-living one, neither were prospects I liked. The second choice would be idea. Growing or building a body perfect for her was the top choice, but also the most difficult and time consuming. The sheer number of complicated and difficult steps involved made me put it off for the time being. By elimination, that made the third step the one I would go for. At the least, it would serve as a good temporary measure. If choice #2 was idea, then choice #3 was a great stop-gap measure, and could be used to transition in to #2 in the future. I''d be able to enjoy Alicia''s company once again even if she wasn''t in a state where we could interact like before, at the very least we could talk. As an added bonus, I could get feedback on her preferences for #2 if she wanted a body different from before. It was the closest thing I could do when it came to reincarnating like I had experienced myself. At the current time, Alicia existed as a formless mass held together inside of the container of my [Soul Siphon] skill. Thinking about it, leaving the skill as is was risky. While it didn''t automatically activate like my [Blood Suck] skill, accidentally activating it could have devastating effects on Alicia. With that in mind, I made a small alteration. Simply by disconnecting the act of sucking with the transfer of any data made it impossible to corrupt Alicia''s data. Satisfied with the safety measure had I put into place, I moved on to my research onto awakening Alicia. As I parsed through the master list of skills, I also thought about what sort of end result to aim for. The obvious option was to turn Alicia into something similar to the little spirits that always followed me. Looking up at one, I activated [Scan] and had a look. It seemed like their species name was actually [Lesser Spirit]. That suggested there was some sort of greater spirit as well, and maybe even other types of spirits. The implications were both encouraging and disheartening. Encouraging because there was an obvious path to take, but discouraging because it would involve changing Alicia''s species from human to some form of spirit. It was difficult to predict what sort of effects such a thing would have. Even for myself, when I thought about it, there were quite a few changes I had gone through when I had changed into a vampire. Many of which I still had trouble understanding or even identifying years later. For example, the instinctive urge to drink blood. While pretty obvious, the consequences weren''t as much so. Needing to feed and instinctively knowing how to wasn''t too odd, at least I didn''t think so. But the lack of guilt after the fact? Even though they were only goblins, when I thought about it, it was strange about not feeling anything about it. No matter how much goblins were "cockroach-like," they were still not bugs, as disgusting as they were. The ones in dungeons aside, they were still humanoids with their own lives, as stupid and ugly as they were. It was strange that I didn''t feel any remorse for killing them. I remembered hearing about an incident where a coworker who liked to act all bad-ass freaked out over the thought of killing a mouse. I doubted I would''ve reacted too much differently in the past as he did, but now killing animals regardless of their appearances didn''t phase me in the slightest. It was a bit worrying that if I crossed the line and killed an intelligent being, I might not even think twice about it afterwards. The fact that the inherent chaos and lawlessness of this world was worrying, as it might be only a matter of time before I was forced to kill someone. Fortunately I hadn''t seen much violence inside of the city, but there was the fantasy trope of bandits on the roads. I could only hope that if I end up facing such people, it wouldn''t lead to me disregarding the value of peoples'' lives. Another thing I had only recently noticed was my lack of a sex drive. It wasn''t even something even noticed until I thought about the changes to my body again. Especially as I had turned into a woman, I''d have thought that I would''ve reacted in some way to seeing a bare man''s chest other than simply thinking it was weird. I couldn''t feel even a trace of hormones running through my bloodstream when interacting with any men since leaving my home. The closest thing was how Philia made my heart race when she rubbed herself against me or kissed my lips, but that was probably just me being conscious about her actions. But when I thought about her actions, I couldn''t help but overlap them with the flirting a close couple would do in the shows I used to see. (But there''s no way she really has those sort of feelings for me, would she?) We had only just met. There was no way such rapid developments could happen in real life. It was probably just a part of the culture in this world I hadn''t known about before. That said, it wasn''t exactly something I could imitate either for the time being. Even if she felt more than simply friends, there was no way it would be because of who I was. It had only started when she saw my face without obstructions. Making a move on her would just be a slap to all the hospitality she had given me since I showed up out of nowhere as a nobody. It was a bit of a depressing thought, but it was probably for the best. While I didn''t want to go through a second life without ever having even dated anyone, much less ending it as a virgin again, taking advantage of Philia like that wasn''t right. Even though she insisted that there wasn''t anything wrong with it, I couldn''t help but feel it was. I shook my head. I was getting way off topic. It was like I was instinctively trying to avoid thinking about Alicia for more than a few seconds. Breaking down and crying wasn''t a good prospect, but not doing anything and just letting her keep sleeping inside of me for all of eternity was far, far worse. For now, I had a plan of action. Find a way to at least wake her up so I could hear her opinions on how to proceed for her full resurrection. On Earth, a child so young often wouldn''t even be consulted, but I wanted her to have the final say in it. It was her life I was going to create, so she deserved to have a say. That said, as the hours ticked by, I couldn''t say I was getting much progress. From everything I could find out, what I was doing may have been unprecedented. There was a serious lack of code I could use to achieve anything I wanted to do. Putting together the modules and code blocks that may have tangential use, I couldn''t say I had more than a small percentage of what was needed. I did find a metamorphosis skill that belonged to an insect monster, but it required an existing body to make it work. I did make a copy for future reference, but otherwise there wasn''t much use for now. The more I dug, the more it felt like creating a new skill for Alicia to inhabit and awaken into was my current best bet. There simply wasn''t any skills that allowed me to transfer her soul into a new body. Even ones that interacted with a person''s soul was pretty limited, with the one that I used to create [Soul Siphon] being the only one I had found so far. tump tump Looking up, I saw Flix standing by the door looking on. It should''ve still been pretty early, so it was a bit surprising to see her awake already. "Is something the matter?" The little girl looked away, but I couldn''t help feel like she wanted to say something. "Did you have a bad dream?" She looked up at me, but turned her head down again after a moment. I was probably a little off from the mark. "Do you want to talk about it? Here, come over." I opened my arms wide, inviting her over. The girl''s face brightened up and her triangular ears flattened against her head as she rushed over and climbed onto my lap. Just like last time, she wrapped her limbs around my body and buried her face into my chest. Flix''s tail wagged strongly enough that I could feel her butt move back and forth on my lap a little as I stroked her hair. "So, what made you wake up so early?" "...I needed to pee." Her tail slowed down a little as she responded for some reason. Flix had said the same thing two days before. Did she have a habit of drinking too much water before going to sleep? (Or is it something else?) Well, it wasn''t like it was problematic, though it could be a bit harmful if she did it too often. "Ummm...what were you doing just now?" Peeking from the valley in between my breasts, Flix looked up at me. "Ah, I was trying to come up with...a new spell." Letting on that I could make skills wasn''t going to be very safe, for myself or her, but magic was probably fine. "You can make new spells?!" But a little unexpectedly, Flix''s eyes sparkled like she was looking at her personal hero. Well, maybe it was stupid of me to think it was unexpected. People probably rarely made new spells. Even if it was common, I was talking to a little girl who had no acquaintances aside from me that could probably even use magic. "Ah, yea. It''s not too hard, though I don''t know if what I''m working on is something nobody else has come up with." Or rather, raising the dead couldn''t have been even remotely a new idea even in this world. Despite my words though, Flix''s eyes sparkled even more. At this rate, I worried that they might light up the room or something. "Do, do you think I can learn magic?" I froze up a bit at the unexpected question. Maybe it was due to how I learned it, but it felt like a pretty stupid question to me. "I think anyone can learn it if they try." "Then! Then can you teach me magic?" "Eh? Ah, sure?" "Yay!" And hence, my little session of turning a little girl into a weapon of mass destruction started. Later on, after most of the kids went to go earn whatever little money they could, Philia and I were sitting together in the back yard bench again caring for the youngest kids. And once again, the short director was pressing her body against my arm. I couldn''t help but think about what had happened the last time we were in this situation. My face was already hot without anything having happened and I couldn''t look her in the face. Without being able to clear my mind of those thoughts, I stared blankly at the sky. "Scarlet?" "Ah, yea?" "...Never mind." Philia stirred a bit before quieting up. It was just a little, but it felt like she wasn''t pressing her body against my arm quite as much. Stealing a glance, she was looking downwards, so I couldn''t see her expression but a pang of guilt wrapped up and squeezed my chest. It was my fault. I had caused her to change the way she did, and now she was suffering for it. (Philia said I should love myself for who I am, but how could I do that when I hurt those around me for being who I was?) Before I could come up with an answer, the sound of the kids returning interrupted our time together. When we went in, I found out that the other kids had caught wind of how I was teaching Flix magic. So instead of playing, it turned into a big group session where I taught the basic principals of the skills required and how to learn them. For some reason, even Philia was watching intently at the back as she tip-toed to see over some of the other kids. It was so adorable that I couldn''t help but to lean down out of sight for a moment, only to straighten my back to see her frustrated expression. I had a hard time maintaining a straight face the whole time. That night, I spent more time working on the skill to bring Alicia back until Flix showed up early in the morning. I couldn''t help but feel that she woke up earlier than before, but since I didn''t have an actual clock, I wasn''t confident on that. I gave her a private lesson as she sat on my lap until the other kids woke up. After breakfast they went off again and I was alone in the backyard with Philia and the napping kids. She was rubbing against my arm again, though not as energetically as she did the first time. I couldn''t help but be reminded how I had made her a bit sad by my actions, or lack there of. After a while spending our time like that, I wasn''t able to stand the silence anymore. It felt like it was accusing me of something. "Umm, Philia..." I turned to glance at the quiet director. I was sure she heard me, but she took some time before looking up at me. "Umm...I know, I think I know what you''re feeling, but I..." "I know. You can''t accept my feelings. I was...I was being cheap, taking advantage of your kindness, your naivety." "It''s not that. I just..." "I said I know. You think that my feelings were caused by your appearances, but so what? So what that my feelings changed from simply liking you to actually loving you because of your looks? It was only the trigger. For me, it only took things to the point that I couldn''t hold back." "But..." "Scarlet. I said it before. Your beauty is a part of you. It''s a part of what makes you you. Don''t deny it, as it would be denying a part of yourself." "..." "I''m not...I''m not asking for you to return my feelings. I know you can''t do that, not right now. Even before that first kiss, I already knew that." I turned away from her. (This, this is my fault. It''s because of me she has to suffer like this.) But a hand touched my cheek and turned my head back. The hand was big and rough, a bit calloused, yet warm and gentle beyond belief. As I turned back to Philia, I felt something soft and warm on my lips, but just as my mind registered it, it had receded. "It''s not your fault. You are who you are, and people will love you for it, as I do. Don''t debase my love by coming to hate yourself because of it." Philia got off of the bench and turned to head inside. "If you can''t come to at least like yourself on your own, then at least let me help you not hate yourself." As her figured disappeared from my sight, my mind hung on one thought. (That kiss was the warmest she ever gave me.) Ninetailed_Furball Hi everyone! Once again it''s your furry little author! This time the chapter was a bit shorter than normal, but I hope you''ll forgive me with what''s coming up in the next one. m(_ _)m That said, another yuri scene? What is this?! Do I need to put in a GL tag now? If you''re thinking along those lines, I''m sorry to say that it won''t be happening. Like Philia said, it''s only until Scarlet moves on. Now then, we had a poll in the last chapter, and as I expected, Philia went real strong on it. Is she best girl, or is she best girl? ©c(¡ä?£à)¥Î ...wait, why''s Flix even higher than Philia? She''s barely had any scenes. What a mystery. (¡ä?¦Ø?`) But now, she''s learning magic?! Is our cute little foxkin going to become a sorceress in the future?! Oh, but the entire orphanage is learning magic now. Maybe I should rename it the magic academy? (£¯¥í¡ã)£¯ [Scarlet''s Magic Academy and Dorm-house for Orphans] No, maybe that''s too long of a name. Oh well. Hope to hear from you all again in the comments! (^o^)د Chapter 44 – Consequences The rest of the day was pretty uneventful, and I went back to my usual work at night. Around the time I started to wonder if Flix would be showing up again, I suddenly heard loud crying upstairs. Not wasting any time, I rushed up to find the source. As I opened the door to the room the cries originated from, I saw the large room packed with crude beds. Many of them had kids in them in the middle of groggily waking up, while others were already vacated and the kids that slept in them were surrounding a particular bed. On that bed, was Flix, the culprit of the nighttime noise. She was tightly holding the fur blanket around her while sitting with her arms wrapped around her knees, her cheeks were glistening as she choked back her tears. "What happened here?" "Flix wet her bed!" The smallest kid in the group surrounding the drooping eared girl answered without an ounce of hesitation nor sympathy. Flix on the other hand raised her face and reached out both hands in a panic before dropping then and openly wept. I didn''t particularly think it was a big deal, as it was a common problem amongst little kids, though the bushy tailed girl was a little old for that, accidents did happen. (Well, just the fact that it did happen would probably be pretty embarrassing, so I guess I can''t fault her for crying. In that case, I need to be the adult here.) "Is that it? In that case, you guys can go back to sleep. I''ll handle it." The other kids lost interest as I said that, but the little girl on the other hand looked up at me in a panic. "No, I, I..." "It''s not a big deal. It happens. Here." Without waiting for an answer, I pulled off the covers and picked Flix up in one arm. A wetness seeped through my sleeve as she hurried and wrapped her arms around my neck. With my other hand, I picked up the blanket and thin mattress and left the room. Behind me, I could hear the kids returning back to their beds. As I reached the stairs, Philia showed herself, but her surprised expression immediately softened up. "If you need me, I''ll be in my room." "Ah, um, thanks." As she made way for us, I fumbled my words a bit when she gave us a bright smile. Soon, we reached the bathroom, where I put Flix and the bedding down. I got Flix to remove her dress as I stripped down, then after filling one of the tub sections with hot water, I sat down on an upturned bucket and placed the nervous-looking girl down onto my lap. "You''ll feel better once you''re clean, I''ll guarantee it!" "..." But she refused to respond and just looked down at her lap, shoulders trembling slightly. Ignoring such a thing, I soaked her hair in some hot water and started work on lathering it up, slowly kneading her scalp, giving care and attention excess of what was needed for her short hair, but necessary to improve her mood. Once I rinsed her hair, I moved on to her body, slowly moving across massaging her body as my fingers loosened her tense muscles. Flix visibly grew more relaxed as my fingers played across her body. By the time I finished rinsing all the soap suds off of her cream-coloured skin, I could swear that there was a distinct softness and glossiness that her skin lacked just a little while ago. I transferred Flix to the bath so she wouldn''t get cold and proceeded to wash myself while occasionally dumping some magically conjured water onto the mattress and fur blanket, rinsing off all traces of any smells it might have. From the corner of my eye, Flix stared at me in a daze with amber eyes as she leaned against the edge of the bath tub, her chin resting on the lip. Quickly finishing up, I pulled the slightly vacant little girl into my lap, leaning her against my chest as I lightly wrapped my arms around her. My eyes wandered to the sight of the girl''s tail. The way how it''s full fluffiness was gone and the fur was now just floating like it was desperately trying to keep up appearances felt a little sad. "So, that little accident you had earlier..." The little girl''s body stiffened up. It felt like she stuck between wanting to run away and feeling she was unable to. (Well, even if she tried to run, I wouldn''t let her) "Let me guess. You drank a whole lot of water before going to sleep so you''d wake up before anyone else?" Flix twisted around and looked at me in shock. "And you''ve been doing it the last few days as well, haven''t you?" "I, I..." She turned her eyes to the side, deliberately avoiding my gaze. But I needed her to look at me. Lifting one of her legs, I turned her body around and made the trembling girl face towards me. With one arm around her lower back, I gently stroked her head with my free hand. "You know, I''m not angry that you wet your bed or anything. What I am upset about is how you''re only hurting yourself with what you''re doing." "Huh?" "A growing girl needs to sleep properly or she won''t grow up to be big and strong you know?" "Mhmm." She slowly nodded in understanding. "So, you''re a good girl, right? You want to grow up to be big and strong, right?" "Yea." Her nod this time was a bit more energetic. "But...you''re not sleeping much, are you Scarlet?" (Ugh, perceptive little brat.) "Ummm, well, I''m already all grown up, so it''s not as important for me." "Even though you''re so much smaller than all the other adults?" "Erk! Umm...you see? That''s why you need to eat and sleep properly, so you don''t end up short like me." (Not like that''s the reason why I''m this short.) "Then, if I don''t sleep properly, then I can be short like you when I grow up?" For some reason, the kid''s eyes were sparkling at that moment, exactly the opposite reaction as to what I wanted. (Ugh, to think it would go this way.) "Umm...well, I''m not short because of a lack of sleep. And if you don''t sleep, while you won''t grow tall, you also won''t become strong like me." "Strong?" "Yup, like this!" I suddenly lifted the little girl''s body up with one hand, all the way out of the water. I had to squint a little as her flailing limbs splashed water all around. Especially that tail of hers. After a few seconds, I gently lowered her back down, but the sudden surprise had made her lose the rest of her composure, and the second she was back in the water, Flix wrapped her limbs around body and pressed herself as tightly as she could against me. I could feel her heart in her chest beating like a giant drum. "Maybe that was overly dramatic, but see? Wouldn''t you like to be a strong girl like me when you grow up Flix?" "..." It looked like she needed a bit more of a nudge before accepting my words. "And besides, if you don''t sleep properly, I won''t let you sit in on my magic lessons. It''ll be too dangerous to practice when you can hardly keep your eyes open." "I''ll sleep!" Flix''s reaction was a lot more visceral than I expected, but it did the job. "Alright, but for now, I doubt you''ll be able to fall asleep properly in your bed, so let''s start tonight instead. For now, you can take a nap with me, so let''s get dry." Giving me a nod, Flix climbed out of the bath and we wiped ourselves off with some ragged towels. I quickly rinsed and dried our clothes with magic, and we put them on before I carried the little girl to another room where I sat down on a chair and had Flix sit on my lap. She buried her face in my chest as she wrapped her limbs around me again. Her now happily fluffy tail wagging slowly as she fell asleep while I gently stroked her hair. In the end, Flix woke up when the other kids loudly started to complain about hogging my attention once they woke up. Just in case, I warned all of them not to try to skip out on sleep, or I''d get angry. Philia stood by at the side giving me a warm smile the entire time. Personally, I wished that she''d help me instead of enjoying the scene. But thankfully, after that incident, Flix stopped trying to wake up early. Instead, she even started to sleep in a bit. The next few days were pretty uneventful. I helped take care of the kids, do some light cleaning both inside and outside, spent time helping the kids learn the basic magic skills, and quietly sat together with Philia when the kids were otherwise occupied for the day. For some reason, Philia and I ended up cuddling on the bench whenever the kids were out. We didn''t really talk much while like that, and things felt different from before. It wasn''t like the fake couple thing that was going on before, but we were more just enjoying the presence of each other. It was...nice. Like sisters comforting each other. At least, that''s what I imagined. At night, I would work on designing my new skills, then play with the little fluffballs to relax. Overall, I quite enjoyed my days there and kept pressing them beyond what I had originally planned because of it. (They''re there again.) My [Sense Presence] skill had been going off nonstop ever since I left the dungeon due to the prevalence of people, animals, and monsters around me, but the last few days I noticed there were a pair of signals that often appeared nearby where other people didn''t cross very often. At first I thought it was just some ordinary people, even though they stayed in one spot. At worst, they were some sort of dealer. After a while, they would move on, but then I would find a presence in the same spot again at night, and they would stay there until long after it had gotten dark before moving on. I wasn''t entirely sure as I didn''t pay much attention to it at first, but it felt like they were the same two presences that kept stopping at the same spot. After five days of this repeating, I sent out some of the little spirits to have a look. What they reported back was that there were two large people in concealing dark clothes. They didn''t do anything beyond simply standing there no matter how long the spirits looked on, so they came back after becoming bored. I was pretty concerned at this point. These two people definitely had a specific plan in mind, and it was possible the orphanage was involved. Once everyone else had gone to sleep, I snuck out of the building to have a look. The place where I felt the presences was in a narrow alley where the light of the sun wouldn''t shine. "Ha! To think she finally left, she came right here?" "Heh, were ya gonna take a shortcut somewhere? Guess you''ve got somma bad luck." The two figured were giants of men, wearing all black nondescript clothes that covered their faces, but their voices felt familiar. "Hey, ya think it weird she came this way at this time?" "What, ya think she knew we were waiting? Blow off, some slut like this having skills like some spy?" "Heh, got a good point. No way this little bitch can do that." I was getting pretty tired of being called a bitch or slut all the time. Considering how late it was, I started to consider trying to scare these two thugs. My eyes flickered around to confirm that there weren''t any presences my skill couldn''t detect around me. "Oy, stop right there ya broad. If ya thinking of running, then lemme tell ya, we got orders. You make a break for it, we break into that building and start taking crying little kids in bags." "Heh, you''ve been making it hard to do it lately. The kids stopped wandering around the alleys after dinner. Haven''t been able to grab even one after the first." "And some fucking mage stopped us that other time too. Fuck! The boss''s been so pissed we couldn''t bring any products back to sell!" (These guys...!) My hands formed into fists and my teeth clenched so hard my jaw hurt. "Woa there. Don''t ya start anything funny. Our orders are to take ya in to the boss. You come quietly, and we won''t touch the kids. How''s that?" "And if you getting any ideas, the boss already knows you''re connected to the stupid orphan kids, so you better come or else." I forcibly relaxed my muscles. If what they were saying was true, then I needed deal with things at the source. Making a move here wouldn''t help. I looked one of them in the eye. For a fraction of a second I froze, finally recognizing these two. They were the ones that hit on me the first night after visiting the orphanage. "...Fine. Take me to your boss." "Heh, that''s a good slut. C''m''ere!" The big man grabbed me by the nape of the neck and forced me to walk. As we moved, he checked my body, removing my knife from my belt and taking a glance inside my bag. His hands roamed around my body, making goosebumps rise everywhere he touched. They stopped several time, at my thighs, my ass, my chest especially. It took all my willpower not to slug him in the face. The thoughts of what would happen to the kids if I made a wrong move here kept me from doing something I could potentially regret. After few short blocks, there was a small carriage parked at the side of the road. The other man got on to the driver''s seat while the one holding me like a disgruntled kitten shoved me inside before getting in himself. When the door closed, I felt the carriage lurch and the clomping of hooves resounded through the thin wooden walls. After a while, the carriage stopped and I was dragged outside. What stood in front of me was that huge building that looked more like a palace than a house. Some of the lights were on, and I could easily see the garish decorations through the windows. The two large men dragged me through the front gates and inside. What greeted me was far more opulence than I had expected. The ceiling was lit with a giant chandelier filled with multi-coloured crystals, the walls was covered in bright red and gold pain and lined with giant paintings. There were display pillars with glossy vases and statues of naked women at regular intervals. The floor was made of black glossy wooden planks and a bright red carpet covered the middle. My boots depressed significantly into the thick carpet as we walked. Somehow the well lit and gaudy interior felt even brighter than the annoying glare of the sun during the day, and I was forced to lower my hood even further than usual for the sake of my eyes. Well, for more than just that. My [Sense Presence] skill surprisingly didn''t find many hits inside the building, and almost all of them were concentrated in a single area on the first floor. Considering they were spread out in regular intervals, I presumed it was the servants'' quarters or barracks. Perhaps both. Aside from that, the few hits I got were all far away, slowly moving around. I was continued to be dragged by the neck as we went through the gaudy as all hell building, up the stairs to the third floor. knock knock "Yes?" "It''s Beldia and Hans. We''ve brought her." "You did! Finally you useless pieces of loam wolf fodder! You''ve finally done something right! Bring her inside!" One of the men opened the door and the other pushed me inside. As I was staggering to regain my balance, the door closed behind me. "Ah, my little slut. I''ve finally found you again!" The room I was thrust inside of was even more garish than the rest of the building. Gold and silver, all encrusted with jewels of every colour. There were things that I couldn''t even identify all around me, but at least looked expensive. My eyes opened wide as I got a look at the boss of those two bit thugs. The one standing there in the middle of the ostentatious room was the one that one store keeper called the city''s lord. (This guy again?!) I thought considering how haphazard this guy seemed, he wouldn''t even remember me after that first night. At worst, he''d forget after two or three nights. It looked like I was wrong. Or maybe it was less him and the two thugs trying to stay on his good side? Now that I thought about it, they were probably the ones guarding this man''s carriage back at the store I visited in the noble''s district. The lord closed the gap in between us and violently tore my hood down, knocking my hat off in the process. "Ah, even more beautiful that I had imagined! You! You will never cover that face ever again! I forbid it!" (This guy, saying whatever he wants, ordering me around like I''m his property!) I couldn''t help but scowl as I tried to figure out what to do. If what the thugs said was true, then this one was the one that had ordered the kids to be kidnapped and sold. It meant that he was the only one that could stop it as well. Erasing him was an option, but even if he was the mastermind, if I got caught doing it, I''d be the one in serious trouble. I wouldn''t be able to show my face in this country until I''ve been forgotten about. I had no knowledge about this world''s forensics, but just because the society looked to be middle ages level, didn''t mean that the technology wasn''t ahead of what was available on Earth in strange and unexpected places. The lights I''ve seen all around seemed to be standalone pieces. There wasn''t any obvious traces of mana flowing in from anywhere else, suggesting that they didn''t receive power from somewhere else like electric lamps on Earth. Such a thing for every light in a building wasn''t really possible from a practical standpoint on Earth, yet they did it here like it wasn''t a big deal. Before resorting to the worst case, I needed to at least try something else. "The kids, if I do what you say, what''ll happen to them?" "Huh? Kids? What kids?" "The ones at the orphanage on the western side of the city!" "Ah, those brats. Of course I''m going to sell the lot." "Wha?!" I blinked over and over, trying to process what he just said. "Ah, that damn orphanage is such an eyesore. All the land in this city belongs to me, yet they don''t have to pay me taxes?! What filth! No, if they refuse to pay their dues, then I''ll just crush them! Sell everyone there, then sell the plot once it becomes mine again! Do you have any idea how much that one plot is worth?!" "Wha...?" My mind was reeling. I couldn''t believe what I was hearing. "Well, let''s just say it''s worth a hundred times more than you. A thousand times! Yet it belongs to some damn orphans that won''t pay their taxes? Bah! If that''s the case, then I''ll just take it back and sell it to the highest bidder! Not only would I get the money from the sale, but the taxes from such prime real estate! That damn Vanir. Always complaining about how much I spend! Well, selling that orphanage and everyone in it will shut that damn geezer up! He''s too noisy for a damn butler!" My mind couldn''t keep up. Just as my mind registered what he said, it had trouble putting together how it actually connected. It was simply too baffling and asinine. "Heh, well, all that can wait. I finally have you in my hands!" The fool of a noble pulled me towards a bed before grabbed at my chest. He frowned for a bit before fiddling with the buttons holding my robes closed with a lecherous grin on his face. My mind circled around what he had said over and over. "Th, the kids..." "Ah? What are you prattling on about? You mean those damn orphans? Forget about them! They''ll all be sold off along with that damn dwarf heading the orphanage! Ah, but if you like them so much, maybe I''ll keep one of them to be your pet? If you''re half as good in bed as you look, I''ll let you take your pick when they''ve all got collars and chains!" "You!" Before I realized it, I was standing behind the city''s idiot of a lord, my hand having gone right through his back. I could feel a feeble attempt to struggle as the lecher''s mind caught up with what had happened before all strength faded from his body. On the other hand, I stood there with my hand buried in the dead man''s rib cage, trying to figure out what to do next now that lucidity returned to my mind. The instant my mind snapped, I circled around the buffoon and stabbed him with my fingers. My hand ended up buried in it''s entirety. Thankfully aside from my hand, I wasn''t dirty from the fool''s blood, and as there was no exit wound, there was almost no blood spilt. But it would be incredibly easy for anyone to discover what had happened, even if it was a little unbelievable. I needed a way to cover things up. The first thing I did was removed my robes until I was wearing only the right sleeve which I couldn''t remove until I pulled my hand out of the city lord''s back. Careful to avoid the blood gush, I pulled out my hand and moved out of the way, letting the blood spray out of the wound. I caught the body before it hit the ground to avoid making a sound with my clean hand and let it down gently. As I looked around the room, I formulated a plan. Hopefully the forensic sciences of this world wasn''t very advanced, but I needed to take every precaution I could. I conjured water to clean my hand and sleeve the best I could, then put the water into my bag to be disposed of later on. Next I took out an iron ingot from my bag and transmuted it into a thick, broad blade and repeatedly stabbed the open wound, careful to avoid any blood. Next I changed it into a pair of thin daggers and went to the door. The presence of the two thugs hadn''t moved from outside the door. No matter what, I needed to deal with these two guys as well. Not only did I had a personal grudge against them, but they had caused direct harm to the orphanage. They admitted to kidnapping one of the kids, and it was possible they''d kidnap more even without their boss. It was a risk I couldn''t take, beyond the personal gratification I would get. Moving as quickly as my stats would allow, I opened the door, slipped through, then stabbed up into the throats of both men with a dagger each. I caught their bodies and gently let them to the ground silently. Checking for presences, I confirmed that there weren''t any people nearby, and returned to my work in the dead lord''s chambers. I opened the curtains then the glass windows and looked around outside. The window looked towards the front courtyard. There weren''t any guards aside from the ones at the front gates, and neither were paying any attention towards the building. Taking one of the daggers with telekinesis magic, I stabbed it at regular intervals into the brickwork below the room''s window. The scratches were left at intervals a bit longer than my own arm length and set to look like someone climbing down the wall. Once done, I closed the curtains and put the daggers and my hat into my magic bag, then removed another iron ingot and formed them into a set of shackles with two sets of binders connected by a short chain. They were made so each set had two holes to pass limbs through and were held with a single crossbar instead of a lock. I wrapped my bag up with my robes and put it beside a large standing closet. Inside, it was filled with gaudy clothes, but there was some space at the bottom. I grabbed a silk scarf and stuffed it into my mouth as far as it would go, then tucked myself in and bound my hands and feet with the shackles behind my back, forcing me into an awkward position while laying on my side. With a bit more magic, I closed the closet and sealed myself in darkness. As a final measure, I activated [Spirit Form] and proceeded to change my appearances with [Alter Silhouette]. Rather than change my facial features, I left them mostly as is and instead concentrated on making a more drastic change. Changing my fangs back to how they were before, I changed my eye colour to amber and removed my ears. Then, I made triangular ears grow out of the top of my head and a bushy tail from my butt just above the belt of my hot pants. The animal features were modelled off of the ones I was most familiar with, which ended up being Flix. Of course, I didn''t change the colour of my hair. If anyone had seen me come in, then it would be a giveaway that either I wasn''t the one who originally came in, or that I had disguised myself at some point. Neither being very conductive to avoiding suspicion to the crime I has just committed. Laying there in the closet, I waited until someone discovered the bodies in front of the moronic lord''s chambers. Ninetailed_Furball Hi everyone! It''s your yuri loving fluffball once again! (^o^)د First of all, I''d like to give an apology for two things. First being how late this chapter ended up being. The last few days were pretty eventful for me (not particularly in a bad way, especially today), and I didn''t have as many chances to write as I had intended. The second is in regards to the last chapter. I''ve been thinking a lot about yuri lately due to other stories I''ve been working on (including a yuri short story contest) and my yuri juices had overflowed into this story. I went too far with the last scene, especially when a Philia deserved a proper way to come to terms with her feelings, and the way I originally planned it wasn''t going to cut it, especially with how I ended up reversing some decisions on the last chapter. The entire scene at the end of chapter 43 was rewritten, though the impact on the story isn''t massive, I do believe it does Philia proper justice, and encourage everyone to have a look, as it''s not a long scene. m(_ _)m That said, how did everyone like the climax of this arc? Do you feel vindicated? Or maybe the lord deserved far, far worse? Or maybe everything got overshadowed by Flix''s scene? (¡Ð¨Œ¡Ð£© I hope to hear from you all in the comments again! Making me look back on the previous chapter, I felt like I did a disservice with what I had written. Philia''s yuri scenes were nice, and I loved writing them, but it wasn''t appropriate. Not with how things were to progress in the story. So once again I apologize for that, you came to this story for fluff and adventure, but got yuri which probably made some of you uncomfortable. I hope I didn''t make many of you turn away from my story permanently because of a bad on the spot decision. m(_ _)m Chapter 45 – Deterring Investigation I lay there in the closet, bound and gagged, alone to my thoughts. (So, I really did it.) I searched through my feelings, trying to figure out how I felt about it all, and most all I could find was a bit of satisfaction. There wasn''t much grief, no regret. No, there was some regret. I hadn''t found anything about the kid that they kidnapped, and now I couldn''t even ask about it. Even though it probably happened before I had arrived at the orphanage, I regretted that I hadn''t had the foresight to at least get some clues before killing off those three. There was also one last feeling bubbling up from deep within: hunger. The scent of blood permeated even this closed off closet, and while it wasn''t particularly high quality blood, it did stimulate my appetite. I could only hope that while I bore with it, my stomach wouldn''t rumble at a bad time. Aside from that, I was just bored. Most of the little fluffballs had entered the closet and were floating around lazily. I could feel a few outside wandering around aimlessly. Unfortunately, I wasn''t really in a position to entertain them, but it felt like they could at least read the atmosphere that much, and didn''t insist on it. To think that in the end I felt so little after killing people. I felt a little bad for doing it, but not some sort of crippling anxiety over it. I couldn''t tell if it was because it was in my nature, if it was something inherent when it came to being a vampire, or if I''d been conditioned to care little about death after coming to this world,. I really hoped it was the last one. As terrible as such a thought was, it was way better than the other two. And there was enough evidence that it couldn''t be denied. I had spent every day since I was born in this world killing to survive. Even if I had never thought much of the things I had killed, it was still killing. Many of them weren''t any different from killing bugs on Earth to me, and anything that felt more than that was like breaking robots or something. Challenges to overcome rather than ending lives. If that was the case, then it wasn''t an inherent part of this world nor my race. (No, in a sense that''s an inherent part of this world, but just not one that everyone experiences.) But if it wasn''t an inherent part of my race, then it cut down the chances that all other vampires were hostile to the major nations of this world. But in the end, I could only hope that I wasn''t too much of an anomaly in that regard. Since there wasn''t much I could conclude on my own, I could only shelve this thought and move on. I did need to be careful to not lower the value of sentient life in my mind though, as now that I understood how little resistance I had to killing, I was extremely prone to falling down this slippery slope. Moving on, I needed to think about what else I needed to do to avoid suspicion. So far, I had physically hidden and restrained myself. To any casual observer, it should seem like I was forcibly bound and put out of sight by some outside assailant. It was my hope that even under basic scrutiny that the facade would hold up. In addition, the transformation I had put my body under should make it significantly harder, if not almost impossible, for someone to connect me to my true identity. But that alone wouldn''t be enough. I had only made the first impression that would keep me from being suspect. Suspicion couldn''t be put onto me until I was well out of sight and no longer discoverable for further questioning. For that, I needed to confirm my cover story. If I was playing the innocent bystander who was in the same room when the murder happened, I needed to be able to provide a basic witness account, otherwise I''d be suspect as there were witnesses of me entering the building. But it wasn''t like I needed anything more than some shady person entered though the front door and after killing the lecher who brought me to his home, ran away by climbing out of the window after binding me and hiding me in the closet. Even a description of the killer could be done on the fly as long as it was reasonably consistent. Since I most likely wouldn''t have much to worry on that end, I was again brought about with boredom. As I lay there in the darkness on my side, my mind drifted. In the end, even if it was for self defence and to protect the orphanage, I did kill three people. What would people think if they found out? Rather what would the orphans think? Philia? Alicia? The people...they can''t find out. I''d be screwed if they did. The orphans'' reactions were hard to predict. Many of them were too young to have solidified their morals, and would be heavily influenced by their affection of me. Philia...she probably wouldn''t approve, but at the same time I thought she would understand as well. (Alicia. What would she think?) Like the orphans, she was hard to predict on this front despite living together for a year. On one hand she was young and impressionable like the orphans, yet her opinion of me was much more solidified and she was likely more able to objectively judge my actions. (At least I''d like to think she could.) Maybe it was just wishful thinking, but sometimes Alicia seemed much more mature than her age suggested. At least it felt like it to me. Thinking back, Alicia was much stronger than I was when confronted over her death. She managed it with dignity I couldn''t as she grew weaker day by day. In the end I was a mess, desperately trying to find a way to save her while she quietly accepted her fate. Even in the end, she wanted to use what was left of her to support me. Despite only experienced a fraction as much life as I had, Alicia was able to do things I couldn''t see myself being even close to being capable of. As the images of her last moments played through my mind, I was overwhelmed with the feeling of my chest being crushed as tears freely overflowed from my eyes. I missed her so much. I so desperately wanted to hear her voice, to feel her touch. To see her smile once again. Laying there in the darkness, I quietly wept. The sound of a flat echo brought me out of my gloom. The dull reverberations were faint, but distinct, and repeated at a constant rate. It was the sound of feet against carpet through the walls. Stretching out my senses, I felt the presence of someone approaching slowly. There didn''t seem to be any urgency, so whoever it was wasn''t aware something was amiss yet. But as they approached, they paused for a moment then grew quick and loud before stopping entirely nearby. There was a few knocks, then the sound of a door opening. "My Lord!" A few more hurried footsteps before stopping entirely. "My god, how could this have happened?" "Mmmph!" Judging the timing to be as good as it could be, I yelled out through my gag and lightly hit my feet against the bottom of the closet. "Wha?!" After a moment, I was suddenly blinded as the closet was opened. "My god! You! Are you alright?" An elderly man in a well creased black suit cradled my head in his arm and pulled the scarf out of my mouth. "He...I...the lord...!" I quickly stammered out, doing my best to sound unsettled. "Shhh, shhh, it''s safe now. Nobody is going to hurt you miss. Allow me to remove these bindings." The old man lay me back down and started to fiddle with the shackles. It took him several minutes before I was freed, despite the shackles only being held together with a pair of large pins. I might need to review the design if I ever had to wear such a thing ever again. Then again, his hands were shaking pretty bad, so that might have had something to do with it. "I apologize for the delay. I am Vanir, the head butler of the house Koree. May I hear your name?" "Ah, umm...I''m Luna." I hadn''t considered my name to be asked. I could only hope he would accept such an impromptu name. "Luna is it? I know it to be difficult, but may I presume you bore witness to what had happened my lord?" Nodding, I gave him my fabricated story. "When, when the lord asked, demanded me...as he was pushing me towards the bed I heard...a man, a big, tall man come through the door. When I turned, he was already behind the lord, and I saw pain, fear on his face as the tall man standing behind him. He was wearing a white cloak, and a hood. I couldn''t see his face but. But he whispered something into the lord''s ear before laying him on the ground. There was a knife, or something, in his back. Then the man, he turned to me. I tried to run, but he, he grabbed me, then gagged and shackled me. I was put into that closet. I, I heard, I don''t know. Something strange. But after, it sounded like he opened the window, then there was the sound of some scratching. I didn''t hear anything after that." I stuttered horribly as I desperately tried to put together that story. The lack of planning and rehearsing really showed, but in turn I hoped that it sounded more authentic than being able to smoothly give my story like I was reading off of a script. "I see. I suppose you were brought here at my lord''s request?" I nodded. "How unusual. He much prefers humans over foxkins to warm his bed." (Shit.) "I, umm, I normally cover myself. This, this is what I was wearing when I brought here by his guards." To reinforce my point, I quickly picked up the bundle of discarded cloth near the closet and unravelled it, revealing my robes and bag. To prove my point, I quickly put on and buttoned up my robes and showed off how I looked while hugging my white rabbit plush. As an added touch, I tucked my tail between my legs and flattened my ears on top of my head. "Ah, yes, I see. Forgive me for suggesting anything untoward you." "Umm, no. It''s fine." "The sun had already crested the horizon. I am sure you would much prefer to rest and recover from your ordeal in a familiar place. Allow me to escort you." The old man waved his other hand towards the door before making his way out. I couldn''t help but stare at him for a moment before I got the clue and followed him. My cheeks felt a little warm. It was like I was being treated like a lady or something. (Or rather, I am a woman, so in a sense this is only proper?) It seemed like this was the first time I felt the positive side of being a woman in a public setting. All my time with Alicia was entirely private, and with the orphans I wasn''t treated like a woman, just an adult. Philia was the closest, but with the way she treated me wasn''t particularly feel distinct between a man or woman. This old man made me feel like I was specifically treated as a woman, and it kinda made me a little happy. Like I could be a little proud of what I was. It was a far cry from how that lecher or the thugs treated me like an object. (Well, aside from that perfume store shopkeeper, though he just treated me more like a customer than a woman.) While I felt like I was losing more and more of my previous self, I had to admit, I enjoyed the feeling. "Allow me to escort you all the way to your abode." Right as we were reaching the front gates, the old butler turned around and gave me that terrible announcement. "Ah, no. You must be busy. I can''t." "No, you are a guest of my lord, it is only proper that you be properly escorted." "But, but after what happened, wouldn''t you have to stay to handle the aftermath?" "Oh...yes. In that case, please allow one our guards to escort yourself to your abode." It felt like he really wanted to find out where I was staying, but that was the last thing I could afford. The way he was so insistent, he was probably at least a little suspicious of me already. "No, but..." "I insist. It is for your own protection." (Hell no it is!) "P, protection? Do you mean this city is dangerous enough that I would need such a thing during the day?" "N, no. The city is perfectly safe. It is the pride of house Koree. But..." "Then taking an escort would be an insult to your lord, wouldn''t it?" "..." The old man''s face twitched slightly, but otherwise maintained that gentle smile he had since the beginning. "It would. I retract my words. I apologize if I had offended you." "No, it''s fine. Then, I''ll be off." I quickly made my way past the butler and through the gates the guards opened for me before walking down the street around a few corners through a bunch of side streets at random. When I was certain there wasn''t anyone that could see me, I activated [Spirit Form] and made my way back to the orphanage. In an alley near the orphanage, I fixed myself up to avoid making anyone worry the best I could. I took out my hat from my bag and put both on like I usually did. It was then that I was reminded I had transformed myself into a foxkin as I felt the ears on top of my head squish as I put the hat on. Checking to make sure I had swapped out transformations and was presentable, I disengaged [Spirit Form] and exited the alley. The second I was in sight, a bunch of the kids came running calling for my name. I gave them the best smile I could manage as I went inside with them, only to be rushed by almost all the rest of the other kids. Even Philia showed up, though she stayed a third of the way up the stairs to the second floor and just watched the scene of me being swamped with little kids all the while gently smiling. The kids were all in a frenzy asking why I had gone when they woke up. All I could do was lie and just said that I couldn''t sleep so I was taking a walk around the city. While the kids bought it easily, a quick glance confirmed that Philia didn''t, and thus I was forced to prepare to explain at least some of what had happened later on. For now though, since the kids were reassured, they went off to make some money. As I had come back a bit late, there wasn''t enough time to make breakfast, but apparently they didn''t have any real problems regarding that. The kids reassured me that they were used to not eating breakfast. When I looked at Philia to confirm it, she only gave a weak nod. I kinda suspected it with how they had treated the breakfasts I had been making, but having it confirmed stung. That aside, Philia and I were cuddling again on the bench like usual while holding the napping little kids in our arms. No, it had become my usual, but I would need to leave this city soon. Staying could risk bringing danger to the orphanage. If that butler got suspicious enough, he might be able to figure out that I was connected to this place and bring trouble to the kids. He seemed much more decent than anyone else I had met from that place, but that didn''t mean I could afford the risk, and she needed to know that. At the very least, it wouldn''t be fair if I didn''t give her a warning. I really was going to miss these quiet times I spent with Philia. "...You don''t have to tell me if you don''t want to." I looked at my side as the little orphanage director buried a part of her face into my sleeve. "If it hurts, you don''t have to tell me what happened. I believe in you after all." "...no, it''s because you believe in me that I need to tell you." "How much longer can you stay?" Philia pulled on my arm as she leaned into me even harder, not raising her face in the slightest. I was a little surprised at the shift in subject. "Ah, ummm, probably a few days, but that''s it." "...I see." I wanted to do something. Comfort her or something. Parting probably hurt her more than it hurt me. But I was worried. Worried that doing anything would make parting even more painful for her. I cursed at my own spinelessness. I was a level 255 powerhouse, yet when it came to interpersonal subjects, I felt like a noob. No skills, no finesse, no guts. But no matter how little courage I had when it came to interacting with people, Philia deserved to at least hear what had happened. What I knew. "Last night, I killed some people." "...and?" Philia''s body stiffened as I said it, but contrary to my expectations, she pushed her body more tightly against mine. "I uh...it seemed like they were planning some terrible things for the orphanage. That, and they had already kidnapped one child it seemed." "I see. So they were the ones who took Karlie?" "Karlie?" "Ah, no. Don''t worry about it." I was curious, but the way she shook her head made it hard to press further. "Anyways. I found those people last night and killed them. I think I got away with it, but to make sure, I need to leave the city for a while until things settle down." "sigh And you came back to make sure that we''d be alright before you left? You need to think about yourself more Scarlet. Are you sure you don''t need to leave immediately?" "It''s probably fine? I made it look almost impossible for me to have done it, and the one to have left that house was a silver-haired foxkin in black robes." "A foxkin?" I took off my hat and hood, then swapped transformations. "You never cease to amaze me." "I have a lot of time to kill." Doing my best to suppress a grin, I playfully flick my ears as Philia stared wide-eyed at them. Afterwards, we worked a bit on soap-making then moved on to learning the fundamental magic skills before calling it a day. That night, I checked on all the soap we had made along with the equipment we were using. Everything on that side was looking good and there wasn''t anything to worry about, but as I thought about the next step, I realized that there was something I had forgotten: I hadn''t had a plan on how to actually sell the things. My market research had confirmed that there was no reasonable way to sell soap to the general population as it was seen as an exclusive item for the rich. My only way to sell it would to find a store that already catered to the rich and noble. There was that one store that I had visited, and the store attendant that served me seemed to have been a decent person, but I was worried that it would be enough. If the orphanage succeeded in selling the soap, then it would draw attention to it. It wasn''t like selling a common commodity, but a luxury one. And on top of that, it would be better than some of the competition that was imported from outside the city. Anything I could do to deflect suspicion would be extremely helpful. Selling the soap at a relatively low price should deter the store from being tempted to harass the orphanage to sell the recipe, as if that happened, nothing would stop the Philia and the kids from selling the recipe to everyone else, completely destroying the market on high end soap. I could emphasize that point when marketing the soap as well just to make sure. The problem was attracting third party attention. Once a high end specialty product was brought to the market, then everyone in that market would start looking for the source and try to discover their secrets. I doubted patents existed, so stealing the secrets would be high on the priority list. Selling the soap to multiple stores would mitigate that problem quite a bit, but on the other hand, it would expose the orphanage to quite a bit of overall attention, and threaten to turn it into a sweat shop as they were pressured into producing enough for all the stores they were selling to. Keeping it to just one store would make it an exclusive product and naturally limit production by virtue of the store''s inability to sell more than a certain amount. It would also make it easy for that store to limit sales though any number of excuses, and an item that was advertised to have a low production run would in turn garner prestige and inflate the profit margin. Probably. The orphanage didn''t need that much money to keep going, just a regular supply for the long term, so anything that would limit production, even if it meant the kids got a smaller cut, would be beneficial. In the end they were kids, and deserved to have time to play and learn. But also by limiting the production and sales, it would increase the likelihood of someone trying to figure out the source and the recipe. People making copies on their own was fine, but actually going to investigate and discover the orphanage was a worry. Philia could sell the soap to the store herself. The problem was buying the ingredients to make the soap. Or more specifically, the lye. It was blatantly obvious that the amount of ashes produced through ordinary day to day fire usage wasn''t nearly enough to satisfy the lye needs of making the soap. Buying the ashes was the only solution, but then it would bring suspicion in regards to why the orphanage needed so much ashes. Bringing in more wood to produce more ashes in a bonfire was just asking for even more trouble, so that was out. A trustworthy middleman was exactly what I needed, but I, being a person with almost no contacts in this world, was hardly someone who could come up with someone who could be a decent middleman on her own. But, if I couldn''t come up with someone, then I could just ask someone else if they knew someone. (Well, at least I can hope that someone I knew would know someone trustworthy.) Ninetailed_Furball Hello everyone! Been a few days! (^.^)/~~~ Looks like my last chapter got a whole bunch of mixed opinions. Many were happy the lord was dead, but a lot felt like I rushed his arc. That said, his story was almost entirely in the background and only mentioned here and there. Even that was enough for him to get on my nerves and thus, he was done away as quickly as I could type it in. That guy. Even though I was the one who wrote him, made me so mad! (¨p ?Òæ?) Well, he''s gone, and looks like Scarlet''s going to be in the clear for now. Was how she handled it a bit unrealistic? Do you think the butler should''ve tried harder to get more information out of her? Do you think he secretly stalked her straight through her [Spirit Form] and is now spying on the orphanage? Is he secretly some Marvel super-villain?! ¡ãO¡ã Well, all that aside, we''re finally approaching the end of the arc, so I wanted to try something new. Well, new for me. You guys have probably seen it hundreds of times as I have from other content creators. I''ve been thinking of putting in a Q&A bonus chapter once this arc ends. So, put in your questions in the comments, and I''ll pick the ones I like and throw them all in one post! (¨R?¨Q) Ask whatever you want! Wondering how something works? What a certain character was thinking or doing at a certain point? Maybe wondering why certain events happened they way they did? What I was thinking when writing a certain scene? What my original plan even was and how badly was it derailed as I wrote it? (hint, it was a lot) I hope to hear a ton of questions form you all, both from the regular commenters as well as those who like to stay quiet! I''m willing to answer almost anything as long as it doesn''t get weird! Or spoilery. But maybe I''ll hint something if I find it fun enough! ©c(¡ä©`£à)©° Thanks again for reading and supporting my story, and I hope to hear from you all, regardless of what you have to say! (^o^)د Chapter 46 – Soap Selling Personnel The next morning, after breakfast, I asked Philia if she knew anyone who could sell the soap or act as a middleman as well as buy and deliver the ingredients. She didn''t. The only people she knew that was even close were the shopkeepers that she regularly frequented to get donations from to feed and clothe the kids. When I asked about that, since I''ve never seen her do it before, apparently she did it until I showed up, and haven''t since I started staying to keep me company during the day. I felt a little bad for using up all her time like that, until I remembered how it started and my face turned red. Instead, she suggested that she could go deliver the soap and buy ingredients herself if I could find someone to sell them. Doing so would defeat the entire point of trying to keep the soap selling anonymous. I headed off to talk to the only other person I could think of that might be able to help me in this city. Aside from the cosmetics store owner, but that would be giving him all the power to deal with things he wanted, and I wanted to avoid that. If we used a middleman, then it was easy to cut them out if things went sour. At the very least, it would be better than the store owner turning on the orphanage himself, as any middleman wouldn''t be able to do much if Philia just got a different middleman, or resorted to doing business directly. Very quickly, I was standing in front of the adventurers'' guild building. It''s immense size was impressive as always. While only buildings in the nobles'' quarters were a match, it was still nothing compared to a skyscraper, though that was an unfair comparison. It''s been a busy few days, but if I remembered right, the only person I''ve spoken more than a few words to in this city outside of the orphanage was Lucy the receptionist. The guild also owed me the remaining reward money for the last request I did as an added bonus, presuming that everything had finished processing by now. Thinking back, it had already been about a week since then. The guild building wasn''t too busy, only stragglers and people taking the day off being around with everyone else already off doing their requests. Fortunately there weren''t any lines at the moment, so I approached the reception counter to talk to the one I was meaning to see. "Scarlet! It''s good to see you again! I was worried something had happened! Are you doing well?" "Ah, um, yea. I''m alright. How about you Lucy?" "Oh, I''m doing fine! So what can I do for you today? Oh, but before that, the results from your previous request came in and the remaining reward was cleared. Let me get that for you!" She seemed different from when I had last met her. I wasn''t sure what, but she seemed a bit off. "Here you go! Eight silver plates for the confirmation that the pack is gone." I quickly counted it up and put the money into my bag. "So, is there anything else I can help you with?" "Umm...are you really alright? You seem a little..." "...sigh It''s just...have you heard? There''s a rumour that the city''s lord was murdered last night." (Gulp!) "Th, the lord? That''s pretty terrible!" "Maybe..." "Huh? Maybe?" "Well, it''s only rumours, but it seems like he was doing quite a lot of questionable things here and there. I don''t know the details, but it seems like there''s more than a few people who are happy that he''s dead." "And, what about you?" "Oh, I don''t know. I''m worried that things might become chaotic for the next while until a successor is found. I think the lord was pretty young and wasn''t married. From the things I heard him do, I wouldn''t be surprised if he has some bastards, but I doubt any of them would be old enough to take over, let alone be a good lord." "..." I didn''t know how to feel. I was directly responsible for the trouble, on the other hand he had it coming. (...meh.) There wasn''t anything I could do about it, and if I tried, I''d probably end up being wanted for the murder of a noble. Even thinking about it was a waste of time. I could only keep my head down and hope things get better on their own. I needed to concentrate on the things I could actually do. I pulled a hand into my hood to scratch the back of my head and ''accidentally'' let it fall as I pulled my hand out. "Oh!" Lucy''s eyes went wide as she stared at the side of my head before I pulled my hood back into place. "Is something the matter?" "Oh, umm, no. I just didn''t realize you were an elf." "Is there an issue with elves here?" "No, nothing. It''s just, I didn''t expect that. Elves aren''t too common in this city. Or rather, there''s only one elf that even comes here. Well, one other." I had a feeling that I saw that other elf at some point, but couldn''t remember what that elf even looked like. "So anyways! So, were you thinking of taking another request? If you need help, I can suggest some!" "Umm, actually, I wanted to ask something..." "Yes?" "I was wondering if you knew someone who could do some odd jobs like buying things and delivering things to an anonymous client?" "You mean, you want to buy and deliver some stuff without anyone else knowing?" "Yup?" "W, what are you planning on buying?" "It''s not me! It''s for some people I got to know here, but if people found out what they were doing, they wouldn''t be able to protect themselves if something happened." "I see. Unfortunately, I don''t know anyone personally that can help you. Maybe we can set up a designated request to someone with a good reputation? I can help you find...oh right!" "Huh? What is it?" "I just remembered! There''s a designated request for you! It came in yesterday!" Lucy got up and scrounged though a cabinet before bringing out a wooden tablet. "Here it is. A Mint Mercari. A merchant who wants you as an escort two days from today. Hmmm...you wouldn''t happen to know this man, would you? It''s rare for a D rank adventurer to be named for a request. But if you do, then maybe you can ask him to do the work you need?" I looked at the tablet Lucy handed me. I didn''t recognize the name. Furthermore, I hadn''t spent more than a few minutes talking to any merchant in this world, so there was no reason for him to ask for me specifically. Since the request came the day before, it couldn''t be related to any suspicions regarding me. If it happened to be a trap to get me to go to the lord''s place, then springing it wouldn''t be a problem, as the lord in question was no longer able to pay the goons that would set this trap in the first place. On the other hand, if this guy had such a good opinion of me that he would ask me specifically for a request, then it was possible I could trust him to be the middleman I needed. At the very least, if he seemed like a decent person after meeting him, then he would be better than some random person I''ve never met. Maybe. "...can I decide to take it after meeting with the client?" The request tablet also included the client''s contact information, making it easy to find him. "That''s fine, but I do really recommend you take it. It''s a nice, easy escort request and it pays well for a C rank." (Erk. An escort?) Looking closer, that was exactly what it said. A two week trip to some city called Knossos with short stops in two villages along the way. It seemed like the request was a joint venture with three other adventurers already signed on. It made me wonder why he would want even more help when he already had a party, albeit a small one, already employed. (Well, at least I don''t have to feel bad if I refuse it. After all, an escort quest? Urgh.) I took the wooden plank and got directions from Lucy before I thanked her and left the building. Looking around, I found the inn the merchant was staying at pretty quickly. It wasn''t far from the adventurer''s guild, maybe halfway between it and the western gate two blocks through a small side street. It was a shabby looking building standing at four stories. It wasn''t like it was poorly maintained, but I could really see some wear and tear here and there. That said, there was signs of actual repairs, so the building was just old, rather than the owners not being able to afford to fix it up where needed. Inside, I saw a greying old man sitting behind a counter in the small lobby. There was an attached dining area, but it wasn''t very big at all, with only three tables just big enough for four each. "Excuse me?" "Oh, hello there miss. Are you looking for a room tonight?" "Ah no, I''m not." The old man''s head drooped a bit in disappointment, but he quickly perked up again. His eyes grew a bit wide and he started to stare at me. Something about it made me feel uncomfortable, but I couldn''t pinpoint why. Maybe the fact that his eyes weren''t looking high enough to look me in the eye was the reason. (Then again, can he even see my eyes under this hood?) "Umm, I''m looking for someone who''s supposed to be staying here. A mister Mint Mercari?" "Huh? Oh, before I answer that, could I know what business you have with this mister Mercari?" "Ah, I wanted to ask him a bit about a request he posted at the adventurers'' guild." I pulled out the wooden tablet and showed it to the old man. "I see. Fortunately, you''re in luck. He just came back a little while ago after attending to some morning business. If you''ll follow me." The innkeeper came out from behind his counter and led me up a nearby staircase. Then the next flight, and the next. Soon, we arrived on the top floor. The old man''s breath had sped up, but otherwise he seemed fine. (Geez, tall buildings suck without elevators or high stats.) We walked down to the end of the hall, where the innkeeper stopped to knock on the last door. "Mister Mercari? You have a guest." "I see. The door is open." With those words, the old man opened the door for me and backed off. I stepped up to the door and looked inside. The room was pretty small, only big enough for a single bed, a small table and chair, along with enough floor space to pace back and forth in if you were so inclined. There were some bags and clothes hanging on one wall and a small wooden chest on the floor below them. The innkeeper took off with a slow walk, but from the corner of my eye, I could see his eyes stayed glued onto me uncomfortably until he was out of sight. "Oh! Am I right to presume you were the one who answered my request at the adventurers'' guild?" In the middle of the room was a middle aged man in a nice looking light green long sleeved shirt with a tall collar and brown vest, along with matching brown pants. The outfit was pretty well worn, yet also fit his thin frame like a glove. I felt a little annoyed that despite how worn out the outfit looked, it looked so well tailored compared to my own outfit. Something about him looked familiar, but I couldn''t put my finger on how or why. "Ah, yea. I am. My name''s..." "Scarlet, right?" "Ah, yea. How did you know?" "A little over a week ago, you saved my life, along with the lives of the adventurers I had hired! I was so terribly grateful, yet you left before I could thank you. When I reached my destination, I found out you had helped out the people quite a bit. Thanks to that, it was easy to find out your name, as you had registered at the adventurers'' guild over there." "Huh..." It still wasn''t ringing any bells. I couldn''t remember saving anyone before helping those two kids from the orphanage. He said more than a week ago, so before that, I had flown to the city from the first village I had been to. I had learned how to fly during then, but there wasn''t much else notable... (Oh wait...) "Were you that merchant that was surrounded by those wolves?" "Yes! That''s right! I''m glad you remembered. I was so thankful for your deed then, and it was my regret for not being able to reward you in kind." "Ah, no. That''s fine." I did it on a whim. Getting rewarded for a good deed was nice, but I didn''t really care about getting money or something for helping him. "No, please! I must do something to pay you back! Not only for myself, but all of Edgeworth Village! You can''t imagine how happy it made people when they found out all you have done for them!" (Edgeworth? Was that the name of the village I passed by then?) Aside from registering and selling some meat, I gave away some food, but that was as far as my memory went regarding that place. I couldn''t see how he was acting so indebted over it. "Not only did you sell so much meat to the guild, but you spent most of your earned money on products made by the villagers and even donated so much food in addition! And after that, you left behind all the meat and materials from those loam wolves as well! It''s all thanks to you that the village had been able to recover from starving all winter. If it wasn''t for you, we feared that a few of the village''s young may have perished before we could harvest some of the spring''s bounty." (Something that small made that much of an impact?) "Anyways, so I put up the request in the hopes that you would find it and I could finally meet and give you my, no all of Edgeworth Village''s gratitude!" The middle aged merchant bowed down, showing off the crown of his head. "Ah, no. It''s no big deal! I was just..." ''Excess humility is equally bad as hubris you know'' Philia''s words rang through my mind, shutting me up. "It might not have been such a big deal for you, but it was for us. I wasn''t exaggerating when I said that you may have saved the lives of some of the villagers thanks to your donations, and that''s not least to say you saved my own and my escorts'' lives directly!" "Ah, um, alright. I get it." The passion that radiated out of the merchant felt overwhelming and weighed heavily on me. "So, if there''s anything I can give or do for you, it would be my pleasure. Though, that said, while successful, I am not a rich man, so I am not sure if I can offer much in material or coin to satisfy you..." (Well, something like that would just be annoying to be honest.) My mind raced as I tried to come up with something. If it was too small of a favour then I might hurt his pride, but he didn''t have much resources to pay for some one-time reward. He might have some connections, but what use would I have for something like that. (...connections?) "This...this might be a little strange..." "Oh, that''s fine! If I could do something to even start paying you back for everything you have done for us!" "Ah, umm...so, I have some people who are starting to make something to sell to the nobility, but I need someone to deliver the product as well as procure and deliver the materials while avoiding bringing attention to the makers." "I see. So your business partners are a vulnerable group, and you need someone to keep attention away from them while they participate in a high-profile venture?" "...something like that." "And you''d like me to be that someone?" "Yea, I was thinking so." "I would love to! For the opportunity to help you like this? Not only that, but to participate in a new business venture? Little would delight me more! Ah, to participate in a new company start up and grow successful. And in addition, to pay back a debt by doing more of what I already do? If this venture succeeds, may I continue this agreement and start receiving regular pay once my debt is paid?" "Huh? You were going to get a cut regardless." There was no way I was going to make him work for free. The greater the personal stake he had, the less likely he was to betray the orphanage. He already seemed like a decent person, so by being a beneficiary of the setup, he would have every incentive in making this work as well as possible. "I see. You''ve originally planned for me to be included long term?" "Or rather, I''d be in a bind if it didn''t work long term." "Is that so? Well, then, I''d be delighted to do as you require! Since that''s the case, may I hear the details?" For the next little while, I explained what I had planned while he gave me his thoughts. Afterwards, we headed off to the orphanage together and picked up the soap samples we had made already. The merchant, Mint, had been quite impressed by what I showed him. Not only the idea of making the orphanage self-sufficient by making soap, but also the products themselves. Though he admitted he wasn''t very familiar with soap in general. I made a few simple stone boxes to carry the soap in. One for each type. I thought that it would be better than handling the soap directly by hand. The one I had bought came in a nice wooden box, and while I wanted to present the orphanage''s soap that way, it was probably a bad idea until we can figure out how to get the boxes mass produced first. With the merchandise in hand, we went off to the noble quarters to negotiate an agreement to sell the soap. Unfortunately, between the two of us, only that one place where I had that terrible experience came to mind when it came to places that sold soap. At least the shopkeeper was pretty decent. In fact he was especially apologetic about what had happened to me from what I remembered. It was just bad luck that the city lecher just happened to be in the same place at the same time. I lowered my hood as we entered the northeastern quarter of the city. Mint eyed at me when I did, forcing me to turn my face away from the uncomfortable stare. "Umm...is something wrong with my face?" "Ah, no. I''m sorry, that was terribly rude of me. I just...didn''t expect you to be an elf." sigh "That again? Are elves so unusual?" "Frankly, yes. At least in these parts. I''m sorry if I offended you." "Ah, no. It''s fine." We continued to the store I had visited a while back. When we entered, there wasn''t anyone else there to my relief. "Welcome! Welcome! How may I help you?" As quickly as the door closed, a man came out from the back room. It was the same person who was helping me the last time I was there. "Ah, umm, I want to talk to the owner." "As luck would have it, that would be myself, Martin Vermouth at your service miss. I am glad your prior visit hadn''t soured your experience enough to avoid my humble store." The shopkeeper bowed his head down elegantly. The way he moved one foot back and crossed his chest with the same side arm suggested he was really used to doing this. His readiness to do so in apology from last time also did wonders to increase my opinion of him. It wasn''t even his fault. "So, how may I help you today miss?" "Ah, I was wondering if you had space for some new product?" "Of course. I always have space to quality cosmetics and soaps in my store." The way he emphasized on soap almost made me jerk up in surprise. While soap was a bit different from cosmetics, I figured that it didn''t need to be mentioned separately. I wondered if he had already guessed what I had come to sell. "Mister Vermouth? I am Mint Mercari, hired to represent Miss Scarlet when she isn''t available. Nice to meet you." On the other hand, Mint extended his hand, and the store owner shook his hand firmly while giving an affirmative nod. "Mister Mercari? It is a pleasure to meet you." "Here are the products that Miss Scarlet is interested in selling." Mint lay down opened up each of the stone boxes on the store''s counter. Each one was a little different, made from a different set of scents. All of them were light grey to the point that they could be considered white under most lighting conditions, and had almost no obvious imperfections in the mix. There were slight deformities here and there but otherwise were fine at a glance. "Do you mind?" I nodded as he motioned towards the soap. Vermouth picked each one up in turn, examining their colour, sniffing them, feeling their texture, before returning them to their box and wiping his hands on a handkerchief. After several tense minutes, the storekeeper took a step back and lowered his head a little. "Magnificent. I wondered what sort of soap you would present me, but for them to be so outstanding. Every single one of them in fact." "Does that mean you''ll sell them." "If you allow me to." He gave me a gentle smile as he agreed. "In that case, if I may?" From there, Mint stepped in for me and began negotiations with the storekeeper. Ninetailed_Furball Hello everyone! It''s the friendly neighbourhood furball! (^.^)/~~~ Sorry for the late update. It looks like someone especially will be sorry for going to sleep less than 10 minutes before the update (no, actually I''m the one who''s sorry for that m(_ _)m) Today''s update is finally the reveal of how things are going down with the soap selling! Yay! It''s taken quite a long time to get here, along with a few ''small'' detours, but it''s finally here! I hope you guys are happy with it. I know a bunch of you predicted that the Martin would be the one to eventually sell the soap, but it seemed like everyone forgot Mint! (¡ã¡ó¡ã) How''s that for a twist? Ok, that was hardly a twist, but are you happy that he came back? Well, not much more to say. The bonus Q&A is still on it''s way, so if you have anything to ask, inside or outside of Scarlet''s world, let me now in the comments! Now, I''ll see you in the next one! Chapter 47 – Soap Selling Details Mint and I were on our way to the orphanage. After lengthy negotiations which made my head spin as I tried to decipher the double meanings and nuances as they set out a deal, in the end Mint managed to get a price on the soap that made my eyes bulge. They averaged an entire gold coin per bar of soap! And that wasn''t taking into consideration the markup that they were going to get when the shopkeeper, Martin, put them on the shelves! To think that they would top the most expensive soap I saw last time I came. (For a bar of soap to cost as much as an entire day''s pay for a rank C adventurer...) It made me glad that I had gone through the effort of putting together such precautions. If people found out that a group of kids were responsible for making soap that was selling for more than a gold coin each, I could hardly imagine what sort of trouble it would invite. My eyes flickered to the side, glancing at Mint who walked beside me. I could only hope that his professionalism and gratitude would be enough that he wouldn''t ever take advantage of the orphanage. "Is something the matter?" "Ah, no. Anyways, it''s over here..." I turned my eyes forward and we slipped into a side street before soon reaching the orphanage. "Ah!" "It''s Scarlet!" "She''s back!" Several kids who were playing on the street rushed over when they spotted me, but quickly noticed Mint following me. In an instant their expressions reversed and they huddled in front of me, using my body as a shield as they warily looked on at him. "Ahaha, it''s not like I can blame them, but it still hurts..." The merchant scratched the back of his head as he tried to laugh it off. I couldn''t blame the kids for doing that either. I didn''t think he looked particularly threatening, but he was a strange man. In fact, it was probably better that I applaud them for their caution. That said, it would be mean to let this continue. "Don''t worry. He''s not someone dangerous." "Really?" "He isn''t?" "..." "Really. In fact, you''ll be seeing him a lot from now on, as he''ll be helping out here and there." "He will? Like playing?" "Helping? Or cooking?" "Every day?" "No, not every day. I''m a travelling merchant so I can''t come too often, but every few months." "Huh? That long?" I didn''t expect that. "Oh, I''m sorry if I gave a strange impression, but as grateful as I am for what you have done for myself and my village, I do still need to do my normal work. Many people depend on me on that." "Ah, yea. Sorry. I wasn''t thinking." "It''s fine. It''s not your fault. I haven''t told you the details of my circumstances. Despite that, you''ve given me such an opportunity." "Ah no, that''s...anyways...you guys, can you call Philia for me?" """Okay!""" The kids ran inside as Mint and I followed. After I explained the deal I made with Mint and Martin to Philia, the merchant left as it was starting to get late with the promise to meet up with me the next day. As I didn''t really have anything special to do that night, I opted to stay as I had been doing lately. "So you trust that man Scarlet?" After the kids were tucked into bed, Philia and I were discussing the day''s events at the dinner table. "...I don''t trust him. But I don''t think he''s lying either. At the very least, I think he''s serious when he says he feels he owes me." "Well, if you think so, I''ll trust your judgment." "That, and you can just go directly to Martin at the cosmetic shop for the deliveries if Mint betrays us." "You''ve thought this through more than I thought." At the very least, this was important enough for me to do so. Especially this late in the game, I didn''t want Philia or the kids to be stabbed in the back because I wasn''t being careful enough. "I suppose, that means that you''ll be leaving soon?" "Yea. Once everything''s been settled, I think I''ll be moving on." Philia''s eyes turned to her lap as she fidgeted. "I''ll take good care of the children. You won''t have to worry about that." "You didn''t have to tell me that for me to know. But you need to take care of yourself too Philia." "You''re the last person I want to be telling me that." "Haha, I guess." She gave me a wry smile to my words. It looked like things weren''t as bad as I was worried about. Philia was going to be a bit lonely once I was gone, but she was strong. Stronger than me at least, and I could firmly see that in her as our eyes met. "Do you know where you''ll be heading next?" "Not really. I figured I''d just ask for a recommendation and just try that." "I see. Well, I''ve never left Linsington City, so I can''t help you there." Philia shrugged. I had a feeling that it was like that. It made me want to take her out and show her the world with me, but there was no way that could happen without bringing all the kids with us. No way that was happening. The logistics of it was overly daunting, and trying to keep them all safe would be insane. More importantly, I couldn''t see the kids being able to keep going from one city to the next. They''d tire out quickly and get bored even faster. It just wasn''t a viable idea. "You''ll always be welcome here Scarlet, so I hope you''ll remember to come by once in a while." "What are you talking about? There''s no way I''d forget to. This place is almost like a second home for me." I got up and pat Philia on the head like I did with the kids. But rather than let me continue, she pulled my arm down and brought my face close to hers. "It''s still years early for you to be comforting me, Scarlet." "Oh? Despite my appearance, I''ve been around for the better part of forty years now. If you think you can keep treating me like a youngster, you''ll be burned." I gave her a confident grin as I stared into her glistening marble-like brown eyes. (My body might only appear to be that of a 16 year old, and I might have only had it for two years, but I have the experience of over thirty years in my previous life!) "Forty years? You''re barely an adult then. I don''t know how long your kind live for, but we dwarves keep on pounding until we hit our second century. I''m still double your age you youngster!" As the smile faded from my face, Philia''s mouth curled up into a smirk before she quickly rose up and gave a small peck to my cheek. "You''re older than I thought, but still far, far too young to pull one over me Scarlet." With those words, Philia hopped down from her chair and returned to her room. (This world''s fantasy elements just won''t stop throwing me for a loop) The next day, I headed out again after finishing up the morning duties. My feet took me straight to the inn Mint was staying at but when I got there the innkeeper told me he was out. Unable to meet him to teach him the rest of his duties, I headed to the adventurers'' guild to kill some time and try again later. "Oh Scarlet. What can I help you with today? Are you looking for a specific request?" Just like the day before, my timing had allowed me to talk to Lucy without having to wait in a line. "Ah no. I wanted to use the library for a bit. Is that fine?" "That''s not a problem. Umm..." "What is it?" "Did you refuse the request?" "What request?" "The designated one that I gave you yesterday! How could you even forget that so quickly?" (Ah, that thing. An escort quest...haa....) It might not be as bad as it seemed on the surface. For all I knew, escort requests could be pretty decent unlike the ones I''ve had more than enough of in games. "Ahh...ummm, are escort requests good?" "sigh I suppose you wouldn''t know since you''re new to adventuring, but yes, generally speaking. In fact, there''s a lot of adventurer parties that try to become regular escorts for merchants. Not only is it steady work, but it pays well for how little danger it usually involves." "Really..." I averted my eyes. Despite her words, my mind was filled with images of escort targets walking into walls and getting stuck, being ambushed by monsters that spawned out of nowhere only to die after I''ve been killed by another player waiting for the ambush to distract me, the escort target running off when surrounded by monsters, only to run into another group as I''m trying to cut down the first group and getting killed, the escort target getting interrupted mid-dialogue by unrelated stray monsters only for them to bug out and freeze until I could lure another stray mob into killing them so I could restart the quest, or... "Umm...are you alright Scarlet? You look like someone who''s suffering through a deathly fear or something." "Huh? Oh, umm, I''m alright." (Thinking about it, all those problems were due to design oversights by the original developers. Realistically thinking about it, most of those issues weren''t possible for a real escort request. Especially the target trying to phase through a wall because of poor pathing.) "Anyways, if you''re so against escort requests, I can help you find something else." "Ah no, maybe I''ll try it out. It might not be as bad as I heard they are." "I have no idea what sort of things you''ve heard about them, but it''s rare for an escort request to turn sour." I couldn''t help but feel like Lucy had just raised a flag, but superstition only came true if you actually believed in them. Then again, I was in a world where magic and supernatural phenomena were commonplace. That said, the escort request did lead to another city from what I remembered was written, so it was as good place as any to head to. Making some money on the way would certainly be nice. "I guess I''ll talk to him and take it, but for now, the library?" "Ah yes, follow me." Soon, I was under the unwatchful eye of that old man who seemed to always be in the library for some reason I couldn''t remember. I couldn''t spend all my time here like I used to, so instead of just randomly reading whatever I could get my hands on, I tried out something a bit different. Scanning through the wooden planks, rolled up barks, occasional parchment and even rarer book, I took out any that mentioned anything about magic. Next, putting them carefully onto the table, I took out an iron ingot and worked my magic on it and made a series of thin plates of steel, just thick enough that they wouldn''t deform easily. My final step was to go through the various materials and copy out whatever was written on them and etch them into the steel plates. Rather than transcribing it manually, I relied on my [Terranian Magic] skill to simply copy what was written. It was nice how skills could fill in the gaps like that. After confirming the first sheet was properly copied, I continued with the rest and had made copies of them all in less than an hour. I felt like a human, err vampire, photocopier, but it was effective and I could spend my time later on reading the pages I hadn''t managed to by this point. Happy with the results of my work, I got up to put the materials away when I noticed that the old man was staring at me. "Umm..." "What was that you just did?" "Uh, I just copied the texts. Is that not allowed?" "You...just...copied...how did you do that?!" I instinctively took a step back as the old man yelled, spittle flying out, but thankfully landing halfway between us. "I just used magic to flatten out these metal sheets then etched in a copy of whatever was written." "You just...which magical academy did you come from?! No wait, she wouldn''t have any need of such low grade information about magic if that was true. Just where did you come from?" "Umm, can I not answer that?" "Bah, fine. But you, why did you copy those texts on magic when you are so capable?" "I''m self taught, so there''s a lot of normal things I don''t know." "Self...taught...? When your skill is so obviously high?!" "Anyone can raise a skill to high levels if they push it hard and long enough." I may have cheated at it being a vampire, but I couldn''t see how it was any different for anyone else. At least if they spent enough time on it. "That''s...true, but to think someone had actually done it on their own..." The old man sat back down into a quiet contemplation. Taking advantage of the opportunity, I quickly put the materials away and my transcribed plates into my bag before I escaped from the library. Waving to Lucy, I left the guild building and headed back to the inn to see if Mint had returned. When I asked the innkeeper, he stated that the merchant hadn''t returned yet, so I asked if I could stay until he did. The old man agreed to let me, so I sat down at one of the nearby tables. The old innkeeper kept his eye on me, creeping me out a little, but he seemed harmless enough otherwise, so I did my best to ignore him as I lowered my hood a bit more. Taking out the etched metal plates, I sorted through them and returned the copies of the texts I had already read before I started to read. Like before, the texts varied in what they talked about, as if the library''s collection was nothing more than anything that the guild could get their hands on rather than things specifically aimed at adventurers. The first one wasn''t particularly useful. It was a simple theory about the wind element and how it described it as a mystical force. I quickly scratched [This is most likely entirely wrong] at the bottom and moved on. The next plate on the other hand was very much useful for me. It described one of the essential skills for a mage to learn: [Multi-cast]. The skill allowed the user to cast multiple spells in parallel, with the skill''s rank determining how many that can be cast at once. [Multi-cast] was learned by simply attempting to cast a second spell while another spell was already active or by trying to cast multiple spells at the same time. I''ve already tried casting a second spell while one was already in use, but had given up while presuming that casting multiple spells wasn''t possible. It seemed I was very much wrong to have done so. I only needed to keep trying to make it work. Thinking about it, whenever I go through the master skill list, I had always just skimmed through it. With how long the list was, it was pretty much impossible to go through the entire thing without doing so, and it was a given that I''d miss things each time I did. I should probably put in more effort into experimenting whenever I felt like needing a new skill rather than just looking for one in the skill list. I''d probably find some new skills unexpectedly that way. (For now though...) A sphere of ice formed in the palm of my hand the size of a small marble. While maintaining it, I formed another identical sphere in the other palm, but as the mana flowed from my body to coalesce, the first sphere shattered and returned to pure mana as the second sphere took form. Some of the little fluffballs rushed over and flocked to my hand that was just freed from holding the small ball of ice. The fastest few slurped up the free-floating mana in an instant before the group backed off. Their behaviour was a little surprising, but not really that much different from how they eat the mana treats I give them. I continued to make little balls of ice over and over as the little fluffballs all diverted their attention to racing to grab the small bits of free mana that escaped when each spell broke. ''You have gained the [Multi-cast I] skill!'' After a while of working at it, the usual voice resounded in my head. Now, I could make two ice balls at the same time, or separately. But when I tried to make a third, the first one I created would shatter. According to the skill''s description: Allows one to have multiple spells cast simultaneously. The number of simultaneous spells doubles with each skill rank. So at rank 1, I could cast two spells, but at rank 2, I could cast four spells. Some quick napkin math confirmed that I could cast 1024 spells at max rank. I wondered if that was the limit, or if there was an advanced skill that allowed for even more spells to be cast at once. (Well, even if there were, I can''t even imagine what practical use there would be to cast so many spells.) As Mint still hadn''t returned, I went back to trying to make a small pile of ice balls while the fluffballs kept attacking my hands like a flock of impatient pigeons. "Scarlet! I''m sorry for making you wait!" Turning to the side, Mint was standing there looking a little tired. "Ah, hey." "If I knew when you were coming, I''d have finished my business earlier!" "It''s okay. I forgot to tell you when I was coming." "Yes well, let''s leave that aside for now. How about some drinks? I have some in my room?" "...sure." Actually drinking anything he had to offer wasn''t really an option for me, but I could take a hint, especially when it coincided with my own interests. We headed upstairs and he let me into the small, cramped room. "So then, would you like some wine?" "Huh?" (Wait, was he serious when he was offering a drink?) "Oh, never mind. So I presume you came to explain the rest of the job?" "I did." I explained to him the ingredients that the orphanage would need to produce soap, along with a few alternatives and possibilities they might request. "I see. Well, it would be difficult to bring in enough wood to satisfy your demands, but ashes would pose no issue at all, and the other ingredients won''t be any problems. Would there be any issues if any of them are preserved?" "...for most of them it''s fine as long as nothing is added, but not the flowers. They need to be fresh." I was glad I was talking about this here. I hadn''t considered that any of the ingredients wouldn''t be in their normal state. While for most things I couldn''t think of any issue of them being slightly altered from normal, anything that was used to make essential oils had to be fresh. The essential oils were quite volatile, as they wouldn''t have a strong scent if they weren''t, and so most of it would be lost if it''s source was dried. "Is that so. That would make flowers a little harder to get, but I believe it won''t pose too much of an issue." "Alright. Umm..." "Yes? Is there something else?" "I was wondering about the request..." "Oh that? If you don''t want to take it, I won''t mind. It would make me happy if you would, but I already have my usual escorts anyways. Unless something unusual like when we first met happens, there shouldn''t be any issue." "Ah, no. I mean, I was thinking of taking it." "Really? I mean, thank you! I''ll feel much more secure knowing that you were with us!" "But, only until the next city. I think I''ll be staying there for a bit." "Oh, that''s fine. The request was only for that far, and I won''t feel offended if you''re lured by what Knossos has to offer, being that you''re an adventurer." "Huh?" "You don''t know about Knossos? The Labyrinth City Knossos?" "Labyrinth City?" "Knossos is most famous for it''s dungeon. It was built around one and I hear it''s famous amongst adventurers for it." "A dungeon huh?" I really liked the idea of seeing what a different dungeon had to offer. Now I had to check this city out. "Oh, you really like the thought of it huh? Well, I suppose that makes you a real adventurer then? Hahaha!" "Maybe?" I gave Mint a wry smile as he whole heartedly laughed. "Now then, we''ll be heading out tomorrow morning. We''ll meet at the southern gates at the second bell. Is that fine, or do you need me to delay it?" "No, I''ll be fine. See you then." "I''m looking forward to it Miss Scarlet." We shook hands before I headed out and back to the orphanage. Ninetailed_Furball Hi everybody! It''s your favourite sleep deprived furball! I''m really sorry for being so late on this chapter. Work decided to screw around with me and left me with a pretty messed up sleep rhythm. I''m still trying to fix it up but artificially induced jet lag sucks (£Ô¨Œ£Ô) That said, I don''t intend on skipping out on any chapters! Nor will the Q&A chapter stop being a bonus! This weekend will be a little weird when it comes to releases, but I''ll be serving up tons more Scarlet! ( ^^)_µ©~~ As a reminder, if you have any questions you want answered in the Q&A (or in general) post it in the comments! Anything you''re unsure of, or maybe wondering what a character''s doing, or how I came up with some of these names or plot threads, it''s all open season (Aside from spoilers. You can ask, but I just won''t tell (`?¦Ø?¡ä))! That said, did anyone catch on to the little clue about the next city in the last chapter? No? orz Well, maybe it was too obscure? Even I had to check up with master Wikipedia to come up with it! Well, thanks as always for reading my story, and I apologize for the late release once again. I''ll be soon back on track and you won''t miss a single chapter, even if they are delayed a bit! (^^)/~~~ Chapter 48 – Goodbyes With my meeting with the merchant Mint over, I headed back to the orphanage. The sun was starting to dip below the city''s walls and the blue of the sky was retreating from the orange and red. Before long, I made it back and was greeted by the kids and Philia. We quickly made dinner and the kids ate with all the gusto they always found a way to gather. After they all finished dinner, I gave out the news that I was leaving the city the next day. They all cried out and begged me to stay, but thanks to Philia, we managed to calm them down. Strangely, Flix was surprisingly quiet during the whole ordeal. I figured that she would have been the loudest amongst the kids considering her track record, but she didn''t say a word and stayed at the back of the group the entire time. Due to the time it took to calm all the kids down, we weren''t able to play, and thus with Philia''s prompting, we got them all to go to bed. "I suppose this will be the last time we''ll be together for a while." Philia nursed a cup of tea she brewed as we sat together at a table. I felt bad about how my arrival was now making her miserable. Even if I had never intended such a thing, it was still my fault that she had gotten so attracted to me, that I let her pretend that there could be something between us despite the fact that I would have to move on at some point. Now, the longer I stayed in this city, the more danger I brought to her. Just staying long enough to depart with Mint was pushing my luck, but it was still better than simply leaving on my own like a vagrant, though I virtually was one. "Have you decided on a destination?" "Knossos. I got a job escorting that merchant I introduced you to yesterday to that city." "I see. Will you tell me about it if you come back?" "I will. I''ll definitely come back some day." "You don''t have to if you don''t want to you know." "I want to. You, you''re my first friend after all." Philia''s eyes opened wide as she looked up at me. I wasn''t really lying. While I had friends in my previous life, I didn''t have any in this one, and since she became family, Alicia didn''t count either. Even including ones in my last life, I never felt nearly as close with them as I did then with Philia. I couldn''t even remember the names or faces of most of them anymore, but I doubted I''d forget Philia''s for a long time. "Your first friend? Really? You''ll call me that?" "Why wouldn''t I. It''s true after all." I gave her one of my biggest smiles. The little dwarf''s face went beet red as she stared at me for a second before shaking her head. "That''s cheap. You know I''m not good at resisting that." "Ah, sorry." My hand grasped at the edge of my hood and pulled it down further. "No! No, I''m sorry. I didn''t mean it like that!" "But..." "How many times do I have to tell you, that beauty of yours is a part of you. It''s something I love about you." "But it''s the reason that..." "Don''t. It''s my feelings that put me on that spot, and I won''t let you deny that. You have a charm beyond simply your appearances. There is genuine beauty on the inside as well as the outside. I guarantee it." Philia kept interrupting me and refuted my arguments even before I made them. Her hands firmly planted on the table as she leaned over and looked up at me through the shadow of my hood. "I want you to promise me. I won''t ask you to hold pride in your appearance, but at the very least, stop denying it and make it as a part of you. Even if you can''t do it immediately, try to accept that part of you." She stared into my eyes as she practically pleaded this. I wanted to avert my eyes, the burden of what she was asking felt heavy, even though it sounded so reasonable. But my eyes couldn''t break contact with hers, like there was a force compelling me into this staring contest with the only way out being to accept her promise. "Alright. I''ll promise." Unfortunately, my force of will against that sort of attack was miserably weak. Maybe it was weak in general, but when a person appealed to me like that, it was as good as me not having any defences at all. "Good. Don''t forget it, your first promise to your first friend!" Philia smiled brightly as she got off the table and sat back down. "Geez, just rubbing it in huh?" "Yup!" Somehow that smile of hers seemed to just grow even bigger. Philia grabbed her now cooled cup of tea with one hand and chugged the entire thing. "Don''t leave in the middle of the night this time, you hear? We all want to give you a proper goodbye in the morning!" "Alright. I promise." "So your second promise belongs to me as well huh?" Philia flashed another bright smile before turning and headed back to her room, leaving me a little dazed at how dazzling she looked. I couldn''t help but feel that if things were a little different, we might have really started dating and maybe even gotten married someday. There was still a bunch of work for me to do before heading out in the morning. I didn''t have much time to spare. Looking around, I found another small unused room. Putting my rabbit plush bag down, I took out the etched steel tablets I had made and started to skim through them, sorting out the contents. They went into four separate piles. One for absolute beginners, one for early learning, one for intermediate learning, and a trash pile. The first three were self explanatory, but the fourth was tablets filled with magic theory that most likely wasn''t true. At the very least, they defied the logic of Earth, even after taking into consideration the differences because of magic and mana. I was pretty sure that the one that theorized air as a mystical force caused by invisible and untouchable wind aspected mana was outright wrong. I had no proof, but I was pretty much convinced that air was more or less the same here as on Earth. Just infused with mana in addition. For each pile, I made a stone container with labels to keep the steel tablets sorted and placed them around the room on simple but sturdy tables made of more magically manipulated stone. rustle There was a sudden sound from behind me. Turning around, I saw a kid with her arms buried inside of my bag as she tried to push her head through the stretched opening as well. "Hey hey hey, what''re you trying to pull?" I grabbed the girl''s collar and the bag to separate the two. "Eeep." Flix looked at me with a meek expression as her arms retracted like a cat''s while being carried by the nape. "Do you know how dangerous it can be for a living being to be put inside a magic bag?" "...No..." Frankly, I didn''t either, but I didn''t want to even test the idea, especially on a kid. "...So, why did you try to get into my bag?" "I, I..." Flix started to sniffle. It didn''t take a genius to realize that she was holding back her tears. "Let me guess. You planned on hiding in my bag until I was far and away from the city, then when I found you, I''d be forced to take you along with me, right?" "..." She turned her face away from me, but it was as good as an admission of guilt. "Flix, what do you think everyone else would think if you suddenly disappeared?" "Huh?" "I know you want to come with me, but have you thought about what Philia''s or the other kids'' feelings? Of what they''d think if you suddenly disappeared?" "I..." "Personally, I think they''d all be in a panic. They''d think some bad people might''ve taken you or something. Philia and the older kids would go all around the city looking for you and the younger kids would be scared that their family was being taken from them. You wouldn''t want that, would you?" "No..." Thankfully, Flix didn''t think things through nearly as well as Alicia did, so she was pretty easy to handle in comparison. She was a good girl, so simple guilt trips were really effective on her. "And besides. I''m an adventurer. That means that I go to dangerous places all the time. You still haven''t even learned how to use magic yet, and I bet you don''t have a single combat skill either, right?" "No..." "That''s right. I''d be beside myself with worry that something might happen to you all the time in such dangerous places!" "Really?" "It''s a bit depressing that you''d even think I wouldn''t be." "No! That''s not what I meant!" Flix shook her head as hard as she could, wholeheartedly denying my little joke. "I, I didn''t mean to make everyone worried, not Miss Philia, not everyone else, not you. But...!" "It''s too early for you to come with me, but I won''t always be adventuring, nor always going to dangerous places. If you sit tight, I''ll be back someday. Maybe then you can come with me if you still want to." "I do! I''ll always want to come with you!" "Alright then. I''ll promise to take you with me next time" "Really? It''s a promise!" It felt like I was only delaying the inevitable, but for then at least, it did solve the issue for the meantime. I could just worry about the consequences the next time I came around, and if I made sure to save up a decent amount of money, I could just avoid most of the more dangerous parts of travelling if I ended up having to drag the little girl around with me. "So...what were you doing?" Flix looked around at everything I had made and pulled out. "I made copies of a bunch of texts I found. Figured that you guys could use them to keep learning magic after I was gone." The little girl more than a head shorter than me stretched her arm and pulled one of the steel tablets off of the container on one of the tables and read through it. As expected, it looked a bit heavy to her, but she looked like she was doing her best not to let it show. On the other hand, seeing her read through the etchings on the metal plate she held in both hands as she stood beside one of the tables was as good as play testing. I took out some planks of wood out of my bag and cut up then fitted the pieces together to make several sturdy chairs, some of which were extra high but with additional rungs securing the legs for the smaller kids. I places two at each table. "Here, try sitting on this." Flix climbed up on one of the taller chairs I had placed beside her and held the tablet upright on the table, now low enough for her to comfortably read on top of. "Is all this really for us?" "Yup. I figured some of you guys would want to keep learning magic, and it would be hard to find anyone else who would teach you." The little girl excitedly bounced on her seat, making me glad I made the inscribed plates thick and durable as she banged it on the stone tabletop before she sheepishly looked at me. "Opps. Thank you Scarlet!" "Just make sure you share, okay?" "Okay!" Excitedly, she went back to reading the tablet as I went to scan through the ones I haven''t read yet. Unfortunately, I wasn''t finding much of actual use. I kept finding incantations for spells that I could easily just do trough brute mana manipulation or descriptions of elemental properties that were pretty obvious if you spent any time looking outside of a window. To my side, Flix''s head dipped down before quickly jerking back up. She rubbed her eyes then concentrated on the tablet she was reading before her head started to dip again. "Alright, I think you need to go to bed. You might hurt yourself, especially with how heavy the tablets are." "Mmmm! No!" But to my surprise as I tried to lift the little girl out of the chair, she violently shook her head and struggled out of my grip before slipping and falling off. Thankfully, my reaction speed was more than adequate to reposition myself underneath her and catch the fluffy tailed girl in a hug. When she realized what had happened, her arms snaked around me and held herself as tightly as they could manage. "You''re going to leave in the morning, right Scarlet?" "Huh? Ah, yea, I did say that." "Then, please. Let me stay with you until then." Flix''s entire body was trembling as she spoke into my chest. (Philia wasn''t the only one I needed to spend extra time on a goodbye it seems.) One of my hands moved from holding her back and went to stroke the girl''s hair. Her triangular ears slowly folded back as her tail wagged lazily and she buried her face further in between my soft mounds. I slowly lowered my body to the ground while holding her secure against my own and readjusted her body so that she sat on my lap. The moment my arm went back around her back, Flix''s legs wrapped around mine as if she was afraid that her arms weren''t enough to avoid losing her grip on me. Flix''s breathing also grew deeper and faster, like she was deeply inhaling through her nose and exhaling through her mouth. It wasn''t the first time she had done this, so I wasn''t too concerned about the behaviour, but it did make me curious. Actually asking the person in question about it was straight out though, so I had no choice but to leave that question unanswered for the time being. The two of us stayed in that position until I could hear the kids upstairs stirring out of their beds. "Flix? Time''s up. Everyone''ll be coming down soon. Flix?" I dug the little girl''s head out of my valley, only to find out that she had fallen asleep in that position. Her lips curled up into a small smile as her tail periodically wagged a bit here and there. Without any choice, I held Flix close to me and rose to my feet to greet everyone else. As the kids came down, they made a fuss about how Flix was stole a march on them overnight when they saw her in my arms as I carried the sleeping girl. I transferred her over to Philia''s arms as soon as possible before preparing breakfast for everyone. Once the kids ate, I gave them all goodbyes as they left to earn money. Many of them gave me teary waves as the left one after the next. Quite a few tried to stay, but a stern word by Philia was enough to make them hurry. All that was left was Philia at the door. The kids too young to help around were dozing off on a couch inside and Flix was fast asleep in her bed upstairs. I had already explained about the room with the steel tablets to her, and even put aside a bunch of spare food and soap making materials to last everyone a little while. After that, I had handed over the bag of coins I had gotten for the sale of the soap. Philia didn''t bother to open the bag, but was still pretty surprised at the weight of it before she hid it in her room. We stood there face to face at the threshold of the door. "Take care on your journey." "You take care as well." Philia held both of my hands in hers as I stood just outside of the door. Tears were threatening to escape from me and I could see the older dwarf''s lower lip quiver. "I''ll be back." "I know." But our farewells didn''t go anywhere. For the first time, I realized I didn''t even know how to do one. I had thought that just saying goodbye was enough, but it didn''t feel right now that the time came. No words that I could think of encapsulated what I wanted to say. Not even close. "I, I..." "I look forward to the next time we see each other again." My words choked up in my throat, but somehow Philia was able to say exactly what I wanted to say. No matter what I did, she always managed to stay one step ahead of me. (I won''t let it stay that way though.) I squatted down a bit so that our line of sight was level. Philia''s eyes widened a bit, but it was nothing compared to what would happen if my plan succeeded. Throwing off her hands, I wrapped my fingers around the back of the gaunt dwarf''s head and I pressed my lips against hers, pushing my tongue aggressively between her lips as I got a thorough taste of her. The seconds ticked by. I couldn''t tell if it was only a moment, or half an eternity, but I pulled away, letting go of Philia. Pulling back, she was completely frozen, her eyes as wide as they could go. Satisfied with the expression I never got to see before, I licked my lips. "That''s something to remember me by." As I turned around, I saw her face grow cherry red. That expression of hers was a perfect souvenir for myself as I made my way to the city gates where I would meet up with Mint at. =========================================================== "Ah damnit!" A tall figure clad in robust metal armour stepped past the large orc serving as the local boss. The figure removed their helmet, revealing the short and wavy blonde hair atop her long and narrow, yet sensually feminine face. She shook off the glistening sweat that had accumulated on her skin as she took deep breaths. "No environmental controls, no personal regulator. Just how the hell do these savages even survive?!" She glared at the corpse for a moment before moving on without even bothering with any items the monster may have left. "And they only give me this flat metal pole?! I demanded that they give me at least a shock rifle, and they give me a damn pole to fight with! How the hell am I supposed to do my job with a measly piece of crude metal?!" Despite the names she called it, the woman carefully returned the light blue blade into it''s sheathe. "Damnit. And these supposed support systems that those bastards said I got? Why the hell do I have to power them up by fighting! Couldn''t they have just charged the damn things in the first place instead of making me work for it?! At least they make up for the lack of power armour, but damnit this crude armour is hot!" She tried to pull on the neck lining a bit, but the lightly elastic material refused to budge as much as she wanted. "Damnit! Why the hell do I have to go through this shit?! Ah, they better make me rich and let me spend the rest of my life on a resort planet after this! Damnit!!!" Leaving those words, the woman returned her helmet back onto her head as she trudged along down the stairs behind where the orc was guarding. Ninetailed_Furball Hi everyone! It''s everyone''s tardy furball! m(_ _)m Finally, this arc has finished! Liked Scarlet''s little revenge at the end? I couldn''t resist, so sorry those of you who don''t like yuri. And that little Flix! She''s so cute! But no way I can let such a girl on to such a dangerous journey. What''s that? It''s only dangerous because of Scarlet? Hmmm....oh well! ¡¥_(¥Ä)_/¡¥ Sorry for the delay on this chapter as well. I still hadn''t fully recovered from some of the weird stuff that happened at work last week. This week should be better, and though there might be a bit of chapter shuffling, as the bonus Q&A is next. It''s still not too late if you have any questions! That said, I look forward to whatever everyone has to say in the comments, and once again, thanks for reading! (¨R?¨Q)/ Chapter 48.5 – How and Why of Terheim Alicia: "Hello everyone! Welcome to the first ever episode of How and Why of Tehreim!" Scarlet: "Hi." Alicia: "Scarlet! You need to sound excited and happy all the time, like how our creator does!" Scarlet: "Umm...HI..." Alicia: "Talking closer to the mic doesn''t count as excited and happy." Scarlet: "Sorry, it''s just...are we really doing this?" Alicia: "Of course we are! Our creator said it would be more interesting if we did it!" Scarlet: "Interesting? Really? Is it that interesting for us to do it?" Alicia: "Of course it is! At least I''d rather read a Q&A made by you rather than our creator." Scarlet: "Isn''t that rude to our creator?!" Alicia: "It''s the truth though." Scarlet: "I think I need to teach you about things you shouldn''t say about other people." Alicia: "Really? How about right after this? And can you pet my head while doing it?" Scarlet: "I wouldn''t do that. It wouldn''t be a punishment if I did..." Alicia: "Awwww..." Scarlet: "Haaa...anyways, the questions." Alicia: "Umm, okay. The first one. ''Will there be anymore yuri with new characters or is it just a one time thing?'' from ohmyriley. Ummm...Scarlet, what''s yuri?" Scarlet: "I''ll tell you when you get older. Ahem! Anyways, according to the notes, it seems that there will be more in the future on occasion, but it won''t be nearly to the level as Philia. Haaa, that''s good. The fact that there will be a bit might mean that I might find someone for myself someday? The fact that it''s subdued might mean that it won''t be shown publicly I guess? Ahhh, just thinking about how everyone saw me kissing Philia makes my face red!" Alicia: (Grrrr, that damn hag! It''s good that she didn''t get seduced by that scrawny and wrinkly face of hers. Scarlet''s mine, and I won''t let anyone have her!) Scarlet: "Huh? Did you just say something Alicia?" Alicia: "Nope, nothing! Let''s move on to the next question then! Ummm...''Can slimes be used as an ingredient in personal lubricant?'' from Gelcube." Scarlet: "Ah! Ahh...do we have to answer that?" Alicia: "We do. All the questions were picked out by our creator and we''re not allowed to not answer them. But what''s a ''personal lubricant''? Is it like a toy or something?" Scarlet: "Ah I guess? It is used for a type of playing." Alicia: "Can we try playing with it?" Scarlet: "No! No, we can''t. It''s not a sort of play we can do!" Alicia: "Why not?" Scarlet: "Ummm...I''ll tell you when you get older!" Alicia: "Muuu. Why is it always that? Why do you keep dodging my questions like that?!" Scarlet: "Ummm...well, I don''t know the answer to everything. Some times I just can''t answer." Alicia: "Oh, okay. You know so much, sometimes I forget." Scarlet: "Thanks. Oh, right, the question. Ah! There''s an answer for it already. Umm, it says ''Yes, however I do not recommend it, as the burning sensation is quite strong. I personally am not a fan of blood mixed in with my physical fun times, but I''m not you. Unlike K-Y, more is not better''..." Alicia: "Scarlet? Are you alright? Your face is red again." Scarlet: "Ah! Umm, yea, I''m alright! Let''s move on then!" Alicia: "Ummm...okay. The next one is ''Can''t she just change her appearance to look like a male vampire, like she has some trouble adapting so why not change her appearance to at least look male if she can''t fully change her gender?'' from Ruiso. The answer is never! Scarlet is beautiful the way she is! I won''t let anyone make her a man!" Scarlet: "Ah, umm...thanks? Anyways, the thing is, I''ve kinda gotten used to this body of mine. Changing it feels weird, and it would be a pain to get used to a new body all over again, so I won''t do it just to be a man again. I mean, the only difference really is what parts stick out, right?" Alicia: "Why are you asking me? I don''t know what it''s like to be a man." Scarlet: "Oh umm...it was rhetorical. Well, another bit is that things get complicated pretty quickly with the [Alter Silhouette] skill, and using it requires a bit of awareness and effort. It''s not much, but if I become too disturbed, the transformation will be undone. The process is pretty painful when it''s only my eyes and fangs. Just thinking about how it would be like for my whole body makes me shudder." Alicia: "It''s okay Scarlet. That dwarf can''t hurt you anymore?" Scarlet: "What are you talking about Alicia?" Alicia: "Oh, nothing." Scarlet: "Oookay?" Alicia: "Now then, the next question! ''How long until I get to see my cute Alicia again?'' from Ruiso. Yea! How long until I get to show up again?" Scarlet: "It says here the answer is...''spoiler'' with a smiley sticking out it''s tongue." Alicia: "Boo! I wanna come back and hug you all the time again!" Scarlet: "I do too. I really do..." Alicia: "Ah! It''s okay! We''ll always be together while we''re doing the Q&A!" Scarlet: "Yea, but that''s only until this ends." Alicia: "So we''ll make the most of it!" Scarlet: "I suppose so." Alicia: "Ehehehe. I love it when you hug me Scarlet. You always smell so nice and are so soft!" Scarlet: "Umm...yea...(Why does everyone like to bury their face into my chest so much? Wouldn''t they get tired of it after a while?)" Alicia: "..." Scarlet: "Okay, it''s been ten minutes. How about we continue with the Q&A?" Alicia: "...can we do it while we''re still like this?" Scarlet: "Oh alright." Alicia: "Yay! I love you Scarlet!" Scarlet: "I love you too Alicia." Alicia: "Okay then, the next question! ''My question though is, why did she go through all that? There was no point in pretending to be somebody else, they would have just seen a dead body. She could have left and they would have just had a murder mystery. And if they looked into it enough they would have found evidence of his illegal activity. THEN they would have assumed that was the cause of his death. No need to pull the farce she did.'' By ThatOneJester. Wow, what a long question." Scarlet: "It is. Well, then...basically, I didn''t have much information to work off of, and had to make a lot of presumptions. Maybe it wasn''t very obvious, but my thought process at the time was that being seen going inside of noble''s house, having the noble die, then not be seen leaving would make everyone suspicious about a woman in black robes and long silver hair. But if said woman appeared to not be in a position where it was possible to have been the one to have done it and there was enough evidence to suggest a third party, she could buy enough time to get out of the city and if she stayed away long enough, everyone would forget about her. The disguise beyond that was insurance, as almost everyone who knew her believed she was an elf, and the one who left the mansion was obviously a foxkin." Alicia: "So basically it was all just in case?" Scarlet: "Yup. If they chased after a person who didn''t exist, it would keep myself and the orphanage much safer." Alicia: "Alright then. Next question is ''Is there a reason why Scarlet is masquerading as an elf as supposed to any other race?'' from binarysoap." Scarlet: "I''m not. Vampires like myself just look like it to the casual observer if they don''t notice our fangs or eye colour. I might be more easily figured out by an actual elf, but I''ve only seen one in this life so far." Alicia: "Yup. It''s all just a misunderstanding. Now the next question. ''WHAT ARE THE CHANCES OF FELIX BEING ADOPTED!?! TELL ME AUTHOR-SAMA!!!'' from SovietWeeb. NEVER! She won''t every come back ever and ever again!" Scarlet: "Are you alright there Alicia?" Alicia: "Ha! Umm, I am. Sorry." Scarlet: "No, it''s fine. I was just a bit surprised. Ummm, do you have something against Flix?" Alicia: "No. I don''t have anything against that thieving cat." Scarlet: "She''s a fox though. Oh well. Ummm...legally speaking, it won''t happen. Not like with Alicia." Alicia: (Yes!) Scarlet: "However, we will be hanging out together in the future quite a bit, but when and in what form is a secret." Alicia: (Grrr. She should just stay in that orphanage and never come out again!) Scarlet: "You really alright there Alicia?" Alicia: "I am! Next question! ''What is going to happen with the city characters once Scarlet departs? Are they here for this arc only? Will there be other permanent characters (aside from Alicia) in the future? Do you have a central plot for the story in mind or are you making it up as you go? Do you believe that the Nanjing government could''ve won the Second Sino-Japanese War even if the United Front had not been established?'' from Zephyrus." Scarlet: "Ummm, for this multi-part question, we have an answer straight from the creator: ''Some of the characters will come back in the future. I''ve set up way too many threads and foreshadowed too much to abandon them at this point. Maybe you noticed a few of them? But they''ll be taking a back seat until Scarlet meets up with them again later on. I have roughly a half dozen characters that will become regulars in the story, though it won''t ever stop following Scarlet as the central MC. When it comes to the plot line this entire arc was completely unplanned and only came about because I realized that it was weird for Scarlet to go to a large settlement only to leave a day later and nothing immediately important happening like four times in a row. Something important needed to happen at a town or city before the meat of the next arc, and this one happened to be the one it happened at. Beyond this, I have about a half dozen arcs roughly planned out along with the next two planned in much more detail. In fact, I even have the ending fully planned out already, though details do change as unexpected things happen as I write. Finally, no. The Chinese were screwed from the start during that war. Unlike what happened in Russia just a little earlier, the Nanjing government didn''t stand a chance in the long run, and barely got anything done in the short term either. If the States didn''t have colonies in SE Asia, Japan would''ve taken the entire region along with all the good bits of China. After that though is anyone''s guess, as history is too complex to come up with solid answers to what if scenarios. Overall, the Sino-Japanese war was quite a different story from the European war, as it was the time''s equivalent of a rising first world power against a bunch of third world countries. Only Russia was the only exception to that, and they almost lost their war in the east anyways. I think the only reason why they didn''t lose any real territory there was because there wasn''t anything worth keeping. At least when you consider how much of a treasure trove SE Asia was at the time.''" Alicia: "Wow. There''s some strange stuff in there too." Scarlet: "A bit I guess. That last section was strangely long though. Maybe the creator is a big fan of WWII?" Alicia: "Maybe? Anyways, next question: ''How much blood does Scarlet drink?'' From a lot of people." Scarlet: "Well, generally four litres a day is enough for me. It''s nice and filling, and I won''t feel hungry for most of a day after that, but if really wanted to, I could drink as much as forty litres at once." Alicia: "Forty?! Really? How! How does it fit in your body?! Isn''t that bigger than you?!" Scarlet: "I don''t know if it''s bigger, but at the very least it''s eerily close. Well, the answer is that it doesn''t, not really. My [Blood Sucking] skill lets me take more blood as I raise it''s rank. The reason is that my body converts blood into mana, which is used to repair my body and refills my MP reserves in addition to being nourishment. Any mana that isn''t used for one of these purposes is expelled in my breath. The process can work in reverse to a degree as well, as ambient mana can be absorbed as I breathe, but ordinary mana doesn''t have the nutrition my body needs to keep going, so no matter how much I breath in, it won''t substitute for blood." Alicia: "Wow, so that''s the secret behind why you drank so much blood early on." Scarlet: "Yea, it was great to get skills up quickly. Though a part of the reason why it seemed like I drank a lot was because I lost track of time so badly." Alicia: "That''s true. You don''t sleep, and if you''re drinking blood so often, you won''t get tired either." Scarlet: "Exactly." Alicia: "So, here''s the next question. ''why is Scarlet so different in chapter one compared to later on?'' from quite a few readers." Scarlet: "Oh, that. Huh. Well, to be honest, I didn''t really think that any of that stuff in before I was reincarnated was real." Alicia: "Huh? But it really felt like you did!" Scarlet: "Well, it''s one of those things where it kinda feels like a dream, but you''re not sure, I guess? I mean, if something like that happened to you, wouldn''t you wonder if any of it was real?" Alicia: "I suppose so?" Scarlet: "Anyways, that''s the excuse." Alicia: "It''s an excuse?!" Scarlet: "Yea, because our creator didn''t have a good grasp of my personality at the time of writing, so things just came out that way." Alicia: "An out of story retcon without actually changing anything in previous chapters?! How devious!" Scarlet: "I think so too. I''m a little worried about the chapters that''s coming up in the future." Alicia: "How terrifying! Well, for the the last question, apparently our creator wants to be the one to answer it." Scarlet: "Ah, so I guess that''s the end for our time then." Alicia: "Can we stay like this a little longer then?" Scarlet: "Sure. We can for as long as you want." Alicia: "Yay! Last question! ''How long did you take to decide to share the story, and I''d love to hear even more in-depth about how you plan out a story'' by FireflyFanatic!" ''So, starting from the beginning, I started writing way back when I was still in elementary school. Not much, but just a bit here and there for fun. It didn''t really go anywhere back then, but I got interested in learning more about writing in general, so I occasionally checked out tips and guides. From there, I got introduced to web novels from a friend a few years back, and after spending most of a year binging on them, I got the urge to start writing again. I think I started up like 20 different stories. Some were only a chapter long, others went on for over 20. I stopped writing each for different reasons, but most of them were because I got stuck at some point. Half were because I got bored of it itself, while the other half was because I couldn''t figure out how to continue the story. I want to go back to finish the ones I got stuck on, but I''ll probably hate them if I did go back and find out how bad they were. So, I was checking out an anime after being prodded by a different friend on it, as it was based on a WN I had finished reading. After checking it out, I just kinda felt like ''I could do better''. I mean, the original story was very much meh. The overall plot line was pretty simplistic, full of convenient contrivances, almost no character development anywhere, and overall not much meaning to the story. Even worse, almost every chapter was an exposition barf. But it was fun. Somehow, I really enjoyed the story, and seeing it animated was even more fun. I could tell that the animation studio was just enjoying themselves screwing around wherever they could. So, I decided to write another story based on it, and after I got 13 chapters done, I tried making an account and releasing it. Here we are, four months later, and it keeps hitting the top of the front page on SH, it gets mentioned a bunch in the forums. I really didn''t expect it to explode the way it did. Looking back, I feel like while I did fix a lot of the things I complained about in regards to the WN that inspired my story, in turn there''s a whole ton of unique problems that got incorporated here and there. But to everyone who enjoys my story despite that, I say thank you all!'' Alicia: "And as the same as our creator, we say thanks as well!" Scarlet: "Ah, yes! Thank you for reading the story about us!" Alicia: "About you! This is your story!" Scarlet: "It''s our story. I might be the main character, but I''m not the only important one there. You''re one of them too, so it''s our story." Alicia: "Scarlet! Sniff" (If only she said it was just us two) Scarlet: "There there. Now then..." Alicia: "Right! So everyone..." Scarlet & Alicia: "Thank you for reading!" Chapter 49 – Escorting Nearby the gates, I could see Mint standing around beside a large horse drawn wagon. He was casually scanning the streets around him as he waited. (I hope I''m not late.) Picking up the pace, I weaved between the people around me. "Oh Miss Scarlet!" He waved and called me out the moment he spotted me. I raised a hand in turn but opted not to raise my voice. Instead, I quickly closed the gap. "Hey. I''m not late, am I?" "No no. In fact, I''m still waiting for my other escorts. They had some last minute business to take care of." "Oh, I see." (I hope he''s not just saying that to make me feel better.) That said, it did actually make me feel a bit better. The thought that I wasn''t dragging anyone down was nice, even though I had absolutely no reason to think that I''d be dragging anyone down at all for this job. At least while we were on the road. "So...can you tell me what sort of things to expect? I''ve never done an escort request for the guild before." "Oh, you''ve done escorts for other guilds or something? How was it like?" "Uhh...unpredictable." There was no way I was going to recount all my terrible experiences escorting NPCs into hell holes, traps, ambushes, and glitched pathing. "I see. Well at least these sorts of escort requests are vastly different from that. It''s pretty rare for the unexpected to happen. Maybe a few monster attacks, the occasional bandits, but even that is rare." "Bandits are rare?" I had the image that monster and bandit attacks happened pretty much every time a merchant was being escorted, considering that the spent the money to hire escorts. "Pretty much. If they were common, merchants wouldn''t use the roads they appear at you know?" "Ah, makes sense." "Monster attacks are more common, but they only happen once every few days or when travelling in a particularly infested area. Even then, they usually only show up in small groups and are easy to repel. We merchants actually count on being able to harvest a few monsters along the way to help cover the costs of the escorts." Mint points out at his wagon and there was some tarps and rope in a clearly open extra space. It was a bit weird that merchants actually looked forward to monster attacks like that. The thought made me wonder just how there were enough monsters around that would allow such a thing. The ecology of this world was weird. "Huh? If you count on monster attacks to happen, then why don''t you just strengthen yourself instead of hiring escorts?" "Ah, some merchants do that. It''s especially common among former mercenaries and adventurers. But for the rest of us, the time we spend on training ourselves up to be self sufficient is time we could spend making more money. Unless if you have a particular reason to get those skills and levels, it''s just not worth it." (And thus they spend that money on escorts instead huh?) "Hey! Mister Mercari!" "Oh, looks like they''re back. Hey! Over here!" The merchant waved at a group of three people who were making their way through the busy street towards us. Two young guys and a young girl, all in their early or mid teens. One of the men had triangular pointed ears and a thin furry tail. Their equipment looked like hand-me-downs from three generations ago, and their clothes under their armour looked as old as they were. My eyes half closed on the fact that the animal-eared one was wearing an open vest and nothing else to cover his upper body. (Is that one doing that on purpose, or just can''t afford a real shirt?) "My dear mademoiselle! To think we could be reunited at a...!" "Oh shut it and stop being in heat all the time you moron!" "Ah, stop it you two!" As they got close, the half stripped one rushed up and grabbed my hands, bringing his face way too close for comfort. But in the middle of his sentence, the girl smacked the back of his head and pushed him to the side, toppling him to the ground. The third member of the group rushed up and pulled the first one back onto his feet as he tried to deescalate things. "Hey! That hurt! Why do you always have to be so violent?!" "Oh shut it! Why do you always act like you''re standing at attention all the time?! Make it learn to lie down, or I''ll make it learn how to play dead!" "Ahh, you two! Not in front of our benefactor! Ah, I''m terribly sorry about those two." Before I could get anything in, those two just kept yelling at each other. The last one seemed a bit more amiable, but had way too little influence or force of will to actually get the other two to stop. Not like I was one to talk though. "Ahem!" Behind me, there was a massively loud fake cough, making all three of them, plus myself, stand like rods. "Now then, as you three already know, this is Miss Scarlet, the one that saved us from those loam wolves a while back. As I''ve told you before, she''s joining us for our trip as an additional escort to Knossos City." "Ah, I''m Aaron Recnal, and it''s a pleasure to be able to work with such an amazing mage! Gah!" "I''m Mary Eromyalc! You were really incredible appearing with a cloud of dust and taking out all those wolves in an instant! I hope we can be friends!" The triangle-eared one extended a hand out to me, but before I could take it, the girl body-checked him to the side and grabbed my outstretched hand in both of hers and shook it with all her strength. It was actually more than I expected considering how her arms weren''t particularly muscular, but I should''ve known as my own arms were thinner yet I probably completely dwarfed her in strength. "Why you! Why do you always have to do that sort of thing Mary?!" "Oh shut it. I wouldn''t have to do that if you weren''t always a cat in heat!" "I''ll have you know that we cat-kin don''t go into heat!" (Rather than that, wasn''t that something that only effects females?) "Ahem! If you will, I''d like to get a move on before the sun sets." "Ah, right! You two, let''s get going! We can leave the talking to afterwards!" "Oh fine." "I''m coming! Bleh!" Thanks to the timely intervention, I didn''t have to get caught up in those two arguing a second time in only a few seconds. Maybe a third time, considering the girl stuck her tongue out at the guy at the end. "Sorry about that. They''re always like that." (Seriously?) "Oh, I''m Jason Dleihs by the way." "Scarlet." We quickly shook hands before Mint had the horse start pulling his wagon and we followed after it. "So, where did you come from anyways?" Within seconds of clearing the city gates, the four of us spread out forming a half-circle covering the back and sides around the wagon. Somehow I ended up being one of the back corners with the girl being beside me. Just in front of me was the tailed guy. It felt like they weren''t really maintaining formation properly and were closer to me than the last guy on the far side of the wagon. Maybe the formation didn''t actually matter much? "Umm...from the west." "Oh really? We came from the west as well! Ah, but...I''ve never seen you before. I''d definitely remember if there was someone as beautiful as you in the village. Did you come from beyond the forest?" "Uh, yea. I came through the forest." "Wow! Really? I knew you were strong, but strong enough to get through such a dangerous place? How did you get so strong even though you''re younger than us?" "Uhhh, well, I fought a lot of monsters." "Oh man. I''m glad none of them managed to scar that pretty face of yours. It would be a loss to the entire world if they did!" "For once, I actually agree. It''s a pretty scary thought that I might mess up and get a nasty scar or worse." "You don''t have anything to look at, so I don''t see the problem." "Why you! How can you say that to a girl?!" "Ah! You two! Stop fighting already!" (And once again they''re fighting. How does this party even stay together when they''re like this?) "So, what sort of things are expected to be done in escort requests?" After quite a while, the two calmed down and we were able to have a proper conversation again. The trip itself was pretty boring as we were simply walking on a mostly featureless road with very little to note aside from tall grass on both flanks and the occasional tree in the distance. The pointy eared guy was pulled to the other side of the wagon by the other guy so that he and the girl wouldn''t be able to fight. I was left on this corner of the wagon pretty much alone with her. "You mean aside from following the client and protecting him and the cargo?" "Yea. Aside from that." "Well, there really isn''t much more than that." "Really?" My eyes grew a little wider while looking at the girl. (Umm...shit. I forgot her name already.) "Well, the hard part is that we have to always be on guard day and night until we can rest at a town." "How''s that done?" "Ah, well, it''s pretty simple. During the day we''ll all keep an eye out, but when we make camp for the night, we just take shifts for the watch." "Shifts? Then I guess you don''t get much sleep during an escort?" "Ahaha, I guess not. Especially since there''s only three of us, it was pretty tough at the beginning, but we''re used to it now! Ah! But since you''re here, we can get a bit more sleep!" (Sleep huh? It feels weird talking about it since I don''t do it anymore.) "Hmm...if that''s the case, how about I just take the night shift?" "Huh?" "Well, if I rest during the day in the wagon, it wouldn''t be hard to keep watch during the night. That way you guys can get proper rest and be at full strength to deal with any threats during the day." "Well, sure, that would work, but..." "No way! I can''t allow such a beautiful woman to keep to the flames all alone the entire night!" "Hey, stop it!" From the other side, the two guys yelled across. There was the sound of some struggling and I could see some dust puff up from under the wagon. "Umm, I don''t mind myself, but are you sure about that Miss Scarlet?" "I''m fine with that. I''m used to staying up at night." (Rather, I prefer the night in general without the annoying glare of the sun making everything too bright.) "How about you Mister Mercari? Is that fine?" "As long as you are in agreement, I don''t have any complaints, but are you sure it''s fine Miss Scarlet?" "Yea, it is." "Alright then, you can take a rest in the spare space in the back. Just let me stop the wagon." Before he finished, I had already hopped inside and was pulling the cheap tarp over my body. "I''m already in. You don''t have to stop." "Oh, well, you really are quite capable aren''t you? Have a good rest. We''ll be relying on you at night." "No problem." With that, I pulled the sheets over my head. But the second I did that, I pulled off my bag and started to remove some things from it. Some wood as well as a bolt of spider silk came out. From there, I used [Spirit Form] and [Materialize], then applied some more magic to form the wood into an approximation of my own body but in several parts to make it easy to take apart and put it into my bag later. The silk was cut into long lengths and the ends were embedded into the head area of the wooden dummy to look like my hair. The colour (or lack thereof) was pretty close to mine, and should fool a casual observer. When everything was in place, I completely disengaged [Materialize] and extracted myself from under the old tarp. Using [Float], I hovered above the wagon. A bit of [Tempest Magic] kept me from falling behind, and I looked around. It looked like nobody noticed what I was doing. Well, nobody aside from the little fluffballs that got all excited when they realized what I was doing. That was because I had gotten so bored already that I just wanted to be entertained, and there wasn''t much better entertainment in the middle of nowhere as playing with the little spirits. Well, aside from talking while walking, but trying to do so reminded me how bad of a talker I was. Especially when I had so many secrets to keep. Just in case, I paid attention to the presences around the wagon, but there weren''t any significant ones, and none of the small ones I did detect made a move towards the group. leaving me to play with the little spirits. To start with, I made and spread out a bunch of mana treats which the little fluffballs eagerly caught and ate up. From there, we started one of our usual games as I started to chase them, using [Tempest Magic] to push me around while floating. "Miss Scarlet. Can you wake up now?" "Mmm? What''s up?" "We''re making camp now. I thought maybe you''d like to at least have dinner with us." The sky had turned crimson and the sun was starting to dip close to the horizon. I thoroughly enjoyed myself playing with the fluffballs, and they seemed to be properly satisfied themselves for the first time in a while. It was nice that I finally was able to make up for how much I was neglecting them while I was in the city. During the day, the others called me for lunch as they rested at the side of the road, but I ignored them. It wasn''t like I could eat normal food. Pretending to sleep was a natural way to avoid being found out. But sleeping even at this point wasn''t so good. Putting the wooden doll back into my bag, I snuck back under the tarp and acted as if I was coming out of it. "Ah. In that case, I''ll help cook." "Huh? Cook? We don''t have ingredients though." "Then what do you normally have?" "We just have some black bread and dried meat." The guy with a shield on his back came up with some hard looking bread and a small bag full of dried meat in his hands. I couldn''t imagine how any of that was tasty. "If you guys don''t mind waiting a bit, I can make something." "Really? If someone as beautiful as you is the one making it, I can wait all night for it!" "As much as I hate to agree, if you can make something, I''d love to eat it too." "Oh, you''ll make something Miss Scarlet? In that case, how about everyone set up the camps first while we wait?" "Okay!" "Alright!" "''Kay!" With that, I took off in a sprint, checking out one hit on my [Sense Presence] skill after the next until I found some rush rabbits. A quick squeeze of my fingers around their necks ended their lives in an instant. I nicked their necks with a claw and sucked the blood out of each of them. It wasn''t really enough as my stomach threatened to rumble, but it had to do for then. I needed to spend time gathering more blood as my jars of blood were running out. Nearby, I could faintly hear the sound of running water, so I headed towards it. Only a short distance away, I found a small stream flowing through the grasslands almost parallel to the road. The stream really was tiny though, as it was only big enough that you could barely submerge a water skin enough to fill it. There was no way to fill a pot from here using normal methods. Fortunately, I was more than experienced when it came to filling a container with fluids using unconventional means. Taking out an iron ingot from my bag, I reformed it into a pot large enough to serve four, then I used [Aqua Magic] to make the stream flow up and into the pot. Once it was filled halfway, I put the pot into my bag and returned to the camp. I got back to everyone as the first tent was spread out on the ground and two of them were just about to raise some wooden poles to hang the heavy canvas off of. "Oh, welcome back. That was fast." "Wow! Rush rabbits?" "Three of them as well?" "Incredible, you really do live up to our every expectation." "Umm...anyways, it''ll be a little longer." I put the rabbits down and pulled the pot out of my bag and placed it on the ground. Next, went about to open up the rabbits. I had lost the knife I had bought before to the lord''s goons, but I had made a pair of daggers that same night. Taking one of the daggers out, I reformed it a bit into the shape of a more proper utility knife, then went to work skinning, removing the organs, then separating the meat from the bones. When I was done, I heated up the water using magic, bringing it to a boil in only seconds, and threw in the diced meat in to be cooked. As it went, I diced up some leftover vegetable from my bag. I was starting to get really low when it came to food, as almost all of my reserves had gone to the orphanage. If I wanted to keep doing this sort of thing, I needed to stock up again soon. Carefully timing it, I added each vegetable depending on it''s cooking time. While I kept a low flame going underneath, I took advantage of my newest skill, [Multi-cast], and stirred the contents at the same time using magic. Finally, I added some salt and pepper to the mix while stopping the stirring to remove the scum from the top on occasion. My [Multi-cast] rank wasn''t high enough for me to cast three spells at the same time yet. I had a lot more practising to do, unless if I got lucky and found a monster that had the skill naturally. "Alright, it''s ready now." I turned to my travelling companions, but to my surprise, they were all staring with their mouths agape. The always bickering duo were drooling a bit. "It smells so good." "It smells better than the food at our last inn." "It really does." "Is it really alright to eat something so nice smelling while travelling?" "I made it, so isn''t that a given? Ah! I forgot the utensils." Looking around, none of them had bowls or spoons to eat with. I hadn''t even prepared something to serve the soup with. Hiding behind the large pot, I dug into my pack, pulled out an iron ingot, and formed it into four simple bowls and spoons to match, along with a ladle. "Here you go." I handed each a set and served some soup to each. They each thanked me in turn as they received their meal. "Mmm! This is great!" "It really is better than that inn''s food!" "Ah, to be able to eat this well!" "To be able to do so on the road..." Once they started to eat, I got up and headed towards the far fields. "Miss Scarlet? Aren''t you going to eat as well?" "I''m going to have a look around. You guys can eat ahead." "How about doing so after you eat? You should enjoy the meal you yourself have made!" "Ah, umm...well, I''ve got something to do..." My brain went to overdrive, trying to come up with an excuse to not eat with everyone. "Ah! Mister Mercari! She said she has something to do! It''s rude to ask anymore!" "Huh? Oh, yes, I suppose that is true. I apologize." "Ah, no. It''s no problem..." Fortunately, the girl gave me an out, though I wasn''t quite aware what it was she was trying to imply. "Oh, we''ll save you some food for when you come back." "Ah, no, it''s okay. I''ve got a small appetite. You can have it all." "Even still, we''ll make sure to leave you some. It''s the least we can do." "Ah, thanks." I quickly made my way to the fields. Seeing them all eat wasn''t doing me any favours and I was really aching to get more blood into my body. The small amount I had wasn''t doing it for me. As everyone else ate, I switched to [Spirit Form] to avoid my high-speed movement from being noticed. I quickly found and hunted myself a charge boar a bit of a distance away, drained it of all it''s blood, then threw the remains into my bag. Now that I was happy with a nice and full belly, I headed back to the camp. Ninetailed_Furball Hi everyone! It''s your friendly online furball! (^o^)د Sorry for the late post. It feels like this is becoming a regular occurrence lately. That only means three thing! Discipline, discipline, discipline! Now, if only I knew what that word meant ©´(''¡«`£»)©° Jokes aside, we''re finally onto the next arc! Whether you liked Linsington City or not, you won''t see it for a while! Unless if you go back to check out previous chapters that is (???) So, how many of you remember these three adventurers? Did you maybe think they''d show up once Mint was brought back? How do you guys think of them? I''m not so used to characters that talk so much nonsense, but was it enjoyable? Well, anyways, I look forward to everyone''s comments. The plan is that the next chapter will be in two days, and we''ll finally be back to our usual schedule! Hasta la vista, baby! Chapter 50 – Claret I came out of the waist-high grass on the far side of the wagon after making sure that everyone else was all together on the other side. Making my way around the wagon with the horses tied to it''s side, my eyes caught the sight of a fully erect tent and all four of my travelling companions huddled around a small campfire, the sound of their conversation drifted over indistinctly. "Oh Miss Scarlet, welcome back." The first to notice me was Mint, the only one on the far side of the fire. As he spoke up, the other three turned towards me with a smile. "Miss Sc..." "You''re back! The soup was amazing!" "The soup you made was such a delight! So much so that I would love to eat it every day!" "As much as I''d hate to agree with anything this cat in heat says, it would be nice to eat your food all the time." The quarrelling duo interrupted their third as they rushed over to me, eyes glittering. I couldn''t help but feel sorry for the other guy. Despite being their mediator, he had little success at his job and was now being completely ignored. "Ahaha, thanks. I caught a boar just now, so I''ll make something for breakfast as well." "Ah, that''s why she smells like blood again..." The cat boi whispered something to himself but it seemed like my hearing was better than he thought. "Miss Scarlet, we left some soup for you along with some of our rations. Please have some." The pot was sitting beside the fire keeping it from getting cold. Taking a glance inside, there was enough for a single serving left. Beside the pot was the rest of the food Mint promised sitting inside of a simple wooden mug that probably belonged to one of them. "Ah, thanks. I''ll have it when I get hungry." The bread and meat, along with the entire pot went into my bag. The bowls and spoons the others used were next to where the pot was, neatly sitting in a little circle. "Oh sorry, I was going to wash those in the stream in a bit." The non-argumentative guy got up when he noticed I was looking at the bowls. "Ah, no. It''s fine. It''s faster if I do it." Picking one set up, I applied some magical water and quickly rinsed the bowl and spoon out before doing the same to the rest. In less time than it would''ve taken him to walk to the stream, I had already finished cleaning all the utensils. Seeing that, he slumped down beside the fire. "Miss Scarlet? We cleaned up the remains of the rush rabbits and put them on the back of the wagon for you to take." "Ah, you can keep them. Didn''t you say that the monsters hunted during an escort go to the employer?" "They do, but that''s usually only for monsters that attack along the way, not monsters that the escort hunt on the side." (So there''s a differentiation?) "Well, I don''t need them anyways. You can keep them." "Is that so? Well, I''ll graciously accept them then." I sat down at the campfire and the five of us chatted a bit about random topics. As random as it was, it was informative. Apparently monster sightings had increased in the recent few years, especially in the south and west, and it was suspected that it was connected to the defeat of the demon lord. Without him to lead the demons, they scattered around. As a consequence, lots of monsters ended up getting displaced as they were forced from their normal habitats as groups of demons moved through their territories. "Well, it''s starting to get dark, so let''s all go to sleep. Are you sure you''ll be fine keeping watch for the whole night Miss Scarlet?" After a while of talking, Mint made his suggestion. "Yea, I''ll be fine. I''m not even a little sleepy." "...if you say so. Don''t hesitate to wake us up if something happens Miss Scarlet." With some encouraging words from the others, the young adventurer party all went to their tent and Mint lay down on the wide driver''s seat on the wagon. I sat down at the campfire to tend to it for a little while, but once I was reasonably sure that everyone had fallen asleep, I killed the fire only to notice that there were charred bits of meat and bones in the flames. It looked like that was how they disposed the rabbits'' unused bits. I lay down on my back to watch the stars above. The three moons floated high above, each a different primary colour. My eyes gravitated towards the red one, the one my name may have originally come from. The thought that vampires may have originally came from that moon felt pretty ridiculous, but at the same time, I couldn''t really dismiss it. This world had things in it that couldn''t be explained no matter how much I tried. The dungeon I lived in for almost my entire second life being the most principal example, but my own body was another. Like, how come I didn''t need sleep unlike pretty much every living being aside from bacteria on Earth? Even plants slept, in their own weird way. I think. How was I able to survive on nothing but blood? How can I drink more blood than the volume of my body? I could only answer those questions with the answer: magic. But that was an obvious cop-out, and wasn''t satisfying in the slightest. Not to mention that magic was a thing in this world. After a while of staring, I switched gears and went back to working on the skill to revive Alicia while paying attention to the presences around me in the corner of my mind. Every once in a while, I threw some mana treats to the fluffballs. As the starry sky started to retreat, I sat up and dusted myself. Taking the boar out of my bag, I got to work skinning it, removing the organs, and cutting the meat up into little cubes. Removing another iron ingot, I reshaped it into a pair of large serving plate and a bunch of skewers and stabbed the cubes onto it. Applying some crushed salt and pepper, I filled one of the wide plate with a large pile of meat skewers. The organs and loose bones were all thrown into the remains of last night''s campfire and I ignited it all with magic. The fire didn''t take well, so I had to sustain the spell to get rid of the garbage. In the meantime, I formed a simple legged grill from some leftover iron and placed it over the fire before putting the skewers on top. Moving the meat around as it cooked, the fat drizzled down, causing small up-flames in the fire as the meat sizzled. It was really unfortunate that I couldn''t eat any of it, but I liked to imagine that it did wonders for hiding the fact that I was a vampire. That, and it was strangely enjoyable. I had always enjoyed cooking, and while making food for Alicia was especially nice, making it for others wasn''t bad either. It felt nice how the others responded well to the soup I made the night before. The scent of cooked meat started to drift around, and after a while, I heard some rustling in the tent. After more rustling, a bonk and a small yell, then more rustling, the adventurer trio came out one by one from the tent. One of them was rubbing a spot on his head and the girl''s face was a little red it seemed. (Not my problem.) It was most likely prudent to not ask about it. The guy who wasn''t rubbing a bump out went over to the wagon and woke Mint up. "Oh what a sight to wake up to! If only I could be greeted by such a sight every day!" "Wow, there''s so much meat. Can we really have this?" The two just ignored each other rather than fight for once as I placed the serving plate covered in the cooked skewers as I continued to roast the rest. The last two members of our camp quickly came over and they grabbed a skewer each to eat. I continued to grill the meat up until all the prepared skewers were done, then cleaned up the ad hoc grill and used plate before putting them into my bag. Faking a yawn, I went to the back of the wagon and made some space for myself to hide my body double in. Mint asked about eating, but I just said I already ate. Pulling out my body double, I activated [Spirit Form] and started to play a bit with the fluffballs after giving them some breakfast of their own. (Am I feeding them too much? Spirits can''t get fat, can they?) As I idly wondered about something a bit asinine, I kept an eye below me as everyone else got ready to head out. After they ate, they covered the remaining skewer filled plate and placed it neatly in the wagon before they took turns to clean the used skewers and have a drink at the nearby stream. Once they were done, Mint reconnected the horses back to the wagon and they started back on the road. The day passed by pretty uneventfully for the most part. A small group of three slimes appeared out of the tall grass at one point, but I fired off some ice lances and took them out mid-hop the moment they showed themselves. Everyone looked shocked and turned to where my double was laying. In a panic, I rushed back down to it, clipping my body through the wagon and materializing a single arm to wave at them lazily before pulling it under. They all mumbled words of amazement to my embarrassing mistake. I didn''t think before killing those monsters as they showed up on my [Sense Presence] well before the wagon got close at it''s slow walking pace, so from my perspective, I only attacked when they showed signs of aggression. To everyone else, well, it looked like a pretty super human feat. If only they knew how inhuman I was. That evening I fried up the rest of the meat in thin strips and sandwiched them in between the hard bread everyone was carrying along with some ground mustard seeds and some ketchup I found I still had. Seeing how well received this meal was, it made me realize that not only I need more vegetables, but I needed to prepare some sauces as well. If only I could settle for a while somewhere to ferment some stuff, as well as get someone who can taste test, I could make soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce, tonkatsu sauce, or at the very least Roman garum, though I''ve never had it before, so anything I made would be nothing but a blind recreation of a recipe I once read. As everyone ate, I went and found myself some loam wolves and brought the two back in my bag after finishing my own meal. Once the others went to sleep, I started work on the wolves. Wolf meat was tougher and gamier than boar meat, from what I''ve heard at least. I couldn''t really tell as I was cutting it up, but I made nice and thick steaks from them, then after emptying and washing the pot that I had used the day before, I made a new batch of ketchup before adding a bunch of honey, the last of my tomatoes as well as several strong herbs and spices. After letting it simmer for a while, I threw the meat onto the serving plate, extended the edges up and turned it into a wide pot, and poured some of the sauce inside to marinate the meat before magically forming a simple top from another iron ingot. Iron was another thing I was running out of. This was my last bar I had left. There was plenty of other ingots though, and even a few of those weird metals from those golems I had so much trouble with. The trouble was that I wasn''t sure which ones were safe to use for cooking or eating off of. If I needed more, it was probably better to use clay or something from here on. Taking my own advice immediately, I made a new jar from clay and poured the rest of the BBQ sauce into it and put it and the wolf pelts into my bag before cleaning up the area. The pot of meat was placed in my little spot on the wagon to let sit and I incinerated the wolf remains. When I finished everything, I activated [Spirit Form] and floated up to play a little with the fluffballs. I wasn''t making as much progress on the skill to revive Alicia as I had wanted, so I just wanted to distract myself for a bit before working on it. (No, it''s just procrastinating, no matter how I tried to word it. If I keep doing this, Alicia won''t ever come back...but maybe if I only do it today...) Even knowing full well that I was only making things worse, I did my best to keep my mind off of my lack of progress and just tried to enjoy myself with the fluffballs. They certainly didn''t mind at all. It was quite a few hours into the night. The moons had tracked through the sky quite a distance when I spotted some strange black dot in the distance. The dot wasn''t quite black, there was some white as well, but it was slowly growing bigger. It was definitely approaching me, and it wasn''t long before I could feel it''s faint presence through my skill. But rather than alarm, I only felt curious about the sight. There was a strange familiarity to the creature. (Just what sort of thing could it be?) It looked like a person flying through the air, yet something was off about it. Not in a threatening way, but...in an inhuman way. The figure had white skin and hair, and was wearing black robes that flapped in the wind. At a glance the being looked like a woman, but a bit...ghastly? It wasn''t quite right, but it was the only way for me to describe her. Like she was some sort of spectre flying through the night. (That''s right. She looks like one of those robed spectres from the dungeon with her hood down.) The realization helped to understand the familiarity of the sight, yet the feeling of it wasn''t quite right. It looked similar, yet different. Something about it prevented me from taking my eyes off of it. Not like I would, considering it was heading straight towards me. As I was distracted by my thoughts, the figure kept flying straight towards me without slowing. The fluffballs had long stopped flying around and for some reason had opened a path for it. It felt like they were watching the UFO, but for a different reason than I was. At a certain point, I could hear a strange sound sound, like a high pitched scream or yell. It grew louder as the thing approached. "...aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!" The figure of the pale woman flew towards me at, and by the time I realized just how fast she was flying, my mind was only able to register the bright expression of pure joy on her face before she slammed into me and we tumbled heads over heels. The lack of obvious hostility delayed my reaction, and the confusion from her expression further prevented me from actually responding before we collided. But despite my expectations, we didn''t separate from the collision. The mystery woman hugged my neck tightly as we tumbled, rubbing her cheek against my own as I tried to figure out just what was going on. "Aaaahh! It''s you! It''s really you! You''rebackyou''rebackyou''reback!!!" The screaming in my ear didn''t help in the slightest. "I was sad you know! So so sad! You left me and didn''t come back for so long! I thought you were taken and left me behind! But you''re back! I''m so So SO HAPPY!!!" "Wha, just...wha...?" I tried to gently tug her off of me, but her grip was surprisingly strong. Her voice was youthful, but not quite child-like despite the way she was screaming next to my head. Putting in more strength, I finally managed to separate myself and got a good look at her. It took far too much strength to do so. It should''ve been enough to rip her thin limbs apart, yet she treated it like nothing more than a firm grip as she continued to smile. The woman in front of me had hair half as long yet twice as white as my own, her skin even paler than mine. Her face was rounded and well featured, large black eyes and small nose, thin lips but her grin was extraordinarily wide. This person definitely looked older than I was, but she didn''t act like it. Her body was covered in thick black robes with sleeves that extended past her hands and the body obscured her feet. It was a bit similar to mine and even had a large hood that was pulled back, but didn''t open in the front. Unlike mine though, the ends were heavily frayed like they were a good twenty centimetres longer but were then shredded then worn out even further. No matter what, I had no idea who she was and why she acted the way she did towards me. "Who are...?" Before I could finish my question, her arms rose up, her sleeves falling back to reveal her pasty white hands as they cupped my cheeks. Tears started to stream down her face as she felt my features. "You''ve changed so much, yet you haven''t. The years must''ve been hard on you too." "I, I don''t, what? Who are you? How can you even know me?" "You''ve forgotten? It was them, wasn''t it? Those damn rot weeds in the church? Or maybe the god they serve?! It''s me, your dear Claret. Now that we''re together again, I won''t ever let you go Master." The woman''s face twisted in anger for a moment before it returned to it''s gentle smile again. "Wha, Claret? I, I''m not your master." "Yes you are. Scarlet, my master. You''ve changed these past few centuries, but there''s no way I wouldn''t recognize you!" "Centuries?! I''m only three years old! There''s no way I could be your master! I mean, the name''s the same, but, no, it''s impossible!" "It''s not impossible. I always believed that if anyone could do it, you''d be able to escape from the church''s god and come back home." "I, what? No, escape, I, I mean..." It sounded too much like what I actually did, though escape was hardly a good descriptor for my reincarnation, it couldn''t be said that it was entirely wrong either. But that had to just be a coincidence. "None of that matters. There''s no way I could mistaken the colour of your soul. There''s not a single one in the entire world a brilliant as yours!" "My, my soul?" "That''s right. You''re guarding it well, but you can''t hide it from me. Not for me who still has my familiar bond with you." "A, familiar?" I felt like all I was doing was stuttering this entire time. "Exactly, my master! You fed me, you raised me, and when I grew strong enough, you let me be your familiar!" The woman, Claret, pressed her forehead against my own as she stared into my eyes. There was something in her eyes I''ve never seen before. Some sort of longing, some sort of determination. Something...greater. But after a few seconds of staring, she pulled back. "You, you really don''t remember me? Not even a little?" "There''s no way I can. I just told you I was only born three years ago." I couldn''t remember her, yet somehow I didn''t feel wary of her, despite only having just met her. Maybe it was the complete lack of hostility, or the overly familiar way she acted with me, or maybe... (No, that''s absurd. Even if my soul''s the same, I''m a completely different person. Nothing should remain of her. Not after what was probably several reincarnations. I definitely don''t remember a single thing from before my last life, so there''s no way I should be able to remember that life, on the off chance that her soul was the same as mine.) Claret''s hands trembled and she bit her lower lip as her brow furrowed. But as quick as the signs appeared, they disappeared just as fast. "Alright then! If you can''t remember, then I''ll make you remember! And if even that''s not enough, then we''ll make new memories together!" She pressed her forehead against mine again when a dialogue window appeared in my vision. ''Claret wishes to form a familiar pact with you. Will you take Claret as your familiar? Yes/No'' (A familiar? Then, is it like in the usual stories?) "Are you alright with this? Are you fine with me?" "You are my master, Scarlet. There is nobody I want more than you, my master." "Even though, I might be a different Scarlet from what you remember?" "That''s impossible. I can see it in your soul you are the one and only." My thoughts instantly moved towards the ''No'', but I hesitated. The way she looked into my eyes. There wasn''t any wavering in the slightest. Her determination was greater than any I have ever seen, though it wasn''t saying much due to my lack of experience. Even still, the way she talked about me, about her master. It made me hesitate to just hit no outright because of her misunderstanding. "If, if you regret it, we''ll end the pact, alright?" "I won''t regret it. Even if you decide to eat me, I won''t regret it. I owe everything to you, so I will never regret it. So please, I beg of you, I truly beg of you. Accept me." The weight of her words was crushing. She was much older than anyone I have ever met, far older than I could imagine, but despite that she seemed to have kept her child-like purity. Her innocence resounded inside of me against my will. I couldn''t bear with making this person cry. ''Claret has become your familiar.'' Ninetailed_Furball Hi everyone! It''s everybody''s tardy furball! (¨R?¨Q)/ Sorry, I joked about the lateness last time, but it feels like it really is becoming a regular thing. Well, looks like it''s time to redouble my efforts! (`?¦Ø?¡ä) So, a new character! How do you guys like her so far? Well, maybe a bit overbearing, but I kinda like that. Not IRL. I''d hate being around someone so energetic all the time (?©f??)~¥­¥é¡î I''m a bit amazed how much people liked to talk about the knife after reminding everyone about it. I wonder if it''s going to become relevant in the future? Well, I''ll have to remember it exists when the last arc becomes relevant in later plot-lines first. You know, I''m really thankful for the comments you guys have been making. Sometimes it even preemptively lets me fix mistakes! (It really is preemptive. I had no reason to mention it the last chapter. Huh? I wasn''t supposed to call it a mistake? O.o) Well, I''m looking forward to seeing what everyone says this time. See you next time! (^.^)/~~~ Chapter 51 – Spiritual Support As my new familiar rubbed her cheek against my own with her arms around the back of my neck, I had a look at my status. There was a new entry in it. ------------------------------------Familiars:Claret (Greater Dark Spirit)------------------------------------ (So she''s a dark spirit, and a greater variety at that?) That answered why she appeared similar to those ghost monsters I found in the dungeon back home. At the very least, I presumed that spirits were similar to ghosts as they were both incorporeal beings, even if one was a monster and the other something closer to normal living beings. At least they acted like it, being that their diet wasn''t quite that different from my own when I could eat the energy of ghosts and undead monsters. Not like it kept my stomach from shrivelling up like a raisin though. Concentrating on the entry, I was able to get more details like usual. The entry detailed that familiars were contracted beings to a master. The benefits of the contract was that both members can know the location of the other at all times as well as transmit their thoughts and mana to each other. In addition, the master has can use the skills owned by the familiar though at a reduced effectiveness, and the master can give access to their own skills for the familiar. Finally, the master can end the contract at any time, but the familiar was bound to it for life unless if released from their service. The first bit was pretty much as expected from something called a familiar contract. They were all simple things that gave pretty obvious benefits and were easy to imagine their purposes. The latter bit though made me reread the description. Being able to use skills you didn''t have was a huge thing, even if it wasn''t as effective as on the owner. The fact that it went both ways as long as I gave her access opened up countless possibilities. The last part was reassuring. It was possible to end the contract if this turned out to be a bad idea, and the fact that she couldn''t meant that it put me in a stronger position. Though, the way it worked, I didn''t really want to ever contract someone ever again. It just put so much power over the familiar into the master''s hands. It wasn''t nearly as bad as slavery, but it was a wonder that Claret wanted the contract so bad. Next, I moved further down and examined Claret''s personal entry. Doing so made her status page appear without me having to use [Scan]. ------------------------------------Name: ClaretSpecies: Greater Dark SpiritSex: FemaleState: NormalLevel: 228XP: 50,659,328/63,013,800 HP: 1,091,628/1,091,628MP: 3,912,060/3,912,060STR: 46412CON: 41925AGI: 86891DEX: 71796INT: 131622ANI: 101389 Skills: Racial Skills: [Mana Eating 10] Primary Skills: [Exceptional Vitality 5] [Boundless Spirit 7] [Strong Arm 2] [Relentless Body 1] [Winged Feet 5] [Feather Touch 4] [Brilliant Mind 9] [Adamant Psyche 8] [Unarmed Technique 4] [Blunt Resistance 10] [Slash Resistance 10] [Pierce Resistance 10] [Arcane Magic 8] [Blaze Magic 2] [Terranian Magic 2] [Aqua Magic 3] [Tempest Magic 4] [Lunar Magic 10] [Solar Magic 1] [Dimensional Magic 3] [Multi-cast 8] [Synthesis Magic 2] [Arcane Resistance 6] [Fire Resistance 7] [Earth Resistance 6] [Water Resistance 7] [Wind Resistance 8] [Dark Resistance 9] [Light Resistance 9] [Mana Manipulation 9] [Mana Perception 9] [Parallel Thought 6] [Spirit Perception 10] [Materialize 9] [Sneaking 9] [Suppress Presence 9] [Suppress Aura 9] [Sense Presence 9] [Danger Sense 10] [Rapid Regeneration 3] [Rapid Refresh 8] [Acid Resistance 2] [Poison Resistance 3] [Paralysis Resistance 8] [Confusion Resistance 9] [Sleep Resistance 5]------------------------------------ Frankly, it was pretty amazing. Some of her skills were even higher than my own, and she had some skills I haven''t even heard of. [Dimensional Magic] and [Danger Sense] were of particular interest to me. I hoped that I could at least learn those for myself. Claret was definitely higher level than anyone else I had seen so far as well, putting her stats at some extremely impressive levels. It was amazing how physical ability had no correlation to appearances at all in this world. Thinking about it, nothing about her appearances correlated with how she really was. She appeared to be in her late teens, yet she acted like she was half her age, but her actual age was measured in centuries if she wasn''t lying about anything. That age part especially was useful for me. If she really was around as far back as she claimed, then she could tell me quite a bit about this world. The fact that she was my familiar meant it was much easier to control her than anyone else as well, so that put in some level of protection against betrayal. So far, she had done nothing to suggest that she didn''t deserve my trust, but at the same time, I had only just met her. I couldn''t even tell if her level was indicative of the range the strongest people of this world were at, or if it was some sort of deception to let my guard down. In the end, I couldn''t decide without spending more time to figure it out. Before I knew it, my hand was going through Claret''s hair as I supported her body with my free arm. She had completely stopped rubbing her cheek with mine and instead just entrusted her entire body to me. For some reason it reminded me of a cat falling asleep on my lap as I pet it. As enjoyable as this arrangement was, there were things I needed to know, and it was the perfect opportunity for her to earn my trust. I pulled Claret''s body apart from me and I looked into her eyes as I held her shoulders at arm''s length. The dark spirit''s eyes were half closed like she was feeling groggy, yet her expression was that of displeasure. She tried to pull herself back onto me before I spoke out, making her stop. "Claret?" "Yes master?" Just by saying her name out loud, the girl put on a smile as bright as any she had shown me despite how dark her expression was just moments before. Did this mean she really easy to deal with, or extremely troublesome to deal with? It felt like it might be both. "How did you find me anyways? There shouldn''t have been any way for you to find out I was even around." "That''s easy! It was these guys!" Claret backed off and raised her hands. A few little fluffballs came over and hovered above the palms of her hands. "These little kids were spreading word that there was a friendly vampire giving them tons of food. When I heard about it, I rushed over to where they said you lived, then followed the ones that were with you after you left!" "They...told you...?" I stared at them. Something about them felt like they were puffing out their chests with pride going ''Yup, it was us!'', but it wasn''t like they had any anatomy aside from being nearly spherical balls of coherent mana. They didn''t have any mouths, and as far as I''ve seen, they''re completely incapable of making any sounds. I wasn''t convinced that anything that I thought they were trying to convey was anything but signs that I had long since gone a bit weird in the head. "Yup! Well, kinda. These little guys can''t really say much but all together that''s what I was able to get. They''re can only actually give feelings like ''food giving'', ''tasty'', ''nice person'', ''vampire'', and stuff. They''re not smart enough to do much more than transmit what they feel about things." (Wait, then I haven''t gone halfway to wonderland in the head then?) It was comforting to have someone confirm me that I wasn''t just imagining the little spirits were telling me stuff. "But still, they could''ve been talking about anyone. That''s no reason for you to rush so much." "That''s more than enough reason for me to drop everything and rush over! Even if they didn''t tell me that it was a vampire feeding them! Even if they just said that there was a nice person, it was enough! I''ve gone back and forth across the entire world trying to figure out a way to bring you back after what that damn hero did to you! If the little kids said there was a nice person, there''s no way I wouldn''t check to see if you found your way back on your own!" "I, I see." This devotion of hers was a bit suffocating. I didn''t need something so weighty in my life. I was starting to regret making that contract. Depending on how things went, I would sever it and go into hiding for a while. "But it is strange though. The little guys said you were a vampire like before, but I''ve never seen one without red eyes or fangs. Did you do something to them?" "Ah, well, a bit." If she was going to be as clingy as she''s already proven herself to be, there was no way for me to keep hiding this trick of mine, so I dispelled the transformations I made to my eyes and teeth. "Oh wow! You couldn''t do that before! That''s amazing! This time nobody''ll suspect you''re a vampire!" (So that Scarlet really did go around hiding the fact that she was a vampire?) But it was annoying how she kept considering me the same person. I had no memories of such a life, nor had any reason to really believe that Claret couldn''t have been wrong when she said my soul had the same colour as hers. "Umm...why did you want to enter the familiar contract so badly anyways? It doesn''t provide you with much benefits in the first place." "Was that bad? Do you not like me so much that you don''t want it?" "No! No way. I was just curious!" (That''s cheating. I''m just so weak to those puppy dog eyes...) "In that case! It''s so I can feel where you are all the time! The contract joins our souls together so we can feel each other all the time! I was so lonely these hundreds of years not being able to feel you! But...I can feel something strange. Like there''s another soul inside of you?" "Huh? You can feel that?!" "Yes, umm...what did you do, Master?" "I''m holding onto another soul inside me in the hopes of bringing her back to life in the future." "Another soul! If you''re going that far, then, is that someone important to you?" "Very important." My mouth curled up gently into a smile as I put a hand on my chest. I couldn''t really feel Alicia, but sometimes it felt like I could. It was reassuring that she was with me all the time. If not, I might''ve still been holed up in the dungeon mourning over her death, stoping only when I lost control over my body to my hunger, but returning immediately after. It was a scary thought just how powerful my instincts were when I didn''t make sure to keep them in check. "Hmm...I checked out quite a lot of stories about people trying to bring back the dead but..." "You did?! What where they? How did they work?!" "Wah! Th, there were quite a lot of them, but none of them ever worked. I even tried some myself to bring you back, but it didn''t feel like I got even close to making them work. It''s said that the souls of the dead go to god''s land for all of eternity..." "Then that''s perfect! I have Alicia''s soul right here with me! I made sure to stop it from being taken anywhere!" I grasped Claret''s hands and brought my face close to hers. But against my expectations, her gaze dropped, refusing to meet my own. "I''m sorry. I don''t think you''ll like any of them. Not a single one could be called a resurrection. There were ones where they tried to build new bodies from metals, stones, wood, monster parts, but the results weren''t even close to a person. They weren''t alive no matter how you looked at it." My hands fell. I thought I had finally found a real clue, but in the end there wasn''t anything. My hands closed into fists as they trembled and I bit my lip, holding back tears that threatened to overflow. It wasn''t Claret''s fault. It wasn''t anyone''s fault, but I felt like I was moving closer to failure rather than success. "I, I, I''m so sorry! I don''t know of any way. I''m so useless. You gave me so much, yet I can''t pay you back for any of it. If only I had that one mortal''s skill, I might''ve been more use to you..." "...What skill?" If there was a useful skill, I wanted to know about it. Even if it wasn''t relevant, just knowing about important and unusual skills was helpful. "I...think it was called [Interpretation]? There was a mortal who talked to himself a lot while working on some weird-looking stuff, but I found out he was talking to his skill. It was as if it was alive and would tell him all sorts of things." "A...living skill?" "Skills can''t be alive, but it really seemed like it. I was curious and checked it out, but it wasn''t telepathy or anything. I''m pretty sure he wasn''t talking to someone else in the room or elsewhere." Quickly opening up my menus, I scrolled through the master skill list and found the skill Claret mentioned. [Interpretation]. It was a skill that collated and summarized information as well as interpret it in various ways. Unlike a normal skill, it was purely informational, and didn''t directly effect the body, but instead the mind. It took inputs from the user''s perception and processed then outputted it to the user''s senses directly. "This is it!" "This is?" I had it! It wasn''t a permanent solution, but an excellent temporary one! If I could get all the key perception pieces, I could create a brand new skill that allowed Alicia to use my own senses to perceive the world, while being able to talk to me directly! It wasn''t a real life, but she would be able to enjoy it to a certain degree! On top of that, I could ask about her opinions and preferences when it came to a real resurrection once I could figure out a way to it! "Thank you! You''re amazing!" "Really? Thank you Master!" We hugged as we yelled and screamed, flipping end over end as we floated there in the sky. The little fluffballs were dancing around basking in our excitement. After a few minutes of basking in our little celebration, I quickly moved on and went to analyzing the skill. The code for the skill was insanely long. Probably the longest I had ever spent the time to actually read through. It made sense considering how complicated of a thing it did, but that was hardly any consolation for how much work this would be. I went through it line by line, looking for the parts I needed. Things like accessing and receiving data from the senses, how it was used and interpreted for the bulk of the code to act on. It was quite difficult work, but the thought that it was a solid step towards being able to talk to Alicia once again was more than enough motivation to do so no matter how much time it took. "Master!" But annoyingly, Claret started to shake my arm and yell into my ear. I glared at her for a second as she shied back for a moment before gathering her courage. "The sun! It''s starting to rise! You need to hide yourself properly!" "It''s fine. My clothes do a good enough job." The sun wasn''t really something for me to be seriously scared of anymore. The burns hurt for sure and I wanted to avoid that, but there was no way for me to die from it, and my robes did an excellent job of protecting me anyways. "But, but! Please! Don''t risk yourself like that! At least, at least cover yourself and stay somewhere close to the shadows!" "Look, it''s..." I wanted to argue, but tears were streaming down her face as her voice rose in pitch as she yelled. There was a clear desperation to her expression as she looked like she was ready to forcefully pull me down into the first hole she could find. "Fine. I''m supposed to be escorting a wagon, so I can hide behind or under that if something happens. Is that good enough?" "It is! It is! As long as you have a safe place to hide if something were to happen!" Claret nodded faster and more vigorously than a bobble-head after a hidden speed bump. I sighed to myself. I didn''t like the idea of making Alicia wait longer than she had to, but Claret had given me a clue I desperately needed, so I at least owed her enough to keep her placated. I flew in the lead as she followed, tightly gripping my arm as her head nervously twitched back and forth. We hadn''t strayed far from the wagon and a visual sweep as we came down confirmed what [Sense Presence] had been telling me all night: that there wasn''t anything for me to worry about. The sky was starting to light up quite a bit even though the sun hadn''t crested the horizon yet. A quick check confirmed that everyone was still asleep and the pot of marinated meat was untouched all night. I changed my eyes and fangs before safely disengaged [Spirit Form], but as I did it without saying anything, Claret passed right through me as I did so. She looked up at me with frustrated puppy dog eyes, leaving me with nothing but a sigh. I reengaged [Spirit Form], but as I couldn''t do anything with it on, I also applied [Materialize]. Playing around with it, I quickly figured out how to make it work on most of my body, but leaving a portion of my entire body uneffected, so I was partially phased as corporeal and incorporeal. With a cheerful yay, the dark spirit circled around me and wrapped her arms around me from behind as she hung off of my neck like an oversized accessory. "As expected of Master! Even though you don''t remember me, you remembered how to partially phase so I can stick to you!" I put her comment to the back of my head. As annoying as her reference was, I didn''t want to hurt her feelings if I could help it. "What are you doing Master?" As I pulled the pot of meat from the wagon bed, the oversized talking necklace started to poke some questions. "I''m making breakfast." "Why are there chunks in your blood?" She continued to ask. "It''s not blood. It''s a marinade for the meat." "Why are you making breakfast with meat? You can''t eat meat." "It''s not for me." The words took a few seconds to click before I felt her head turn slowly as her head panned across the camp site. I could almost hear the gears grinding in her head as the pieces fell into place. Then she arbitrarily nodded before falling silent. Well, that made it easier to work. Checking the meat quickly, it looked good, so I reshaped some of the dirt into a flat plate of stone with four legs and placed it over the dead campfire. Throwing my mana out, I created a flame across the bottom of the plate, took out a bottle of vegetable oil and spread some across it. Next, I levitated the meat over to the plate until it was filled. The meat gave off a nice sizzling sound as it cooked. It didn''t take long for the others to start waking up, drawn by the sound and smells. "Oh, this is looking even better than what you made before!" Unlike yesterday, Mint wasn''t last to get up, as he quickly came over without anyone having to wake him. "Mademoiselle! Would you be my wife?" Thwack! "Thinking with your stomach isn''t any better than thinking with your pants!" "Though I can agree with the sentiment, I think that was rude too." Everyone sat down around the fire as I gave each a bowl and a simple fork to eat with. Against my expectations, as I gave them the meat, they used their own knives instead of the forks I provided, stabbing them into the meat and eating it right off of the blade. It''s like I had just encountered a bit of culture-shock, though I shouldn''t have been surprised considering that so much of this world was different from Earth. "This is amazing! It''s so juicy and flavourful!" "I haven''t had meat this sweet before!" "Something about it just makes me want to eat more!" "Ah! I wanna eat it until I burst!" With reviews that glowing, I couldn''t do much but smile while continuing to cook up more meat while serving the ones that were done. "What sort of meat is this anyways?" "I think the monster I got them from were called loam wolves?" Everyone froze and stared at me when I answered Mint. Well, everyone but Claret. She was just pressing her cheek against mine through my hood while quietly giggling to into my ear on occasion. "It''s really loam wolf?" "I''ve never had wolf meat this good." "It tastes better than the nice meat I got on my birthday." I really had no way to answer such a thing. I''ve never had wolf meat before and trying it out now wouldn''t be a fair comparison. After a few moments of contemplation, and me putting out another serving of freshly fried meat, they all forgot about the issue and just dug in. The fact that the dripping marinade was getting everywhere as they ate grew more and more prominent in my mind as I continued to cook. Ninetailed_Furball Hi everyone! It''s your tardy neighbourhood furball! (^o^)£¯ Yes, another late release, I''m sorry. I''m trying to break this habit, but it''s become tough. Coming up with stats for a new character took quite a lot of time when I realized I forgot to come up with a few special ones for Claret! So, finally progression on Alicia! You guys have been asking for it for so long! I was finally able to fit it in! Well, this was the plan all along after all, so all the begging didn''t really change things. (^_-)-¡î Well, there was someone who guessed it right on the mark last chapter. Good job! Well, looking forward to what you guys think next! Peace! Chapter 52 – Baring Oneself to Another Ahh, that was amazing!" The four of them were sitting back, resting after finishing off an entire wolf''s worth of meat. There was still a second wolf''s portion left, but there was no way for them to continue eating. I continued to cook it all as I placed the finished meat to a serving plate. When it was all cooked, I cleaned everything up and put the remaining food into my bag for later. But there was something that was bothering me quite a bit. As these guys ate, the sauce dripped all over the place. While they managed to keep most of it from getting onto their clothes, their hands and faces were covered in it. Even worse, they acted like kids and wiped their mouths with their dirty hands and licked the sauce off of their fingers. I couldn''t help but wonder how these guys kept from getting sick as they haven''t even washed their hands before eating. I didn''t think much of it at first as they were eating using utensils, but that quickly proved to be naive of me. Cleaning everything up without saying anything in regards to it brought me to my limit and made me acutely aware how I hadn''t cleaned myself in the last two days either. "Alright then, is everyone ready to get a move on?" "Wait a sec!" Before anyone could say anything, I piped up. "You''re not thinking of hitting the road without at least cleaning yourselves up first, are you?" Everyone''s expression clearly told me that they were. More than that, that they didn''t even consider any alternative. "Can we hold up a bit and at least wash up a bit before starting? Aren''t you guys sticky with all that sauce on your hands and faces?" "Ah, well..." "I mean..." "It''ll stop being sticky after a bit, right?" "I''ve got most of it off already anyways." Once again I''ve been reminded the difference in hygiene from Earth compared to here. And all the while, Claret completely ignored everything and continued to hang off of me like a living cloak. "Look, it won''t take long, but let''s take a quick bath, alright?" "A bath? I think the stream''s a bit too shallow for that." "No, I mean..." I suppose that would''ve been the first thought most people would have. Rather than taking the time to explain, I simply worked my literal magic and made a simple clay open topped room rise up from the ground. """Woa...""" "Let''s go. If we don''t hurry, it''ll be noon by the time we set off." I quickly grabbed the girl''s wrist while avoiding her sticky hand and pulled her through the entrance which I promptly filled in with more clay. The inside of the room was little more than just an open space with a large bath tub filled with steaming water taking up half of it. "Wow, this is..." The girl looked at the bath in surprise as I let go of her. "This, isn''t it like those you hear about in nobles'' mansions?!" "Huh?" (I guess so? I have one in my home and there''s an even bigger multi-part one at the orphanage''s now. Ah, I hope they learn magic soon so that they can fill it the easy way.) Without time to waste, I stripped off my robes. Glancing back at the girl, she was still standing stunned. "There''s no point in getting in without taking your clothes off." "Ah, yea!" As she quickly removed her equipment, I finished taking everything off, then extended some clothes racks out of the walls and hung my clothes off of one of them. Finally, I took out a piece of cloth from my bag to wash my body with. Without waiting for my delayed companion, I stepped into the bath without first washing up. I had learned my lesson already regarding the rarity of soap. Bringing it out here was likely to be a bad idea, even if these guys were people Mint trusted. Rather than letting information about it leak, it was better to just suck up a proper cleaning and simply rinse my body and enjoy a short soak. "Wow, this is a bath?" Still clinging to my neck, Claret moved to my side and poked at the hot water playfully. Ripple came out from the point she touched. As realization slowly dawned on me, my eyes grew as round as saucers. "Wh, wait! You can''t...!" "Is something wron...g?" To my side, the adventurer girl stood there, her face red as she covered her bare self with her hands. Except they were slipping a bit and I could clearly see what was supposed to be covered. Now that she wasn''t wearing that long sleeved and skirted dress, I could see how toned her muscles were. It wasn''t like she looked like a body builder, but rather like a proper athlete. Rather than her well defined muscles bulging, they were sleek and tight. There was hardly any fat obscuring any of the muscles that looked almost like tightly wound springs. She lacked a bit of the curves of a proper woman, but she was young enough that she probably still had good prospects if she ate properly. "Ah no, umm..." "Master, if you want to talk to me without anyone hearing, you can just focus your thoughts at me while thinking something." As my eyes flicked back to Claret, the last bit resounded in my head without first going through my ears. With a big grin, the dark spirit threw herself at me and hugged my head. I had to wrest her off of me so I could turn my attention at the other person in the room. "Aren''t you coming in?" From the corner of my eye, the overly fondle obsessed spirit looked at the girl in annoyance. A quick glance confirmed that there weren''t any ripple forming from where she was touching, or rather phasing through, the water anymore. "So beautiful..." Her words were quietly mumbled, but were loud enough to evoke some bitter thoughts in me and I quickly turned away from her. Despite that, my cheeks felt a bit warm. I wasn''t used to being called beautiful at all. "Of course you''re beautiful! You''re the most beautiful person in the whole world Master! Nobody else could compare to you before, but now nobody can even get close you''re so beautiful!" My cheeks grew as red as my name suggested at the absurd flattery Claret excitedly threw out without hesitation. All around us the little fluffballs danced around like they were cheering and agreeing with her words. I sunk down into the bath until everything but the top of my head was submerged in an attempt to hide how embarrassed I felt. Not like it was any use. The water was so clear that I could clearly see everyone hovering above. Eventually though, I reached my limit in holding my breath and I raised my head out of the water with a small splash. The adventurer girl jerked her head towards me and her cheeks quickly grew even more rosy than the what the hot water had been doing. The fact that she refused to avert her eyes made me even more conscious about her impression of me. Trying to ignore her stare, I looked away and started to rub my skin with the cloth under the water, removing as much dirt as I could without the aid of any soap. It wasn''t wholly satisfying, but better than nothing. The sound of splashing reached my ears as the water level in the large bath tub rose. When I raised my face, the girl quickly averted her head, but not-so-subtly kept glancing at me while she scrubbed her on skin with a cloth of her own. I did my best to ignore it and continued to rub myself clean before combing my hair with my wet fingers in an attempt to wash it. Once I squeezed out as much water from my hair as I could, I got out of the tub and dried myself by evaporating all the water from my body before making my way over to my things and dressed myself. "Are you almost done, or do you want me to let the others join you?" As I flipped my hood down to protect my face, I let out a stupid joke as a bit of revenge for how she was staring at me. "Wah! Wait!" Taking my joke seriously, the girl practically jumped out of the water, forgetting to cover herself before rushing over to her clothes. As it was the result of my little joke, I applied the evaporation spell to her body before she got her clothes wet. "Oh, thanks." But she quickly turned back and got clothed as fast as she could. As she was finishing up strapping her armour and weapon on, I opened up a hole in the wall and stepped through. "Alright, your turn." The three guys all turned from around the dead campfire. The human adventurer had the cat boi in an arm lock. I didn''t want to know why they were in that position, nor why the sharp eared one suddenly looked so devastated after seeing me. "Did you really make a bath in there?" Rather than answering Mint, I directed a hand towards the hole as the adventurer girl stepped out. "If you don''t hurry, we won''t make much progress today." "Ah, right." They all quickly filed through the hole. There were some exclamations from inside as I made my way to my personal spot on the wagon. "Miss Scarlet?" The girl stepped up behind me. She was looking down and fidgeting as she gathered her courage. "Umm, why do you cover yourself?" "Why?" "I mean, you''re so pretty, and your curves are so amazing. If you didn''t cover yourself so much, you might even be able to attract a noble''s attention." I shivered at her words. The memories of a certain noble being completely too recent and fresh. "Master?" The spirit pretending to be my cape circled around to my front and dipped down to look up at my downcast face. The genuine worry in her eyes brought me back and I pulled her against my body, ignoring how strange my actions must look for someone who couldn''t see her. "I''ve got a skin condition where I burn quite easily in the sun. I wouldn''t last very long during the day if I didn''t cover myself like this." Lying about it grew easier each time I did it, especially since it was so close to the actual truth. The girl''s face filled with sympathy as she quietly turned and went to check her things. Personally, her response felt pretty excessive. Not being able to let the sun''s light hit my skin directly without suffering intense pain sucked, but it was a convenient excuse not to show my face at the same time. The way the girl acted the first time she got a proper glimpse at me was more proof of the effects my appearance had on people. Even more so if it were to draw the attention of abusive people like that. Pushing the thought to the back of my mind, I sat down on the back of the wagon. Claret had wrapped her arms around my waist when I pulled her against my body and hadn''t let go. Physically feeling her warmth was comforting and I couldn''t help but stroke her hair as she buried her face into my belly. As surprising and annoying her sudden appearance and declarations were, it was nice to have someone who know a bit about who I really was. To not have to feel alone. The fluffballs were nice, but there was only so much they could do. Claret was much more proactive and predicted my mood better. Even better, the mass of her body, despite the fact that she was always floating, felt more reassuring than the nearly massless fluffballs. (I wonder how she''s doing it? Is it a feature of the familiar contract, or is she just that good at predicting that sort of thing?) After a little while, Claret pulled back from me and gave me a full-faced grin, to which I had no choice but to return a gentle smile. Before I could say or do anything else, she pulled herself back to me, but this time burying her face into my chest. The indentation in my clothes she made were much more prominent than before and I hurried to check where everyone else was. Turning my body so that my front was as obscured as possible, I watched as the guys made their way out of the bathing room, still wet but fully clothed. As they approached, I erased the small building and everything inside before giving them a quick wave and laying down on the wagon''s bed, covering myself with the ragged tarp. My heart was pounding in my chest as I listened to everyone else finish their preparations before I felt the jerk of the wagon as the horses started today''s leg of the journey. All the while, Claret tightened her grip around my body, pulling the rest of her body as close to mine as she could. As we continued down the road, I payed attention to the presences around me, especially the adventurer trio, waiting for a good chance. In the meantime, I wrapped an arm around Claret''s body and stroked her hair with my free hand. The dark spirit raised her face as I did so and gave me a sleepy smile, radiating pure and innocent happiness as she did. Something about her did an amazing job of making me feel all light and fluffy on the inside, like her happiness was infectious or something. Despite a small nagging feeling in my chest, I returned a light smile, which in turn her smile grew even wider, prompting my smile to creep ever bigger like we were competing somehow as the fluffy feeling inside of me grew. Eventually, as if a dam burst, I wasn''t satisfied with just petting her and I used both arms to pull her up, closer to my face so I could rub my cheek against her head. As if she was expecting me to do that, Claret lightened her grip just long enough for the quick readjustment before tightening her hug even more than ever. Even without being able to see her expression, I knew she was feeling so happy that it threatened to burst out of her body. If she had a dog tail, it would''ve been wagging so furiously that it would''ve generated a small tornado. Forgetting about everything, I just basked in the feeling of embracing a creature that extruded pure happiness. It was a while later when Claret started to fidget for some reason. It didn''t seem to be because she was getting tired of me hugging her, as she''d go through a round of fidgeting, then freeze for a moment before tightening her grip around me again. Her behaviour resembled one time when I was brushing Alicia''s hair while she buried her face in my chest after a long day gathering ingredients in the dungeon. She shivered a bit, but then tightened her grip around me, but on occasion her legs trembled. At the time, I presumed Alicia would unconditionally tell me if something was wrong, so I didn''t pay much attention to the strangeness of her behaviour and just continued to brush her hair to my satisfaction. When I was finally finished, I threw my arms around her lower back and jerked her against my body to surprise her a bit. But accompanying a little shriek, something warm and wet spread across my lower body and Alicia just buried her face further into my chest as she trembled. It took me a while to get her to stop crying after that. But as much the situation reminded me of that situation, there was a fundamental difference: Claret was a spirit, not a human. As far as I was aware, spirits didn''t excrete waste just like vampires like myself. But just because I''d never seen it didn''t mean it was definitely true, and it wasn''t worth the risk. <...I only need you Master. I don''t want anything else if I can be with you.> That wasn''t the answer I wanted. Not by a long shot. She was definitely hiding something. At the time, Alicia just wanted to wait to pee until I was finished with her hair, so she bore with the need to her very limit, which I accidentally ruined. Claret was probably bearing with something while she wanted to keep hugging me like this. But whatever it was she was bearing with, it wasn''t good for her body. Her distractions were proof of it. Claret was a greater spirit, but a spirit nonetheless. As far as I knew their needs were, most of it was entertainment. They practically craved it. But hugging me like this was probably close enough for entertainment for her, so that wasn''t it. The only other need they had was to feed. (Now that I think about it, when was the last time she ate?) With a hypothesis formed up, I checked my surroundings with [Sense Presence] and confirmed nobody could see my little spot on the wagon. I pulled out the dummy from my bag and covered it before disengaging [Materialize], phasing through the cover and floating up above the wagon using [Float]. Claret''s grip around me tightened even further as her body trembled slightly. The fluffballs gathered around us like usual. Releasing one hand from the dark spirit, I generated a handful of mana treats and threw them to the air. As the spirits all raced around catching their meals, the one that was still hugging me started to squirm. An evil grin rose up on my face. Rather than repeating the same routine, I let go of Claret before generating another handful of mana treats. Unlike last time, I used the other hand to throw the concentrated balls of mana into the air one at a time, keeping the handful of treats next to the greater spirit''s head. The little fluffballs raced around competing to see who would get to eat each mana treat, all the while Claret squirmed more and more. She only settled down when my handful of treats ran out. It felt like there was a sense of relief emanating from her still form pressed in between my mounds, but I wasn''t nearly done yet. Another handful of mana treats appeared in my open hand, and the dark spirit quickly started to tremble and squirm again. I threw the treats one at a time, but as I was reaching for the third one, Claret suddenly let go of my torso and grabbed my hand with the mana treats and pressed her face to it, shoving all the mana treats into her mouth. Staying still in that position, she chewed with cheeks puffed out like a hamster''s. Her inflated cheeks slowly deflated a she swallowed, and eventually they returned to normal. Claret licked the palm of my hand like a cat before freezing and turning towards me. "I''m sorry I''m sorry I''m sorry!!!" As if trying to break the sound barrier, Claret moved from my hand to hugging me and burying her face in my chest once again as she apologized. "They''re your precious mana treats for the little kids and I stole a whole bunch of them! I''m sorry! I won''t do it again!" While my little prank succeeded, the result wasn''t quite what I expected and started to make me feel bad conversely. "Umm, no, it''s fine. I''m not angry." "You''re not?" "Yea, I''m not." "Then..." "I''m not, but I am curious. Why did you think I''d be angry?" "The last time...the last time you gave us a whole bunch of mana treats. Quite a few of the kids came around at the time, so you were a bit tired after giving them out. It was then that..." "That?" Claret''s expression grew dark, her hands curled into fists as they trembled. "That swamp gas filled rot weed killed you!" Tears ran down her face as she practically screamed the sentence out. Claret wiped her face with her fists but more tears replaced those that she removed as if they were a mockery of her efforts. "If only, if only we didn''t eat so much, if only we payed more attention to our surroundings, if only I wasn''t so useless..." As if giving up on wiping away her tears, the greater dark spirit instead covered her face with her hands as she wept. "You must be angry. It was my fault that you died. If only I didn''t rely on you so much for food. If only I didn''t eat so many of your mana treats. If only, if only...you wouldn''t have died!" Unable to stand it any further, I grabbed Claret''s head and buried it into my chest, tightly pinning her in place as she struggled. "I''m not angry. I''m serious. I don''t really know what it is you''re talking about, but I think that the Scarlet of before wouldn''t be angry about this." "Really?" "Yes, really. She wouldn''t want to see you crying like this. I definitely don''t want to see you blame yourself like that, so I''m sure she wouldn''t either." After a moment of hesitation, Claret''s arms slowly made their ways down and around my body, returning the embrace I was giving her. She continued to cry, to wail, but it was no longer of fear or sadness. I simply stroked her head as she cried her immaterial heart out. Ninetailed_Furball Hi everybody! It''s your usual furball! I mentioned it on my messages, but once again, and to those who haven''t seen it, sorry for the late release. m(_ _)m Work''s been annoying lately and has been messing up with my sleep schedule along with my free time, making it difficult to write as much as I want. I''m hoping things will stabilize soon, but we''ll find out as the weeks go by. In the meantime, I''ll do my best to at least cut down on the delays as much as possible! (¨R?¨Q) So, how did you guys find this chapter? Isn''t Claret the cutest? (After Alicia of course (^_-)-¡î) I''m looking forward to reading what you all have to say! Until next time, get to da choppa! Chapter 53 – Spirit Feed You feeling better?" Claret''s sniffling had finally stopped. I could feel wetness from my chest all the way down to my thighs. To think that a spirit not of the water element could produce so much moisture without trying to. I didn''t even want to look at the mess she had made, but both of our clothes would need to be washed before the sun neared the horizon and everyone in the travelling band started getting ready to make camp. The dark spirit raised her head and nodded. Her eyes were red and puffy, and some of her hair stuck out due to static buildup from me stroking it too much. What little I could see of her outfit looked as wet as my own clothes felt. (A surprising number of physical properties affects spirits huh? And they affect ordinary things that they touch in pretty conventional ways as well.) "Okay, ummm..." I looked around. The wagon wasn''t below us, nor was it even in the nearby vicinity. Looking further, I could see it in the distance slowly making it''s way on the road. Since I hadn''t made any efforts to drift in the same direction, I ended up having to pay for that mistake. But in the meantime, it was convenient. Scanning the direct perimeter, I found a spot without any large hits and drifted down there. With a bit of magic, I dug a simple ditch wide enough for us to comfortably stand inside of and as deep as we were tall. I touched down inside while holding on to Claret. The greater dark spirit stood there in front of me. Now that she had her feet on the ground for once, I could actually see a bit of her figure underneath those ragged robes she wore. She was about half a head taller than me and her body was proportionately wider. There was a proper thickness to her limbs that made her more reliable looking than my own frail-looking frame. Standing here, I was able to once again confirm that her feminine curves were quite fantastic. Her shapely hourglass figure that was visible even under that thick robe of hers had a motherly quality to it, unlike my own which was a bit more...obscene. Frankly, I was a bit envious of her chest. At least it didn''t look like she have to contort her body just to see her feet. Her face looking more mature than mine and being a bit taller, she gave off an aura of some sort of holy mother or something. At least when she didn''t wear that lazy smile of hers or opened that mouth of hers. It felt like it was only a matter of time before she sprouted a pair of cat ears and tail. The very image had already been ingrained into me starting from her first impression, so I doubted I could seriously see her as some sort of motherly figure. Overall, she was quite the beauty. Though if she was wearing normal clothes, I probably wouldn''t have thought twice and presumed she was a normal woman if I saw her in the streets. A normal elf, probably. They were a bit covered, but she had long, pointed ears like myself. Unfortunately I only had one point of comparison, so until I met another greater spirit, all I could do was presume that she was an average example of her kind. "Let''s get cleaned up. Could you use [Materialize]?" "Sure Master." Shaking out those erroneous thoughts, I disengaged [Materialize] and [Spirit Form] while Claret conversely activated [Materialize] so we would both be in physical form. While I didn''t know the details exactly how magic would effect us while we were immaterial other than ''it does'', I didn''t feel like taking the time to experiment immediately. I generated warm water and swirled it around us, permeating our clothes and rinsing out our outfits. "Ehehehe, my whole body is being embraced." Tipping her head side to side with a lazy grin and rosy cheeks, Claret said something a bit incomprehensible. (Do spirits perceive magic differently from other races, or is she just talking nonsense?) Soon enough, I dismissed the water, leaving us completely dry and all traces of dirt, tears, and snot just suddenly dropped from being suspended in midair. "..." Claret looked a bit disappointed and she started to fidget while looking down. After a few moments of that, she started to make little glances at me before looking back down. "Geez, you''re such a handful. Hurry up and disengage [Materialize]." Activating [Spirit Form], I approached the moody spirit and extended my hand. "Yes Master!" A brilliant smile blossomed at once and she returned to her default form before taking my hand. I pulled her into my chest before activating [Float], and with a small shove using [Tempest Magic], we floated off towards the wagon. She immediately wrapped her arms around me and rubbed her cheek against my own. I could feel the presences of the fluffballs following behind us as we flew. Ever since Claret showed up, it felt like they were distancing themselves from me a bit. It was a bit lonely, but it wasn''t like any of them were leaving, just that they maintained a respectful distance. (No, maybe it''s not me they''re maintaining a respectful distance from, but from Claret?) I couldn''t help but think that there was a strange feeling of reverence that the little spirits had of their greater brethren. Claret did say that Scarlet had raised her. Maybe they were connected more closely than simply being a similar race? I couldn''t simply disregard the idea of some sort of metamorphosis or game-like evolution considering the things I''ve already experienced in this world. "Oh right, are you still hungry?" The sun was getting a bit low on the horizon and it wouldn''t be long before the others stopped to make camp. I stopped in the middle of feeding the fluffballs, and while Claret ate some of my mana treats, if she needed as much of them as her greater body size suggested, there was no way a handful of marble-sized mana treats would be enough when it took an entire one to feel a tennis ball sized lesser spirit. "I don''t need to..." "I''m asking you if you''re hungry, not if you want to eat." Considering how I was holding her, I couldn''t look at her in the face, but I made sure to put some strength in my voice as I practically gave her an order. She didn''t respond well to eating my mana treats despite looking like they were her favourite food. If I was going to be her master, I didn''t want to half-ass the responsibility. "...I am." The strength in her arms increased ever so slightly as she answered me. "Alright then, let''s try something." I let go of Claret and let our momentum continue us on our way. Bringing both hands together in front of me, I concentrated on producing and concentrating mana in the gap in between in the same manner as making mana treats, but on a larger scale. Not the size of marbles, but much, much bigger. The mana solidified in between my hands, but I continued to feed it more of my mana as it grew larger and larger, before my fingers were pushed apart from it''s pure size. Eventually I stopped, ending with a mana treat the size of an apple. It was hardly a treat at this size, but then again, the normal ones were basically meals for the little fluffballs anyways, so the misnomer can continue on. "Here you go." I lightly tossed the mana treat towards the dark spirit. Her glittering eyes followed it''s arc and she caught it in both hands in a smooth practised motion then raised it above her as if she was thinking of worshipping it like some mystical artifact. (Don''t, please don''t worship your food.) But after a moment of this, she lowered the mana treat to her chest and looked at me with concern. "Are you alright Master? You didn''t tax yourself making this for me, did you? If you did, please tell me. I won''t ask for food anymore." "Nah, I''m fine. It''s not too bad." It was true that I was feeling slightly light headed from using up so much mana at once, but it was nothing compared to how I felt after a strenuous battle. A quick glance at my status confirmed that I had used up almost 10% of my MP in one go. Only my biggest spells used up that much mana at once, but my mana pool was slowly recovering and would be filled back up soon enough on it''s own. "Ah, you guys too." In an attempt to prove that it was fine, I produced a bunch more mana treats of the smaller variety and scattered them around to the fluffballs floating around us. Unlike Claret, they didn''t hesitate to devour their meals and quickly bounced around in joy after they filed their figurative bellies. The greater spirit''s eyes went to her lesser counterparts with their own food and back to her apple sized mana treat, going back and forth as the gears tried to turn in her head. "You don''t have to eat it if you don''t want to, but I don''t think it''ll keep it from for long if you don''t." In the end, mana treats were just my mana compressed to the point that they became a solid. At least as solid as incorporeal life forms like spirits were. But unlike spirits, there wasn''t anything in particular to keep them in that form, and it was probably only a matter of time before they sublimated and scattered to the wind. But as we had spent enough time as it was, I put an arm around her waist and pulled her against my body. Claret gave out a happy little squeal and wrapped an arm around me as well before I accelerated us towards the wagon off in the distance. As we flew, Claret stared hard at her mana treat still whole and firmly in her grip. After a solid minute of us flying at a moderate but stable speed, she finally bit into the treat. A brilliant smile blossomed on her face as the greater spirit chewed. All hesitation lost, she quickly devoured her meal. By the time we got close, she was finished eating and had put her free hand around me, tightly embracing my side as she rubbed her cheek against my the side of my chest, still maintaining that bright smile of hers. Looking down, the wagon was moving a bit faster than normal, but there didn''t seem to be any problems from what I could tell. Most likely, the reason was what I saw further up ahead. There were tall walls intersecting the road we were following. From my elevated vantage, I could see past the wall and saw the moderate number of simple buildings and people making their way through their evening. At the increased rate Mint and the others were going at, they would likely manage to reach the village a bit before sundown. Floating just above my little spot on the wagon, I moved Claret to my front, in which she promptly buried her face into my chest. (Everyone really loves doing that, don''t they?) It wasn''t like I couldn''t understand, but that was from the perspective of an adult, and a man at that. Everyone who did it were pretty childish in nature, with two of the three being actual kids. I could only presume there was something inherent to it? Or maybe it was just my imagination and that was just a convenient height for their heads to reach? (No, it''s probably not my imagination. They''ve all definitely been treating my chest as their personal pillows.) As this wasn''t really anything new to me, I quickly disregarded that line of thought and swapped positions with the dummy under the tarp, activating [Materialize] just enough so that I seemed whole to anyone looking at me, but just enough not so that Claret wouldn''t phase through my body and be tempted to similarly activating [Materialize] and revealing herself. We lay there as I listened to the dull grinding of the wagon''s wooden wheels against the compacted dirt road underneath. A little while later, the wagon stopped. Mint talked to a guard before the sounds of heavy creaking reached my ears before we continued for a little longer. A few moments after we stopped for a second time, a pair of hands pressed against my body and lightly shook me. "Miss Scarlet, we''ve reached the first village. Wake up." Pretending to stir from sleeping, I stretched my arms and tugged on my hood before extracting myself from under the tarp. All along while dragging Claret who still clung firmly to my chest like she was a docked part of a combining robot. "The first village?" I lazily scanned my surroundings as I answered the girl who backed up to make room for me. The architecture was similar to Edgeworth Village, though not nearly in such poor condition. The sky was already a dark purple so there were hardly any people in sight, but those that I could see didn''t look to be suffering from any particular difficulties. It was pretty much exactly as I could imagine an ordinary village of this world. Nothing of import or deviation from that impression presented itself. Aside from the way she was looking at me with an awkward expression. I followed her gaze to my chest. It was pushed up like how it usually ended up when Alicia or Flix buried their faces into them, making them look even more enormous than usual. (Of course they were, since Claret is doing just that.) My gaze went back and forth between my pushed-up chest and the girl''s strange expression a few times before she noticed what I was doing and averted her gaze in a panic. It was only then that I realized the problem. Claret''s position on me left an impression of her body on my clothes. For someone who couldn''t see her, it must''ve looked extremely strange. The dark spirit slowly extracted herself from my chest with a look of regret plain on her face before she drifted behind me and wrapped her arms over my shoulders. Claret''s ample bosom pressed into my chest like the last time she did it, but once again I wasn''t in a position to enjoy the sensation. I hurriedly and noisily fixed my clothes before giving a fake cough. "Umm...anyways..." "Ah, yes!" The girl quickly turned back to face me, her expression immediately clearing up now that the strange impression on my clothes was gone. Though in reality it simply moved from my belly and lower chest to my upper chest, it was much less noticeable and strange looking. At least I was hoping so. "Mary, did you wake Miss Scarlet up?" Mint voice rang out before revealing himself from the wagon''s side. "Ah, you are. We''ve arrived at Littleton Village. We''ll be staying here for a day then we''ll continue on in the morning. I''ve already rented some rooms in an inn. Are you fine with sharing one with Mary?" "Oh, yea, sure." The girl''s face lit up to my casual agreement. I felt a bit bad since I had a bunch of work to do and wouldn''t be able to accommodate whatever she was thinking of. Hopefully I wouldn''t have to spend all the time we had in this village handling Claret. "The innkeeper is preparing dinner. The dining hall is this way." "Ah, no, is it fine if I take a walk around instead?" Mint and the girl stopped in their tracks and turned back to me. "That''s fine, but if you don''t hurry, the freshly made meal will be cold by the time you get to eat." "That''s fine. I just want to have a look around." "This late at night? The sun''s almost down." "Ah, erm. Just in case, you know? I''ll feel better if I knew the lay of the land, if you know what I mean." "It''s perfectly safe inside the village, but if you insist, I won''t force the issue. Don''t push yourself too hard Miss Scarlet. We still have a long journey ahead of us so you should rest when you can." "I''ll remember that." With those words, I headed in the opposite direction. On the other side of the wagon, I saw the other two adventurers on the ground. The cat boi was on the ground and in an arm bind with the other sitting on his back. He took one glance at me and tears started to run down his face as his expression immediately changed from determination to pure frustration. The other guy just gave me a relieved smile before letting go of the other''s arm and gave me a wave as I passed. Those guys weren''t worth expending any energy to understand. The little time I had spent watching them made me understand that quite well. I made my way around the village until I found a small space between two large buildings that did a good job of hiding me. Disengaging [Materialize], I activated [Float] and pushed myself into the air with [Tempest Magic]. As I had made an excuse regarding it, I took a few minutes to casually memorize the layout of the village from above. There weren''t many roads or significant landmarks, so it wasn''t difficult at all to do. In the time it took for me to do so though, the sun had made it''s escape and the purple skies were quickly being vanquished by the beautiful stars and black curtains of the night sky. I took a moment to admire the stars along with the three moons before I turned my mind to what I needed to do immediately. "Hold tight." Without the slightest bit of hesitation despite her not knowing what I was about to do next, she strengthened her grip on me, firmly pressing her chest against my back. Thinking about it, Claret was the first person to do that to me between both of my lives. I''ve had quite a lot of time to experience and get used to breasts now that I had a pair of my own, yet despite that, the second I was touching someone else''s, even if it was through several layers of thick cloth and a bag, it felt completely refreshing. "Is something the matter my master?" "Ah, no. Ahem It''s nothing." Hoping that Claret didn''t notice anything, I made to get my next bit of business done quickly. Activating [Alter Silhouette], I grew wings from my back and passed them through the slits in my robes and out from underneath the dark spirit''s body. "Waaaaoooowww! You can grow wings now? That''s wonderful! It''s incredible!" A grin leaked out from my mouth right before I raised my wings and flapped down as hard as I could. "Waaahhhh! Hahahaha! This is unbelievable! It''s so fast!" It was a little disappointing that she didn''t freak out at the sudden acceleration, but I couldn''t hate such a response, so I started to flap again, diverting my flight from straight up to forward. As quickly as I could, I flew in every manoeuvre I could think of, doing loops and rolling scissors, barrel rolls and Immelmanns, all the while Claret screaming in joy a little painfully into my ear. But I really enjoyed sharing this experience. I hoped that someday I could share it with Alicia as well. "Wow, that''s so amazing. Did you use the same skill to change your eyes and fangs as well?" "Huh? Oh, yea." I didn''t think she would''ve noticed the fangs, but maybe she was more observative than I thought? "Well, now then..." Checking my surroundings, I quickly found what I was looking for and with a single flap of my wings, dove for it. A single light slap on the back of it''s neck and the charge boar I was aiming for had it''s head bent to an impossible angle. For a moment, it stood there frozen in that strange pose mid-stride, before it toppled over to its side without any resistance. With a few light flaps, I came around and landed beside the dead boar. "Oh, before I do this, do you want some more food?" "Huh? Umm...is it alright?" Rather than answer with words, I simply produced an apple-sized mana treat and held it over my shoulder. Letting go of me, I turned around to see Claret''s eyes sparkles as she stared at her food, holding it up reverently. (Seriously, don''t worship your food.) She took a bite out of it and beamed in delight as she chewed. Everything about her was so cute and innocent despite her mature appearance. It was so difficult to reconcile with the fact that she was hundreds of years old. Shaking that awkward thought out of my head, I just basked in the aura of pure joy she emitted as she ate. Suddenly, the aura grew even stronger as her smile widened even further. Before I knew it, my hand was on her head and I was already petting her as she ate. My other hand was itching to touch her as well. (Ahh, what the hell is with this cute thing? I wanna hug it so bad!) My expression got a bit screwed up as I held back from interrupting Claret''s meal, though I continued to stroke her head. "Thanks for the meal!" Suddenly my reverie was broken and I came back to reality. "Ah, um, as long as you enjoyed it." "It was amazing! Your mana treats are always the best Master!" "Ah, I see. Thanks." Claret pounced onto me and buried her face into my chest as she wrapped her arms around my back. I put one hand on her back and stroked her hair with the other. (...wait a sec.) "Did you just call it a mana treat?" "Yes?" The dark spirit''s face appeared in the valley of my chest and she tilted her head. "Where did you hear that name?" "From you." "I never said it out loud." Scanning through my memories, I was sure that I had never actually said those words out loud in front of Claret. There shouldn''t have been any ways for her to have learned what I called those meals I gave the spirits. "You did. You''ve always called those mana clusters mana treats. Even back before you died." I froze. (The other Scarlet called them that too? Is it just a coincidence?) The very thought gave me a bad feeling. It was fine if it was just a coincidence, but things kept popping up trying to convince me things like this weren''t just a coincidence. I didn''t like it at all, but there wasn''t much I could say at the moment. "I...see..." "Was it...bad of me to call it that?" Claret shirked back as my boobs filled in the gaps left by her receding face. "No, it''s fine. It''s not wrong." The dark spirit gave an audible sigh in relief as she tightened her grip on me and buried her face in my chest while shivering slightly. All I could do was pet her until she calmed down. Ninetailed_Furball Hi everybody! It''s everyone''s tardy furball! (¨R?¨Q)/ I did manage to get this one a bit less late than last week, but it''s still a bit late, so sorry about that! m(_ _)m Well, I can''t help but feel like I''ve really outdone myself with Claret so far! She''s so cute and precious! I''m only a bit worried about one thing. If this continues, how could I even top Claret''s cuteness when Alicia returns? Is it even possible? Well, I do have some plans for it, but it might take a bit of time. Please look forward to it! (^o^)د Chapter 54 – Treats from the Soul So, the other Scarlet called them mana treats too huh?" When Claret seemed to have calmed down enough, I tried asking her. There was a thought that had stuck in my mind ever since she mentioned it. That there were quite a few coincidences regarding myself and the Scarlet I was named after. Some were easy to hand-wave, like our name. The other things too could be put aside as just a coincidence or me just being easy to compare to a famous figure. But as the number of coincidences stacked up, the more uneasy I felt about them. Like, the possibility that they weren''t merely coincidences. I didn''t like that idea at all. Because if it was true, then my actions were being guided by someone, and I had no clues as to who other than the one I was named after. I hated that idea. Because if that was true, then what about who I was? Did my own will even matter? Did it really exist when my actions were guided by someone else? Was I really my own person, or just an extension of someone who had died long ago? I owed nothing to this other Scarlet, so I didn''t want her to interfere with my life. "That''s right. You called them that before as well." The dark spirit poked her face out out my mounds and gave me a lazy smile under her half closed eyes. "It''s not me, but the other Scarlet, got it?" Claret tilted her head a bit to the side, restricted by the soft pressure on either side. "But you are Scarlet. Your body changed a bit, but your soul is the same as always. It''s a bit hard to see since you''re suppressing it, but there''s no way I can forget that colour of yours." "Even so, that Scarlet and I are different people. Even if I am her reincarnation, even if we have the same name, even if we have the same coloured soul, that doesn''t change things. We are different." I held her head firmly between my hands as I tried to drill that concept into her brain, presuming spirits had organs in the same way as other races did. "Mmmm...But Scarlet is Scarlet..." "I''m a different Scarlet than the one who raised you. We are similar, but different. Got it?" "But...your soul is the same colour. Your mana treats taste the same too. Nobody else could do that..." Claret started to tear up and I was quickly forced to let go of her head and instead started to stroke her hair. "Sorry, sorry. I didn''t mean to make you cry." The oversized crybaby put more strength into her arms and buried her face into my chest before giving me a rough nod. She really acted like a little kid. Thinking about it, lesser spirits definitely lacked intelligence. They seemed to have pretty limited capabilities to understand things and definitely had very limited ability to communicate. They were definitely much smarter than any normal animal, but I wondered if their intelligence was on the level of Koko the gorilla or something? If so, then were did that put greater spirits like Claret? She was properly fluent at talking, but was her immaturity due to her not having grown up mentally, or was it the limits of the intelligence for greater spirits? (Or maybe it''s just her? Ah, I just called her stupid twice, didn''t I?) "So what did you mean by ''nobody else could do that''?" Once her shaking stopped again, I tried asking her about it. "Your mana treats. The taste of them are special." "Special? How?" I couldn''t imagine how there could be anything special about condensed mana. "Your mana treats have a rich taste. It''s strong, sweet, gentle, vibrant. It''s the taste of your soul." "...huh? My, my soul? How''s that got to do with anything?" I was pretty sure that I wasn''t using up my soul to make these things. My MP clearly went down when I generated mana treats and the slightly tired feeling I got from making Claret''s one was exactly the same from when I used magic. I couldn''t see how it was any different from casting spells, and I didn''t see how that was connected to my soul. "Almost everything! When your body collects and produces mana, the colour and flavour of it comes when it touches your soul. Your appearance and taste of your mana, your aura, all of it comes from your soul." I almost got distracted at how well she understood that sort of thing when she usually acted so much like a six year old, or younger than even that if I compared her to Alicia. But still, that did explain some things. There was the talk about how the Adventurers'' Guild used a person''s aura to identify members, and how there were occasions when they''d find duplicates when it would normally be impossible. The guild master said that it likely an issue with the equipment or their records, but thinking about it, what if those rare people they got repeat hits on that weren''t people trying to cheat the system? It wouldn''t be a surprise that I wasn''t the only person who came back to the same world after a few reincarnations. "I...see...Then I guess mana treats made from other people would taste pretty different huh?" (Maybe it''s similar to how different blood tastes different to me? Though my own tastes have changed quite a bit over the years.) I glanced at the charge boar corpse that''s been lying on the ground for a little while now. (These weak monsters have such a weak taste nowadays. It''s hard to believe I thought goblins and loam wolves tasted amazing at one point.) "Yup, they do! Well, if anyone actually makes them at least..." "What do you mean?" "I''ve never heard of anyone else making mana treats. You''re the only one who does it. I''ve never heard of anyone feed their spirit familiars mana treats." "Does that mean that other people who get spirits as familiars make them go feed off of natural mana concentrations instead?" "Nooo. The little kids wouldn''t last long like that. Those mana fonts don''t show up much where there''s a lot of people, so they''d go hungry pretty fast. What people do is feed them crushed magic crystals." (Does she mean those things I found a lot of in the dungeon?) I stretched an arm behind myself and awkwardly pulled out one of those coloured gems from my bag. "Do you mean these things?" "Yup! Just like that!" Closing my fist, I crushed the magic crystal into a coarse powder and presented it to Claret. "Ueeee. Do I have to?" "I thought you said people fed these things to spirits?" "They do...but that doesn''t look tasty at all. Master''s mana treats are way better!" (She sounds a bit like a gourmand.) Sighing, I held out my hand to the fluffballs floating around us. "You guys want it instead?" But against my expectations, it felt like they were giving off the same expression as Claret just did. "Does my mana treats really taste that much better?" "They do! They''re the best food in the world!" The dark spirit violently shook her head, making my boobs bounce around uncontrollably until she stopped. All around me, the lesser spirits gave out their agreements just as furiously. "I see..." I dropped the crushed crystal and patted my hand against my robes, removing as much of it''s traces as I could. "So I guess I came up with the same rare idea as the other Scarlet huh?" "It''s not rare!" "It isn''t?" "Nope. It''s just that nobody does it normally because it tires most people out too much." That made a lot of sense now that she mentioned it. I never thought twice about it, but my level, and correspondingly my MP, was very high, so feeding a bunch of lesser spirits didn''t even make a noticeable dent to my mana reserves. Even feeding Claret, a greater spirit, wasn''t too taxing. "Guess it''s kinda funny I named the mana treats the same as most other people then." "You''re the only one that calls it that my master." "Come again?" I must''ve mistakened what she just said. "You''re the only one who calls it mana treats. Everyone else call it mana pearls." "...So you''re saying that by sheer coincidence I ended up calling the snacks that I came up with on my own, that people usually don''t make, the exact same thing that my predecessor also made on her own and called the same thing?" "...Yes? It''s great that you managed to remember it, isn''t it?" The dark spirit simply tilted her head then gave me a bright smile, obviously not getting at why I was upset about this information. "I...never mind. Here, let go so I can eat before we head back to the village." "Okay!" Moving to hanging off of my side, Claret gave me the space I needed to drink the rapidly cooling blood from the slightly stiff boar. (These guys really have such thin taste.) After putting the dry corpse into my bag, we flew back to the village. Aside from the guards, there weren''t any people around outside and the streets were enveloped in darkness. There was a few faint lights at the inn we were staying at, so after landing in a shadow, I engaged [Materialize] and made my way inside. Maybe because it was a small village, but the lobby was quite small and there were a couple of tables with chair set up right inside of it, rather than separated in their own dining area. There was a simple counter to the side with a simple lamp emitting a gentle yellow flame despite not having an obvious fuel source as well as an old man sitting behind it dozing off. "Excuse me?" "Bwah!" The old man opened up his crossed arms and teetered back on two legs of his seat before regaining his balance and composure. He glanced up at me while stroking his salt and pepper beard with one hand. My hand automatically went up and pulled my hood a bit lower. "One of my companions said that he reserved some rooms?" "Ah, you''re the last one then?" "I should be." The old man got up and walked behind me to the front door before a heavy metallic thud sounded behind me, making my heart beat faster. "It''s cooled down, but will you be having your dinner here?" "Ah, no, I already ate." "Is that so? Your room is on the second floor, the first one on the left little miss. Enjoy your night." With those parting words, he passed by the counter taking the lamp on it in a hand and went through a door beside a staircase in the corner of the room and shut it with a gentle thud. I made my way up the stairs and knocked on the first door on my left. "Come in." The adventurer girl''s voice responded and I opened the door. Opening the door, I was greeted by the sight of the small room assigned to us. There were two beds on opposing sides with a small chest each at the feet. In between the beds, there was a small gap wide enough to comfortably walk and a small table at the end under a partially open window shutter with a lamp glowing yellow sitting on it. Turning around after entering, I closed the door once I confirmed all the little fluffballs there were following me had entered. Claret was still hanging off of my back so just by turning around she was fully inside. "You took a while. Was there any problems?" As I sat down on the free bed, my companion started a conversation. Despite the time, she looked pretty energetic. (She didn''t drink coffee while waiting for me, did she?) I shook my head at the girl before I started to strip down. Claret floated beside me and gave me such a miserable expression that it hurt, despite the fact that I was sure she knew that I needed to at least give the image of preparing to sleep. "Umm, so, I was thinking..." "Aren''t you tired? You''ve been walking all day and it''s late." "Oh, but we''ll be staying in the town for an entire day anyways! Mister Mercari needs some time to finish his trading here, so we''re only going to head off in the morning the day after." "Even still...you''re a girl, so you should get your beauty sleep." Thinking quickly for an excuse, the old classic from Earth came to mind, so I used it without any hesitation. "Beauty sleep? So that''s how she does it?" Despite the fact that she was whispering it to herself, my sensitive ears clearly caught her words. Despite having lived as a human before and spending quite amount of time amongst people who did sleep, it was definitely becoming something that I couldn''t sympathize with. (Sleeping feels like such a waste.) "...Alright then! Let''s go to sleep!" But despite my own thoughts about it, all of the sudden the girl jumped up and turned off the lamp before diving into her bed. (How do you even sleep after moving around like that?) I was a bit exasperated, but rather than stare at the figure of a weird girl squirming under her bed sheets, I grabbed Claret''s arm and pulled her into my chest as I lay down and threw the sheets over our bodies. "Ehehehe..." The dark spirit made some weird noises as she wrapped her arms around me and buried her face in my chest. As I lightly brushed her hair, I turned my thoughts inwards. Claret had given me a vital clue and I finally had time to take proper advantage of it. "Scarlet? It''s morning...wake up..." My shoulder was gently tapped as the words were being whispered quietly into my ear. (If I was actually asleep, there''d be no way I''d have noticed.) "I''m awake." Rising up into a sitting position, I turned to face the adventurer girl. "Tsk." (Why did you click your tongue?!) But as quickly as she made that dissatisfied face, a smile covered everything up. "They''ll be serving breakfast downstairs soon." "Mmm..." (Haaa, another hassle...) As I lightly brushed my hair, the girl''s eyes kept glancing downwards before returning to my eyes. Looking down, I saw Claret''s face peeking between my mounds as she rubbed her face against my chest. (She really doesn''t get tired of that, does she?) But as I absentmindedly thought about that, my eyes went back to looking at the girl in front of me. Her eyes were clearly glued on to my chest. (Ah!) As quickly as I could, I turned around and hid my unnaturally bouncing chest. "Umm, I''ll hurry and get changed then." "Alright. I''ll be waiting downstairs then." For some reason her response was completely monotone and her body moved stiffly. (...maybe I misunderstood it?) Shaking my head, I pulled Claret off as she put on those puppy dog eyes once again and got dressed before equipping my dark spirit mantle and headed downstairs. Everyone was gathered at one of the tables in the lobby. As I approached, they all quieted down and turned my way. "Ah, Miss Scarlet. Breakfast will be served soon." "Ah no, I''m fine. If you don''t mind, I''m going to go check out the surroundings a bit. We''re not heading off until tomorrow, right?" "Ah, erm, yes, but why don''t you take the day to relax?" "I''ve been relaxing all last week. I want to stretch my legs a bit." "But isn''t it fine after you eat?" "I''m not that hungry. I''ll have something later." "Is that so? Then stay safe." With those parting words from Mint, I exited the building, walked down the main street and left the village gates after presenting my guild ID. Of course my objective was a lie, but it was true I had already eaten, even if it was more than eight hours before. After creating a bit of distance from the gate guards, I quickly cut into the tall grass and obscured myself before deactivating [Materialize] and returned back to the village walls. I moved to the shadows of the walls and lightly drifted around with [Float] as I went to continue working on my new skill. The previous night I was able to analyze all the major inputs and figured out their interactions, though actually figuring out how they worked was beyond my current capabilities to understand. Next was to go through the outputs and figure them out. As I started to get to work, Claret moved from my back to my front and I absentmindedly started to stroke her hair once again. (She really likes that position, doesn''t she?) I kinda enjoyed it myself, so I didn''t really have any complaints, but it was still a bit amazing that she never got tired of it. Including a couple of breaks to play and feed everyone, along with a hunt so I could eat myself, we ended up returning a bit after nightfall, quietly returning to the room I shared with the adventurer girl, then went back and spent more time working on the skill that would be the next step to saving Alicia. My progress had been slow. Painfully slow, but thanks to Claret there was clear progress. The interactions and data formats for the inputs as well as the outputs had been analyzed, and I was starting to understand how the [Interpretation] skill worked. The important part wasn''t just connecting the inputs and output to a core, but to instead figure out what the original core was, how the data connected to it, and to seamlessly swap the original core with Alicia''s core while reconnecting everything in such a way to make things work. Considering I had no ideas what I was originally going to do afterwards when I used [Soul Siphon] on Alicia, I could only think of it as a consequence of my desperation and lack of forethought at the time. If I had come to the conclusion of developing [Soul Siphon] earlier, then I could''ve made preparations. Maybe. By the time morning came and we left the village, I felt I had a good idea about how the external parts of the skill worked, but the interfaces between all the inputs and outputs connecting to the inner core was much more difficult. Understanding the way the data was converted was as hard as trying to understand a story translated in a similar, but different language to one you knew. It wasn''t impossible, but it was difficult and time consuming. And thus, I spent the next few days working on it, taking only the occasional break to play with the spirits to relieve myself of pent up stress, feed the spirits, feed the mortals, or feed myself. We passed through the second village without incident either, and I was starting to feel like I had been getting close to getting this new skill figured out. If I was lucky, I''d be able to bring back Alicia before we reached the next city. Ninetailed_Furball Hello everybody! It''s your usual tardy furball! (^o^)د Sorry for the lateness again, and even worse, the short chapter! m(_ _)m I had to throw out a bunch of ideas I had for this chapter, so it ended up both taking longer as well as being shorter. (£Ô¨Œ£Ô) That aside, some of you guys pointed out a few things from previous chapters, but I hope you''re satisfied with what I did with them! And it looks like Alicia might be returning pretty soon! I hope you''re all looking forward to that, cuz I certainly am! (I wonder how she''s going to react to Claret''s stickyness BTW) I''m looking forward to what you all have to say in the comments this time! And so, adeu! (¨R?¨Q)/ Chapter 55 – Brokecleft Mountain Range Early on the third afternoon after leaving the second village, for some reason the wagon stopped. It felt like it was only luck that I was paying enough attention to have even noticed it. There weren''t any presences of monsters nearby. They didn''t really bother coming close to the wagon most of the time, but I paid a small amount of attention to [Sense Presence] at all times, keeping track of the movements of all but the smallest hits on it that were close to the wagon. Lifting my gaze a bit, ahead of the wagon, the road plunged into the side of a low lying mountain range. The mountains weren''t that tall, but were pretty craggy and there wasn''t a whole lot of visible vegetation growing on it. Below, the adventurer girl walked over to the spot where my dummy was laying. "Shit!" In a panic I dove down with Claret giving a little ''wheee'' as I went. Carefully manoeuvring with wind magic, I stopped myself as I phased through the wagon''s bed before floating back up a bit and poking my head in a gap under the tarp near the dummy''s head before materializing just my head. The sensation of being inside of the wagon was pretty uncomfortable and perturbed me, but I sucked it up. The dark spirit on my shoulders tightened her grip on me, though she didn''t complain out loud. I managed to get into position just in time, as the dummy rocked back and forth a bit. "Huh? It''s hard...Umm, Miss Scarlet, could you wake up?" "Mmm? What is it?" After a bit more rocking, spoke up. "Ah, umm, we''re approaching the Brokecleft Mountain Range, and we thought you should be awake during the day for this bit." "Gimme a sec..." "Okay." Her presence backed off and moved to the side of the wagon where she couldn''t see me. None of the others were in a position where they could see my little corner of the wagon, so with some quick movements, I put the dummy back into my bag and finished my partial materialization. Stepping down from the wagon''s bed, I made my way around and was brought to Mint still sitting in the driver''s seat. "Ah, Miss Scarlet, you''re awake." "Yea, is something up?" There shouldn''t have been any real reason for them to get me to come out of the back. I could think of a single reason, though not as to how it was relevant. "We''re approaching the Brokecleft Mountain Range and will be entering the mountain path soon." I nodded. It seemed like it did have something to do with that, but the why was the question. "While the mountain path we usually take is relatively safe, it''s still much more dangerous than the plains surrounding the mountain range, so instead of alternating day and night shifts, I was thinking it might be best if everyone worked together just in case for this leg of the journey. As an adventurer, you''ll probably enjoy the change in scenery as well." The reasoning felt flimsy, but it was an order from my employer, even if he worded it like a suggestion. It wasn''t like I really had any excuses I could readily give either. "Sure, I guess that''s fine." "Alright!" "Here we go!" "Thank you." The adventurer trio excitedly exclaimed. Mint on the other hand gave a wry smile to their reactions. (Maybe it was actually their idea?) "I hope you''re not too tired waking up so early after taking the whole night watch Miss Scarlet." "It''s fine." (Tsk.) I was pretty close to finishing my new skill. All the coding had finished and I''d been going through checking it for bugs for the last two days. In theory it should allow Alicia to wake up inside of me, able to use my senses and talk like normal. She should even be able to use my skills, though to what extent I couldn''t really figure out since there was a lack of comparison points. The original skill, [Interpretation], had all the functions I wanted, being able to take in information through my senses and some skills, while being able to produce outputs that can be perceived by the user, it''s actual capabilities were to only give simplified outlines of analyzed information. The code to reinterpret data like that was incredible and beyond my ability to understand, but it wasn''t necessary for allowing Alicia to connect into the interface so she could wake up inside of me. But it was best to presume I only had one chance at it. The risk of causing permanent damage to Alicia was something I couldn''t afford to ignore, and I needed to take every possible precaution to avoid it. If it was possible to make a copy of her or to test run the skill with a different person or creature, I''d have done that, but it simply wasn''t. Even moving Alicia from her current container into a new one to free up [Soul Siphon] was too large of a risk when she seemed to already be stable where she was. Making a copy of [Soul Siphon] And using that had it''s own issues, and not knowing the limits of the skill system made pushing the envelope when so much was on the line wasn''t something I wanted to risk. In the end, it felt like the lowest risk was to simply check my new skill for any possible problems as thoroughly as I could before slotting Alicia into the new container. And when I was so close to actually doing it, being forced into a distraction like this wasn''t what I wanted. But there was no way for me to explain what I was doing. What I''ve been doing for over a week now, no, for almost three weeks I guess. (There isn''t anything to keep these guys from keeping their mouths shut if I told them either. On the other hand...) I stole a glance at the spirit hanging off of my shoulder. "...?" Claret tilted her head to the side when she noticed my glance. My hand had gotten halfway to her head before I realized what I was doing and forced it back down. (Should I tell her? Will I be able to keep it a secret from her for long?) The dark spirit I had for a familiar wasn''t too curious of a being, but at the same time, she hated separating from me. It was hard to say if I could keep it a secret from her for long, or if it was even a good idea. At the very least though, she didn''t seem to have the disposition to give away my secret. She hadn''t really shown any interest in anything but myself and the fluffballs, and they were all lesser beings to her anyways. (Well, I''ll figure it out after I revive Alicia.) The sound of the horses neighing brought me out of my thoughts as the wagon started to move again, with the three adventurers and I forming up along the sides of the wagon, the two guys on the left and the girl and myself on the right. We followed the road straight into the small crevice cut into the mountain range. "I''ve been looking forward to be able to talk to you properly all this time you know!" "Ah, is that so?" "It is! Ah, not only are you so beautiful, but so incredibly strong as well! Is it really true that you only recently registered as an adventurer?" "Yea." "That''s so incredible then! What were you doing before that?" "Just hunting." "Hunting? You mean like in the western forest? Oh, I mean the forest to the west of Edgeworth Village. So you got strong hunting there then?" "Yea, sorta." "That''s incredible. I heard that the monsters get really strong if you go deep into the forest, even a day in and most C ranked adventurers have serious trouble. It''s no wonder you''re so strong if you spent your time hunting there! But despite that, your skin is so smooth and clear! There isn''t any traces of any scars, is there?" "I guess." "That''s so envious. Just from the little bit I do, my body''s already covered in small scars. I worry if I''ll someday get big ones." "Is that so?" "That is. How did you avoid any scars anyways? Since you''re so good at magic, I guess you did it with healing magic then?" "Something like that." Like that, the girl made constant small talk, but splitting my attention between her and checking the skill''s code was frustratingly difficult. I did my best to avoid giving off a bad impression, but I couldn''t remember anything we talked about, so I could only hope she didn''t think badly of me. I also really hoped that I didn''t reveal anything that could be bad for me in the future. Though, what''s done is done. The fact that she continued to cheerfully talk to me the entire time suggested that I didn''t do anything too problematic. Or maybe this girl just liked the sound of her voice? It wasn''t really a sentiment I could understand though. As we entered the mountain range, the road inclined slightly, slowing down progress even further than usual. We were constantly surrounded by steep hills or sharp cliff sides as the path winded it''s way around in between the tall hills. Even inside the mountain range, there wasn''t a whole lot of vegetation. Just some shrubs and wisps of grass growing on the craggy hillsides. While most of the hillside was made of loose gravel and sand, there were also some larger rocks and even the occasional boulder broken off from one part of the hill or another. While there weren''t that many boulders of particular size, the few that were around made excellent hiding spots for ambushes. (Ah, there''s one right there.) As we approached one particular boulder, there was a hit on [Sense Presence]. But the presence didn''t make any move as we continued, nor were there any other presences nearby. Keeping an eye on the boulder, Mint kept the wagon moving on. "Do you see something?" Maybe it was her longer experience as an adventurer, but she realized that I noticed something. Giving her a glance, I nodded before turning my eyes back to the boulder. The girl put her hands on her long two handed sword, but refrained from drawing it, and instead quietly moved up to the side of the driver''s seat and whispered to Mint. "There might be something behind the next boulder. Be ready for anything." The aged merchant nodded before turning to his side and whispered a warning to the other two on the far side of the wagon. The sound of the other two''s footsteps changed slightly as we continued on the road. As we passed the boulder, all ready to dive into action, what greeted us was the sight of what looked like an oversized blue fetus with little bat wings sleeping behind the boulder. It''s appearance was pretty disguising and it felt like removing it from the world was overall a good thing. I raised a hand to cast a spell when the adventurer girl put a hand in front of me then shook her head. Unsure what she was thinking, I lowered my arm and just went with the flow. We continued past the boulder without slowing. "So what was that about?" I really wanted to know why we let a potential danger away, however small it seemed to be. "Imps tend to have loud death throes. If you didn''t get it perfectly, it''s screams would have attracted more of it''s kind. A single imp is easy to kill, but dozens becomes quite a problem." "I see." Having to take on dozens of those things would be a pain, and maybe even quite difficult to get through unscathed. I was pretty confident in my ability to kill such a weak looking monster painlessly, it was an unnecessary risk since it was just sleeping. If it wasn''t so ugly, I might''ve considered it a little cute. Bringing our guard down from high alert, we continued on the path, making the occasional stop to rest and let the horses drink some water from one of the many streams that flowed through the narrow valleys. I hadn''t been paying much attention to them before, but now that I was forced to walk around with them, I had noticed that the horses really drank a lot of water. It almost felt like they could drink more water than I could blood. While by size it was a bit absurd that I could drink that much in the first place, I had the benefit of skills that broke the laws of physics. I was a little tempted in finding out if the horses had some sort of innate skill that allowed them to drink more water than you''d normally expect, but didn''t bother in the end. Any effort into idle curiosity was better put into hastening Alicia''s return. Anything else could wait until after that. We walked past a few other imps sleeping behind boulders or off a bit in the distance. Fortunately there weren''t any monster encounters and we closed off the day after making good progress. It seemed like we were well on schedule to exiting the mountain range the next day, but for the meantime, we went on watch. One person would stay up while the rest went to sleep. Of course, I wasn''t going to sleep, but had to at least make it appear as if I was. My watch was the last one, so at the very least, I would get a good six hours or so of uninterrupted time to work on my new skill for Alicia. So with that, after a dinner of shredded charge boar meat fried with onions and tomatoes and some basic seasoning sandwiched between the tough bread the others carried on them. Despite how simple the recipe had been, the reception had been surprisingly good. I was running out of ingredients to use for flavouring, so I was getting a little worried about the results. It made me wonder if there was something beyond my recipes that was the cause for the good reception. I really hoped it wasn''t them being nice about it or something. After pretending to go to sleep early, I lay in the wagon''s bed in my usual spot and went right to work on my new skill. "Miss Scarlet, wake up. It''s your turn." Together with a light shaking, the voice of the adventurer boy reached my ears. The mostly ineffective but mostly decent one, not the annoying cat boi. I got up without a word and sat down where the others ate dinner. There was a lamp that faintly emitted a caustic white light in the middle of the remains of the eating circle. Giving the boy a wave, I sent him off to the tent he shared with the rest of his party. Immediately after, I raised a thin earth wall between the lamp and myself, a small half dome that barely covered the side facing me. With a small sigh of relief, I moved on to feel the spirits around me, making sure to give another of the larger portions to Claret. All of them happily enjoyed their meals, bringing a smile to my face as I enjoyed the sight. The way the dark spirit nibbled on the apple-sized mana treat in both hands before lowering it to chew and swallow reminded me a bit of a chipmunk or hamster. But as I thought that, the image of her cheeks puffing out with nibbled pieces of the mana treat stuffed in them made me want to see her actually do that. If I asked her of it, she probably would''ve done it without even questioning it. Once my thoughts got that far, I started to itch at wanting to give the order, but before I could come to a decision, she swallowed the last of the mana treat to my disappointment. I toyed with the idea of giving her a second mana treat just so I can see her with puffed out cheeks before she opened her mouth for a different reason. <...> (I guess it isn''t that surprising that she''d notice. Keeping it a secret to my own familiar is a bit rude, and it would be bad if underestimated how important it was to keep it a secret, especially if she got some weird misunderstanding about it. She had already seen some of the strange things I''m capable of anyways.) (Maybe that was too much at once.) I had absolutely no memory of that. I didn''t really see how it was circumventing anything, but it was probably a waste of time trying to explain it further. It was a bit awkward being praised for an ability I had stolen on a whim, but I honestly accepted her praise. It was true that I was modifying an existing skill, though the end result would be something pretty new. It was likely to be something unprecedented in this world. It was bad to pass it off as something minor. That being said, being praised so earnestly was a bit difficult to handle, forcing me to avert my gaze as I lightly scratched at my red cheek. The dark spirit put her hands on her hips and puffed our her chest towards me. I wasn''t sure about how amazing such a thing was, but considering how she acted, maybe it really was? Though considering she just said that she evolved by eating tons of my...her mana treats, I needed to be careful regarding the fluffballs. Having one of them like this was already a bit of a handful. A second would dominate my life. I slowly clapped while praising her in a monotone voice. Frankly, it was entirely so she would continue her story. (Then why did you act so proud of it?!) My smile cramped up as she threw herself at me, wrapping her arms around me and rubbed her cheek against my own. I forcibly peeled her off of me. The dark spirit puffed her cheeks a bit but quickly deflated them as I prompted her to continue. As if forgetting what I just did, Claret threw herself back onto me and started to rub cheeks once more. But this time I didn''t have the heart to separate us. It was obvious she really loved the other Scarlet, and I was the closest thing to her ever getting her old master back. As things stood, I didn''t even want to think what would happen if she was put all alone once again. Returning her hug, I started to stroke Claret''s hair as I asked about the bit that concerned me the most. Lying through my teeth on that one bit, I extracted Claret from my body and had a close look at her face.