DTK 34

“Gwen!” Terry said.

I stepped from the hallway into the room reserved from her workshop. I hadn’t visited in a few days.

And things here were different.

The tables that had been scattered around the room before and decorated with bottles were gathered in the center on a workstation. Terry had indeed dried spider blood as pigment. But there was also a bottle of concentrated green sitting in the center of the desk; there couldn’t have been more than a few ounces in it. I stared at it. It was glowing.

It was a potion.

“You…” I said, still struck staring at it. Terry had rarely ever pulled out the full set of her glass equipment. This was one of the first times in years I had seen it all in one place.

“I leveled up.” Terry said. Her hands were folded over her knee, and she was staring at the center of her table nonchalantly. “It’s a shame that Sandy can’t bring me more of this.” She said, waving toward a few much darker bottles, filled with a deep green colour.

“We… could.” I said, stepping into the room hesitantly, like the alchemical fixtures of glass in front of me might explode at any moment. It didn’t look like a very safe laboratory. There were smudges on paint on the sides of bottles, as if Terry was painting and brewing at the same time.

“Oh. Right. You said… Sandy got it. You didn’t say from where. Is this…?”

“Yes. It’s from here.” I said, lifting up the tiny bottle. “So what is it?”

“A draught of acid resistance.” Terry said.

I held the bottle up to my face and looked at it before setting it back down on the table.

“You should sell it.” I said.

“Give it to Sandy as a gift. You never know when you’ll need it.”

I whittled away a few hours waiting for Sandy to be ready, anxiety filling me the entire time. I worked a bit on a painting, and spent some time working on a null hunter outfit, though now that mom knew we were constantly receiving monster materials she didn’t pressure me to work on it at all. I still just needed something to do, some way to feel useful.

It worked.

Afternoon came before I knew it and I found myself in Sandy’s workshop. I sat on her bed and ate her snacks while she pinned the bear lather for tanning.

“I don’t think we carried that much out.” I said, watching Sandy worked.

She grunted, finishing attaching the leather to a rack and lifting it off her desk to bring it outside.

“Finally leveled up. Got a skill to get more monster per monster.”

“More monster per monster?” I asked.

“More monster per monster.” She nodded. “When I carve off the leather it… stretches. I get more of it.”

“Huh.” I said. “Neat.”

There was a pounding on the door to the workshop from the other side.

“Sandy!” Henri yelled through the door.

It was still barricaded. I ate another piece of jerky and made eye contact with Sandy. She opened the door and stepped outside, closing it behind her. I sighed, standing up and freeing the furniture from the door. It swung inward towards me.

“Henri.” I said, looking up at him.

“Gwen. Is Sandy here?” He asked, peeking around the room. “I didn’t meet you two in time last night.”

“We went mining.”

“You went mining?” Henri asked. “So is Gerald really a noble? Smithing?”

I nodded.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“I told you I would help you with the dungeons. A more… complete set of buffs.” He said, sighing at his absent daughter and staring at the door.

I followed his gaze.

“I think she’s still just mad at Gerald.” I said. “I don’t blame him for not wanting to fight monsters.” 

I turned back to find Henri searching my face. He sighed, running his hands back and through his hair.

“I think it might be the other way around. She is taking out her anger at me at Gerald.” Henri sighed. “Step inside.”

I followed him to the kitchen. It was much cleaner than the last time I was here, the sink cleaned to empty and every surface swept to a shining polish. The tile floor caught sunlight and threw it back up, while the granite counters made the room feel clean and polished. Much of it must have been imported from other towns, but Henri was born with one of the more valuable class professions.

In a city, he could enhance dozens of other people.

In the center of the kitchen on the table that was functioning as an island were a set of four meals. Two of them were older, probably from last night. Another held a bowl of still steaming stew.

“I know that — mana is probably one of your biggest issues, yes?”

“Yes.” I said, leaning over one of the stews. I took a spoonful and ate it.

Henri’s cooking was, quite literally, magic.

“So this is food for mana regeneration?” I asked after a moment. There was no pop up to confirm it.

Henri shook his head no. I cocked an eyebrow.

“That is… prohibitively expensive.” He said, running his hands through his hair again. “This will give you over your maximum mana and replenish your mana while eating it. The higher above your mana cap it’s raising, the less effective it is, so its better if you spend your mana first.”

“Wait,” I said. “You’re telling me this soup is a straight up mana potion?”

Henri just nodded.

“Well, we’re going to need something better than bowls.” I said, looking around the kitchen.

“I don’t have any Thermos’s.” Henri said.

“ Bottles or flasks, then. A flask full of soup.”

“I do have those.” Henri said, touching a hand to his face.

***
“Ready?” I asked Sandy.

We were standing outside the southern most dungeon; it was closest to the iron mine we were exploiting.

We both had flasks hung around our neck, tied together with little leather strips Sandy pulled out of her storage in her room, though hers stood out more since she had changed into the Stormcaller outfit.

“As ever.” Sandy said.

The southern dungeon entrance emerged from the ground like a stone ruin in the middle of no where, the image inside dim from here. I wondered what would be inside, staring at the image, but it didn’t reveal any secrets to me.

Maybe a mine or a cave, since it was close to those resource nodes in the Wild. My skin itched standing here, still slightly outside the radius of the town’s Domain.

I was wearing the Spider-scale dress, prepared for whatever we would have to fight inside. We still weren’t sure if it would open to monster’s the level of the third floor boss. I was practically shivering with anticipation.

Sandy stepped through forest, the image flickering. It was afternoon outside; we had no need to obscure our movements when the gate was so far away from the town. That meant it was night inside the dungeon, and Sandy’s lantern on the other side gave me warped images of a barren landscape.

I stepped through after her.

The first thing I noticed was that the itch of the Wild eating at me disappeared. I didn’t notice it in the town; when stepping between the Domain and the dungeon inside there was practically no perceptible difference.

But it stood out here. The persistant itch of the Wild, the constant feeling of the world trying to destroy me disappeared, replaced instantly by the comforting feeling of belonging that pervaded the town. The dungeon providing that same feeling was creepy.

The second thing I noticed was the pervading cold, a chill immediately assaulting me. I gasped as the vertigo from moving between a dungeon entrance washed over me and sent me stumbling forward. My breath was visible in front of my face.

Around us, a blanket of snow choked the world. Snow fell all around us.

“Shit it’s cold.” Sandy said.

I rubbed my arms. My right arm was covered in leather, but my left was exposed, and my boots didn’t reach all the way up my legs. With a thought, I started activating quick change and switched into the stealthy leather hunter armor, suppressing a shiver.

“No kidding.” I said, looking around. “This is… different.”

At least light poured out of the dungeon entrance behind us. Besides that, there was nothing to differentiate the world around us, falling into darkness in every direction.

My eyes slowly adjusted to the much darker world. In each direction there was one shape moving in the dark. It was sparkling, glowing blue.

Sandy stepped closer to me, staring out into the dark.

“I’m guessing we have to hunt those down.” I said, looking at the shape moving directly ahead of us. It must’ve been very far away. Or very small. It looked about the size of my hand from here, obscured by the falling snow that suffocated out all sound from the world.

A chilling wind hit us, sending snow drifts rolling below us.

Sandy nodded and stepped forward, her feet crunching on the fresh snow.

I gripped my needle, wishing that this outfit had gloves. I was going to have to craft something just for this cold.

The terrain dipped before rising again, our footing uneven in the snow. It rose half way up my leg as we approached, the snow attacking my body-heat. I half expected to receive [Frostbite] as a debuff by the end of the night.

We reached the source of the glow in the dark, getting close enough to make out the shape of a monster crawling on it. A gigantic crystal rose of the ground, glowing blue, made of repeating crystalline shapes. 

“Is that… made of crystal?” Sandy asked, looking up at it.

It was gigantic and symmetrical, made of dozens of three-dimensional diamond shapes  with symmetrical legs stabbing out from the side. As we watched, it pulsed with icy blue light. The crystal below it resonated, glowing back. Then the monster seemed to suck the energy out of it, causing it to dim before crumbling apart.

Almost imperceptibly, the monster grew.

“I think it’s… ice.” I said, staring at the monster. It wasn’t even close to anything biological. Instead, it was a transparent mass of bluish ice with legs that ended in spikes.

Sandy looked down at her broken cleaver then back up at the monster.

“How are we supposed to fight these things?”

“I could probably pull it off the rock…” I said, reaching for one of the throwing needles in my belt. Even as we spoke, the monster glowed again, siphoning more power from the stone beneath it.

I wondered how valuable that giant rock was.

Then I wondered how many times we would have to clear the monsters in this frozen hell scape to open the next level of the floor.

“Do it.” Sandy said.

I threw the needle, trying and failing to use thread manipulation to wrap around the creatures leg. I was in the wrong outfit.

Recalling the needle, I changed and tried again. The cold biting into me redoubled.

This time I threw two needles, grabbing opposite legs with thread and pulling as hard as I could. The monster didn’t have articulated fingers or any real way to grip the crystal; it was just sort of sitting on it at an angle, propped up by gravity. So when I pulled, it slid across the surface and dropped to the ground.

Sandy dashed forward, swinging her sword into it and chopping violently into its side. Ice exploded up out of it.

The monster made a noise that sounded like wind rushing in the snow; or maybe it was the wind. Then it glowed blue. Alarmed, I stepped back. Sandy did the same, but not fast enough.

A pulse of blue light shot around in the area around it.

“Fuck! Ouch.” Sandy said, stumbling back and falling into the snow.

[Running Stitch I] [Mana: 9/10] [Cancel]

The monster lived, even as my needle split into it. Because it wasn’t made of flesh, the wound wasn’t clean or even. It exploded into jagged pieces of ice as my needle ripped it apart, the crystalline structure fracturing where the pattern repeated instead of at the point of the wound.

I attacked again.

[Running Stitch I] [Mana: 8/10] [Cancel]

[+2 XP]