DTK 44

Sandy had bags under her eyes as she led me around to her workshop. It was still morning, before lunch, when she pushed the door open and it swung inside.

The monster was mostly disassembled and already loaded onto two carts in the door. At least, the parts that could be salvaged were loaded. There was a giant mud spot in front of Sandy’s bed where Cinnamon had dragged in the dirt. He was currently creating a new giant dirt spot on the other side of the room, chewing apart slagged pieces of the monster.

“It was a pain in the ass to take to task.” Sandy said. “I lost more than half of it. It’s like its entire body is set up to self destruct. Still got half of it to go.”

“Valjean said they found it in the woods.” I said, stepping over the slagged pile of monster parts. “It looks like something that would’ve come out of our dungeon.”

“So does the spiders that Cinnamon has been eating. I thought he was hunting them from the woods until he found us in the dungeon. Maybe he’s been diving it.” She said.

There was a pounding at the door. I looked at Sandy, who shrugged, before stepping to the door and swinging it open.

Olivier looked down as the door swung open. Not at me, but at the ground. His eyes were glowing with his active skill. He scratched at his face, talking without looking up.

“Did a monster come in here?” He asked.

“No. Just Cinnamon.” I said.

“Oh! It’s you again.” Olivier said, making eye contact with me now. He smiled. It was obviously more forced this time than it was last night. “What is… Cinnamon?”

Olivier poked his head into the room, looking left at the bed.

“Woah!” I said, putting a hand on his chest to push him back. He didn’t budge. His head swiveled to the right instead.

He recoiled like someone had hit him.

“By all the gods — do you live in here?” He asked. “With the corpses?”

“Yes! Now get out!” I started closing the door. He caught it on a boot.

“Do all peasants live like this? Are the hooks hanging from the ceiling normal?”

“Have you never been to a village before?” I asked, frowning. The nobles that Valjean brought had always rotated out. But none had ever been as naive as this one — at least none that bothered talking to us. Valjean must have gone out of his way to hire a tracker. I hoped it was expensive.

Sandy stomped up, pulled the door back, and slammed it. The noble moved his foot out of the way.

I sighed.

“That guy has no sense of privacy.” Sandy said. Loudly. He definitely heard it.

“He definitely has tracking skills.” I said, stepping back from the door and talking quietly. “Was butchering the monster at least good for experience?”

Sandy nodded vigorously.

“I gained almost two levels from this alone. I hope we don’t have to fight anything like this soon.”

“Is your dad cooking?” I said. I smelled food. Sandy shrugged.

I pushed my way into the kitchen. It wasn’t barricaded anymore. Henri looked almost as tired as Sandy. Dishes lined the table, mismatched pots and bowls as Henri stirred a gigantic pot full of soup.

“This… isn’t made of spider, is it?”

I hadn’t missed that most of the bug-meat was gone from Sandy’s work room.

Without replying, Henri pulled a cup of soup and handed it to me. I tasted it with trepidation. It was delicious.

“Going to have enough for tonight. Save your appetite.” Henri said. I nodded, but I drank the rest of the soup. I hadn’t eaten all morning.

“You’re going to have some leftover too.” Sandy said, waving an arm at the table.

Henri waved a hand dismissively.

“That’s for everyone else.”

After heading back to the workshop we wheeled the carts outside — only after peering through the window and making sure Olivier had gained some distance. Then we took them to the workshop.

I wasn’t going to waste this material on my own pattern.

Mom sat tiredly, organizing the scraps of damaged material she had pulled out of Valjean’s pattern into her storage chest. She gave me a tired smile as I set the work cart down.

I wondered how valuable the scraps of material were if she was sorting them out piece by piece. She had even pulled out broken strings with fraying edges, sorting them like precious stones.

“So.” I said, blowing out a puff of air and turning around to wave at the two work carts of the spider. “We have… this.”

“Should I keep cutting it up?” Sandy asked, standing over the cart that had unprocessed parts of the monsters.

Mom walked over it, scanning each piece of the material and turning it over in her hands.

“You want me to help you make an outfit to clear the dungeon with?” Mom asked, turning to me.

“Yes.” I said, my eyes flicking away from my moms and to the pile of monster parts.

“You just had to ask.” She smiled wryly.

And then she went to work. Mom practically flew around the workshop, using some esoteric skill to fling material onto the extra desks set up. Cloth spun to land in perfect position, chunks of monster landing beside them.

“Can I help anywhere?” I asked, stepping forward.

“No.” She said. I recoiled. But she smiled, stepping over to me and putting a hand on my shoulder. “Rely on me, light.”

Sandy started cutting apart the unprocessed remains of the monster. I wrung my hands for a moment at what to do before remembering the Houndsmaster outfit.

I pulled it out, setting it down on a single table in the corner of the room and looking up.

Mom moved between a half dozen tables, moving like a machine to finish pieces of the outfit she was working on. It took on strange shapes; hard hollow tubes which bent in ways that were hard to look at. I blinked away from it and continued my own work. With any luck, I could finish the Houndsmaster set tonight.

I licked my lips and activated [Running Stitch.] The patterns and memories were… normal. Flashes of the stitching and leather punching, memories of warnings where to avoid stabbing my own fingers, and images of people crafting the outfit in a hundred camps and work shops.

It must have been a popular pattern.

The shell dress had only had a poor few memories attached to crafting it.

The Houndsmaster outfit, on the other hand, was filled with rich memories, scents and smells, the feeling of a heart pounding inside of my chest —

I was standing with an arm extended, the skill already activating in the memory. I was also still in the workshop. The world reeled like I was on a boat in a storm, both memories lilting to the side until I remembered to keep my hands moving, stitching the outfit together with precision informed by memory and controlled by magic.

In the memory, I felt myself activate [Befriend] at a Drake. At an actual Drake; it a hulking leviathan that poured fire across the ground towards me. Two monsters pinned it to the ground. A pure white ape with glowing blue eyes held its right arm, swinging a gigantic paw and releasing a gust of freezing white. The Drake’s flames guttered out.

I felt the Seamstress in the image switch, calling on a different skill, and for just a flash the memory of what was in her [Wardrobe] passed through me. Ten complete outfits, every one withs kills for either surviving the wilderness or taming monsters. She had a complete build from outfits alone.

The thought of it caught me so offguard I stopped sewing, the memory shattering into pieces again.

Blinking it away, I realized that the seconds of remembering had been almost an hour in real time. I had pulled the memory up, piece by piece, like hauling on a thread. The headache wasn’t nearly as bad this time.

But more importantly, the outfit was almost complete.

I kept working at it, slowly and carefully. Every few minutes, I stopped and checked the count down timer on my quest.
***
Cinnamon was a good boy.

He paid attention.

He followed Sandy outside when she carried the cart of good food away. It seemed unfair that she was going to eat the rest herself, but he was an adult now! He could hunt for himself. He wasn’t getting lots of time to play, lately.

Cinnamon looked to his right, sitting up.

The guy who came over had skills just like Cinnamon. Cinnamon made a bet that he would like to play.

Cinnamon activate his [Tracking] skill and started following the red line left behind by the Noble’s tracks.