Chapter Sixteen
The parade of breasts ended when the dungeon monsters realized a man was looking toward them. They kicked up a fuss until Kora cast a long, shallow Elemental Wall of stone separating the groups. It was just tall enough that Vester lost sight of the elflings from the neck down.
Well, that doesn’t seem fair, he mused while rising to his feet and fetching some of the soup Krysta had made. After all, the rest of my Party still gets to enjoy the view. Gender discrimination is a terrible thing.
He was mostly just distracting himself from the huddle near the campfire. Reve and Skylar were whispering, the golem creation momentarily forgotten, and the glances they kept shooting Vester’s way told him that he was the subject of their conspiring.
He sat back down and started spooning the warm food into his mouth.
He wasn’t particularly hungry, but he wanted something to occupy his hands and this worked well enough.
He wasn’t sure if he should bother checking his Grimoire.
He hadn’t defeated the skeleton that had attacked them, and he didn’t think partial credit for killing the titanbat could have pushed him over into a new level.
We don’t have any way to analyze the gear Kora dropped off, and it doesn’t look like the elflings gave her a list of properties—they just piled everything on the shield.
Skylar could do some incredible things with resources from this floor, but if we don’t know exactly what we’re dealing with then we might waste something.
Do I still have that book of enchantments from the Arch Magus?
Tolbert Cathar was the level 81 Arch Magus who had created the revolutionary gate that teleported people from the Trading Post in the tenth-floor Safe Zone to the first floor of the Great Dungeon.
While it was only useable by those who had fought their way down past Sargo, the gate allowed for a lot of goods to be transported swiftly between the Safe Zone and the surface.
That was the source of the current conflict between the Adventurer’s Guild and the Church of Light: Peace’s fanatics wanted to control the flow of goods out of the Great Dungeon and had tried to claim the Trading Post only to fail in their attempted takeover—but the church had still destroyed the gate.
Vester finished going through the books in his storage and drew out one of the more-advanced manuals Tolbert had given him.
The Arch Magus had recommended a number of books to boost Vester’s inscriptions, and he’d slowly been working on mastering them.
The progress had already helped make Skylar’s golems more powerful.
But at the moment, Vester was looking through the complex equations and inscriptions to see if the rare analysis formations were described.
He hoped he might be able to figure out what goods Skylar could destroy and what they needed to keep if he could manage the inscription…
It was just going to take a lot of reading to figure out.
Turning pages while spooning soup to his mouth was easy; focusing on the outside world while doing both was harder.
Vester’s focus narrowed down to the complex inscription systems while he tried to wade through the arcane mathematics that governed how true Enchanters designed their formulas.
There were several that contained elementals of identification, but none that directly offered a method to tell what a piece of gear did.
Vester had learned that Ordinal was incredibly strict about the rare skills that allowed someone to read another person’s class or level.
The Adventurer’s Guild had a scanning system that analyzed mana and could transcribe information, but those tablets were made to crumble to dust if ever taken out of the Guildhall without a special key.
And the penalty for misusing someone’s personal information was death.
Tomlin set that standard in place when he founded the Guild and had to execute several receptionists who tried to get rich selling out Adventurers.
Can’t say the guy doesn’t have a way of making his intentions clear when he sets a rule down, Vester thought while turning the page.
Hours passed, yet he grew no closer to being able to design an identification enchantment.
He had a notebook full of dissected inscriptions and rituals. All of them contained methods of targeting and selecting different things to activate, which he hoped would let him cross-reference and determine what a diagnostic formula looked like.
He suspected he was days, maybe weeks away from managing it, and that made Li Ra dropping into the spot next to him a relief. He blinked his way back to the present and turned his attention to her. “Making any progress?” she asked.
“Not really,” he admitted. “I was never a good math student, and trying to reverse engineer a half dozen enchantments isn’t a quick process. I recognize some of the symbols and some of the flow patterns, but a lot of these use rare runes, and that leaves me guessing what I’m trying to do.”
“What are you trying to do?” Li asked, her shoulder brushing his while she looked down at his notes. “Skylar says you looked at the stuff Kora dropped off for a few seconds, and then got some soup and started reading. She figured you were trying to avoid temptation at the sea of tits over there.”
Vester let out a soft huff of laughter, rolling his eyes with a shake of his head.
“While they’re all lovely examples of breasts, it’s not like I don’t have magnificent tits I can look at regularly.
No, I realized that we didn’t have any way to know what properties all that gear holds, so if Skylar destroys it all for golem pieces, we might miss out on potential upgrades. ”
Comprehension dawned on the oni’s face, then she let out a snort and tilted her face down to press her lips against his shoulder. It took Vester a moment to realize that she was suppressing laughter, trying to keep her composure. He blinked, not sure what she thought was funny.
It took about five minutes for her to calm down and stop chuckling against his shoulder. “Can you imagine what would happen if the Hero challenged us again and you had us all in those skimpy outfits?” she said. “The church-types would lose their minds… especially when they saw Krysta!”
It was no hardship to imagine his entire Party—minus himself—in those bikinis and ribbon skirts, but while that was a pleasant distraction, it didn’t help Vester with the problem at hand.
He nudged Li with his shoulder and sighed.
“You’re as bad as Reve and Skylar. Those two started conspiring before I began studying.
Are we just going to content ourselves with losing potential gear? ”
Li offered him a shrug in response. “Why not? We just got twenty-seven pairs’ worth of metal.
We’re heading toward a city full of these elflings, and we are building good will by having Krysta maintain their health.
By the time we make it to the city, we should be welcome in their shops, and if we are we can buy gear tailored to our needs… and maybe a few sexy items too.”
When he stared at her, she flushed and glanced away for a moment. Then she elbowed him in the side. “Don’t look at me like that,” she mumbled. “I’m allowed to want to look pretty sometimes.”
He reached out and pinched her chin between his finger and thumb, then he turned her face toward his. A soft kiss later, he was staring into her eyes. “You always look pretty,” he said sincerely, “and I am grateful to have you in my life.”
Li Ra’s blushing grew more intense, and a faint heat radiated from the skin under his fingers—she didn’t act on it, she just let out a disappointed noise.
“Ugh, we can’t really… do anything… with all these blood elflings around.
Who knows if it’ll set them off? They really hate the idea of men out of their control. ”
“Sounds like a them problem,” Vester muttered mutinously, and while he was tempted to pull the oni into his lap and show her just how much he enjoyed her looks, he knew it was a bad idea.
Vester took a moment to store all of his notes and his reference books using Chaos Thief, then rose to look around and see how things were progressing.
Kora was still standing guard over Krysta, who was running a full clinic.
The Elemental Wall was gone, and most of the dungeon monsters had moved to a small camp at the base of one of the nearby pillars.
They had begun replacing their clothing with what appeared to be mesh sailcloth from their airship.
The web-like fabric gave them a fishnet look, but they’d looped the material enough times to be opaque.
Considering how little they wear regularly, it’s funny that they’re less naked now than they were before, he thought while contemplating their camp.
Still no scorpion mounts, I won’t miss the damned bugs, less arachnids is a good thing.
Looks like they’ve rearmed from somewhere.
They’ve got a lot of melee weapons, but I don’t see many ranged options.
It’s possible they’re hiding small crossbows or those energy weapons, but I’m betting they use magic against anything they have to keep at a distance.
They might not need those rods to focus their spells.
His attention went back to his own camp, where he saw that Reve was up on the short column. The Avatar of Life had taken over the watch from Li Ra. Skylar had returned to working on her golem parts, and he took the happier expression on her face for a win.
“When is my watch?” he asked, giving Li Ra a side hug to just enjoy her presence. He hoped they hadn’t skipped over him because he’d been studying. Kora would have their heads if they had, but that didn’t stop his lovers from bending the rules to try and give him an easier time on occasion.
“About thirty minutes,” Li Ra replied. “I saw you studying and didn’t want to bother you, so I cleaned up with some river water, ate, maintained my rifle, and then came over to get your attention. I didn’t want to disrupt your work before I had to.”
“Thank you,” he said with a smile. “I appreciate that. I’ll get ready to take the watch—you get some rest.” The Frontier Duelist raised a hand and playfully tipped her hat to him, then she headed toward one of the tents Krysta had made in the side of a rock.
Vester went to a basin and filled it with warm water using Fantastic Reality.
Once it was full, he stripped off his jacket and shirt to start, then used a clean cloth to start washing down his face, chest, and arms. He left his hair tied back, not wanting to deal with it at the moment.
Non had ensured he couldn’t cut it short, because it would grow back within a few hours if he didn’t have other injuries.
He paused with a hand on his belt, contemplating the wisdom versus risk of stripping off his pants to wash his lower body.
He took a second, turning in a circle, then decided he wasn’t in the clear view of the blood elflings—which was enough privacy for him to put hygiene over his worries about monster sensibilities.
He scrubbed down fast, and then ran mana through his clothing until he was sure Avatar’s Raiment had completely repaired and cleansed itself.
Once that was done he dressed once more, this time giving his suit a coal-black coloring.
He altered his vest to a deep blood red, made his shirt a smokey gray, and adjusted his tie until it was black with red marbling.
His gloves matched his shirt and had red stitching.
His socks did too, though he kept his shoes a solid black.
Trickster’s Cane appeared in his hand, and he commanded the gemstone knot to turn a dark red, the wood black, and the metal fittings an aged bronze. The new look suited him, and he amused himself for a second by spinning the cane between his fingers.
Then he heard an odd ceramic clattering sound behind him.
Vester spun… yet saw nothing. No one was standing behind him, and a few careful swipes of his cane failed to reveal anyone close enough to touch him. He took a cautious step forward, only for the clatter to repeat itself, which was when he looked down.
There, sitting on the mossy stone at his feet, was a mask made of black obsidian. It was lying face down, so he couldn’t see its features, but noticed that there was nothing to hold it onto a face. The mask had no straps, no buttons, no strings. It was just a face-shaped oval covering some moss.
He used his cane to carefully flip the mask over, and when the face was revealed he felt even more confused. What he was looking at was a sinister grin that screamed ‘I’m cursed’ to Vester’s eyes.
The smile was crooked, one side rising higher than another, and a dimple showed on that cheek.
The eyes were two round red gemstones, and the obsidian’s black surface had faint red marbling running through it that gave the entire thing the appearance of having shattered and been put back together with molten ruby.
Mysterious object simply appears at my feet, no sign of damage from wherever it fell, no sign of who tossed it here, and no sign of where it came from.
I don’t think the blood elflings are going to be throwing presents at my feet when most of them want me dead…
and if someone in the Party found this, they’d have gotten everyone’s attention so we could try to figure out what it was.
The part Vester found most eerie was that the mask appeared completely mundane—there was no mana radiating off it. If there was magic inside the mask, it was sealed so deeply that his mana sight couldn’t pick up a trace of it.
This is either some sort of elaborate trap or a gift from the gods… but Non has never given me anything without also giving me a Quest to earn it, which suggests trap. So, do I trigger the trap or just walk away from the creepy mask?
He stared at it for several moments longer while fighting the morbid urge to bend down and start poking it with his finger.
What was stranger was that the mask perfectly matched his suit’s current design, something he hadn’t overlooked.
He’d changed the coloring on a whim, and yet this strange item held the same shades of black and red?
Vester wasn’t nearly stupid enough to think that was a coincidence.
“Alright, what do I do with you?” he muttered at the thing while nudging it with Trickster’s Cane.
Before he could make any real decisions, the sound of an explosion echoed from the direction of the blood elfling camp.