Soulforged Dungeoneer

We got a lot of little things done before going to bed. I told Harry about the message from the Fairy Queen, and he told me never to try that again, to which I replied "Yeah duh." I had him pass a message to Kamau asking him to relay a simple yes/no permission from Herman. I... wasn't entirely sure that Harry or Kamau would understand the question, but Herman doubtless would, unless the game of Telephone in between screwed up the phrasing.

Then, to get my mind off of things, Louise and I went back to the Meditation Room and saw the big waterfall, the urban scene, and the sky diving scene, but I didn't partake in that one because after standing on the edge of a skyscraper suddenly I got vertigo, which didn't pass as quickly as it should, probably due to the mental bruise. She enjoyed it, though, her white silk dress flapping in the wind as she spread-eagled in the wind, and she screamed and laughed and played until she had her fill.

Dinner from the tavern was a sub sandwich for me and about a third of a deep dish Hawaiian pizza for Louise. She decided to bring out Cassie, who seemed no worse for having spent the day in an inventory--after having being insulted when I gave her away, I was scared she would be needy, but I guess whatever intelligence there was behind the little phoenix was still aware of her status as an item. I was a little nervous to take back in my inventory, since her manifesting was a part of my "magic", but Louise was fine with it, and Cassie was too.

Louise offered the phoenix some pizza, and she enjoyed every bit of it, and proved that by perching pleasantly on top of Louise's head and playing a little background music. I... honestly don't know where the bird got her collection of music, but she whistled along with a synthesized version of Flight of the Valkyries as though it was a favorite of hers.

I was a little surprised when the answer back from Kamau was a complicated 'No':

"I am happy to hear that you were successful. Something Herman told me before implies that Faeries eat one another if they come into contact, and so I would not recommend that your Fairy meet with Herman or any other. You know how humans react when he is present; I suspect your new friend would not fare quite so well."

The upside to this was that apparently Harry passed him my contact card, because Kamau messaged me directly. I wasn't sure I wanted to--or really had any reason to--try to contact the other Administrator quite yet, but I did send him a message back (adding a note that it was low priority) asking if Herman could relay either the Signature of the Administrator, Xarswitz or whatever, or tell us where he found it when he was examining me, because Merry wasn't having any luck.

And then Louise and I went to bed. It was restful, and nice.

In the morning, Merry and I went out into the open area of the Town to practice Telekinesis. It... didn't feel like it used to, in part because my head was still just a bit off, but more because my whole system now worked a little different, what with Merry being a part of it.

The first order of business was her observing what I normally did, which was difficult what with the pain and the things being different, but after maybe half an hour's work I was able to ride that knife edge again, engaging the skill without activating it. Merry studied it, finally admitting that the slot she'd noticed had something do with both me getting answers out of the skill, and me using the skill while it was "off"--so, basically, yes, it was supposed to be there--or else I broke it in a way that was very useful, either-or.

Importantly, though, as soon as Merry understood what I was doing, she could replicate it instantly. Although I didn't have anything really to practice fighting in town, once Merry held the door open for me, I really felt like I was free to my weight around (well, as well as others') with the skill much more than I had been.

After a little bit of that, we tried engaging my Stealth skill, which was the second-highest magic-ish skill I had. Merry studied me as I used it, and then came back to talk to me. I'm starting to see a pattern. There isn't a slot like your big skill had, but uh, there's a line where that slot would be. I bet I could crack it open.

We considered the pros and cons of messing with it--the big "con" being that if we messed it up I might have difficulty with a major part of my survival toolkit, although that skill didn't really help me keep Louise safe and so was less useful lately. Instead of jumping on it, we tried a number of other minor skills before we decided to spend some real time diving into the elephant in the room: my Class itself, and its abilities that didn't seem to be skills.

Merry studied things as I materialized things and undid them, which still gave me a little bit of a headache. She studied the mechanisms behind the mental "quickbar" that I could easily manifest plus the ones that I had to dig deep to find. She watched me moving things from item to item. And then she shrugged. Eh. It's kind of complicated. I don't want to mess with it.

That was a little bit of a letdown, after possibly boosting my favorite skill, but she replied in a defensive tone. Hey, look, man, I'm like, two days old here. I'm not even doing much with the other thing, honestly. Like, I'm putting your hand in a spot you can't see that's difficult for you to reach; that's about it. If I mess with your other skill it will literally just be prying open that vent thing. This is... complicated. She visualized, for me, a mess of glowing lines and webs and belts and gears that were shifting things into and out of places and exchanging parts that fit in slots and sometimes they had to change the slots in the things to make the parts fit. It was... Complicated. Like I said.

So it made sense that while we might get to that eventually, it wasn't a thing to play with now. Instead, after playing with that for a little bit, and then trying one more time to get Skill Sage to do something useful, I took a brief nap, sent a message to Mel and them, and we ducked back into the Dungeon.

The next biome was a little odd, all things considered. The area had the aesthetic of being inside the tower, but only just; it looked like an open grassy field was painted onto the floor and walls, and a blue sky was painted on the ceiling, and there was a thing hanging from the ceiling on the other end which was the only other feature of note, aside (of course) from the monsters.

The monsters were the kind of peculiar we had come to expect, in that I wasn't expecting it and was immediately confused by what I saw. There were a bunch of humanoids wandering around the level, dressed in denim overalls over some kind of semi-professional suit that had been ripped to shreds by the fact that they were all steroid-bodied monsters twice the size of what their clothes were meant to handle. They were universally barefoot, and most had either a straw hat, a little pair of glasses on their faces, or both. Virtually all of them were wandering around, reading books that seemed entirely too small in their hands, and some had rakes, shovels, hoes, or other farm implements strapped to their backs. The system name for them was "Agrarian Barbarian Librarian."

I watched Louise's face light up. "I love them!" she said, starting to move towards the closest but hesitating, as she realized that this was still the Dungeon, and they were still monsters.

"Just don't get killed," was all I could reply, taking the lead. The nearest Librarian didn't look up until we got close, and to my amazement, glanced at me and nodded, once, without seeming at all provoked. When Louise stepped forward, though, the creature instantly turned on her, a shocked look on its (his?) face.

"YOU NO READ BOOKS!" he snapped at full volume. "BOOKS BRING JOY! NOT-READER IS BAD PEOPLE! CRUSH!" To my chagrin, several nearby monsters immediately became violent at the sound of the call, though I could tell it wasn't the entire floor, which was good.

As usual, the fight that followed was... weird. Barbarian Librarians were tough, fast, and very occasionally magical, but not remotely smart. Mostly, they just tried to beat you with books, by which I mean actually swinging books at you, not like... trying to beat you with booksmarts or knowledge or anything metaphorical. You know what I mean.

But sometimes one would grab a book in two hands, one grasping each of the covers, and snap it full open in our direction, and an apparently random magical effect would shoot out. "Random" was kind of a keyword there, because they ran an amazing gamut--sometimes small elemental darts, sometimes scary beam weapons, though those had to charge and there was an unnerving electric hum and visual swirl as they did.

Materializing my weapons still gave me a headache, but fortunately, there was no real feedback from hitting with them, blocking with them, and so on. I took out the first Librarian by sweeping his legs with the Executioner, then jumping on top of him and stabbing him repeatedly. In that amount of time, two of the nearby monsters were close enough to threaten Louise, but when I instinctively added Telekinesis to a swing to knock one away, it made my headache momentarily much worse. It was... still workable, I guess. It was less of the holy-shit-my-brain-is-breaking feeling I'd had when Merry moved in and much more of a dungeoneer-body-is-grouchy pain, though I didn't notice any numbers dropping as a result. It didn't feel like things were going to break, but... it was the kind of hurt you wanted to rest to alleviate.

Pity I couldn't, yet.

To my chagrin, the headache distracted me enough for Louise to take a couple good hits from the other guy, which I repaid him for with a chop to his throat at an upward angle, once again adding extra force to the blow with telekinesis, at the cost of another wave of hurt. I... I wasn't really becoming immune to it or anything, you know? But once I knew it was coming, it was less of a shock, less confusing. I dedicated a lot less time to freaking out about the mere fact that I was hurting, and tried to tell if it was worse than the last one.

It wasn't, or not much. That meant I could continue. If it got worse... that was Bad.

Merry was quiet while I fought, but it wasn't as though I could forget she was there. The experience of living was different while she was in my head. I felt... full, but some of that fullness wasn't me. It didn't matter to the fight, it wasn't something I thought about or had to deal with, but it was hard not to notice the change.

I took out the four total librarians that had woken up when Louise got close, and then we paused. Louise asked how I was, I asked how she was, we both agreed we could keep going. Merry asked some technical questions about how I was coordinating telekinesis, in a way that is difficult to put into words, and I responded as best I could, by which I mean I'm not sure she understood my answers at all.

Okay, well, look, at some point I wanna see if I can use it on my own. 'Cos no insult to you, but uh, I feel like I could do a bunch with it.

I felt like that was a little bit of a leap from her not even understanding what I was doing, but if Faeries really were just that closely tied with magic, maybe she would do fine. In either case, that was the kind of thing to experiment with under better circumstances, an opinion she readily agreed with.

Louise and I fought our way across the map, encountering the first of those random-spell librarians. They really did have random spells--this one shot out what was effectively an energy beam, except the energy was copper. Not "copper colored"--the metal. It didn't even go away when the spell ended; there was simply a three-inch-thick copper pole that stretched about eight feet long (he missed, by the way, so I guess that's as long as it was going to get) and was apparently... actually just a bunch of much thinner rods smooshed together. I...

I looked at Louise. "This isn't normal, right? Even for a Dungeon?"

She looked back at me blankly, as though asking if I had somehow gotten the impression that she was supposed to be an expert. I looked back, equally confused. Yes, dungeons produced loot, but I was pretty sure I'd have heard of dungeons where the monsters just spit out raw metal.

When the next time I encountered that ability it was different, then it started making more sense. "Random" was the great equalizer of the Dungeon. If you were guaranteed to get something, it was awful; if it could be anything, well, sometimes you got lucky. A beam of metal one day; a spray of seltzer water the next. Who knows but that it might occasionally spit out something terrifying; I had no intention of grinding the level to find out, especially not in my current state.

Anyway, my inventory was grudgingly willing to accept several hundred dollars worth of pure copper, and we continued on. I noticed as we continued that the incoming experience, and I swear I'm not making this up, made my headache better. It really shouldn't have; it didn't heal wounds or do anything like that. This used it up, and it also increased my stats, as it did when I fed experience to my damaged mind.

I'm seeing what you're seeing, agreed Merry as soon as I brought it up. It's, uh, it's kind of a fog, like the stuff you, uh, well I kind of remember back then anyway, you gave some to me? And it's good. But it's, uh, right now it's kind of collecting around broken stuff. Like, making the system work again, I guess? It's kind of... becoming stuff.

Although Merry offered a mental picture that was something like putting glue on something broken, it was flavored by her own obvious confusion. As in, from her perspective the energy was making something from nothing, which sounded to me like the definition of magic, but it still confused her.

The takeaway was just that fighting and experience was evidently needed. I could, in theory, spend what was left in my pool... but that felt somehow like rushing, and honestly, after having spent so much experience during the whole crystal absorption process, I was a little grouchy that it still wanted more. So... I decided not to, not yet at least.

We got to the end of the first level with no serious injuries, and I started feeling confident that I'd be in fighting form by the time we got to the boss. Merry didn't correct me on that, but then, neither of us knew exactly what was coming, except that... well, it was a Dungeon. It was going to be weird, and stupid, and deadly in some asinine way that would make me feel dumb, and Louise just might be delighted by it even as we had to deal with the consequences.

For all that I thought I was prepared, when I got close to the hanging thing at the end of the floor, I was not expecting the next reversal to be here, and now. But when I got close, looking for a secret way up, suddenly the gravity flip-flopped, and Louise and I tumbled towards the underside of the platform, where a dark spot I'd noticed turned out to be the exit itself.

"That was kind of neat," offered Louise with an almost infectious optimism, as we stood up and looked up at the floor we'd just left. "I wonder what she's going to do with the next floor?"

I watched a Librarian wander around the "ceiling" and considered all of the possible ways the next few floors could get annoying, but just shook my head. "We'll see."