Chapter 168: Chapter 154: Boredom

"Boring," complained Cluma, no more than two minutes later.

"What were you expecting? We're only on floor five."

"That was fast," said Michael as we emerged from the portal. "Did everything go okay?"

"Yeah. They couldn't do anything about Cluma's [Stealth], so it wasn't a challenge."

"But there were grey cobras in there. They're blind, so [Stealth] wouldn't have any effect."

"That's what enchantments are for!" exclaimed Cluma, hugging him from behind. She'd accepted my previous remonstration, disabling [Stealth] before going in for the hug, but given that she had moved behind him first, I wasn't convinced she'd grasped the spirit of my request even if she was following the letter.

"Stealth enhancement, silence, mana veil and odour suppression," I clarified. "She takes her stealthiness seriously."

"Oh, drat! I forgot to turn odour suppression back on!" she exclaimed, detaching. "I didn't need my nose for navigation in there, so I should have been using it."

I was rather worried we were taking things too leisurely here. The previous floor, I'd utterly ignored the enemies and let them commit suicide by splattering themselves on my armour. Now we'd casually wandered into a boss room without checking we were prepared. It might be a good idea to make some sort of checklist, before we became too complacent.

Leaving the pair of delving teams to continue their farming of steel ingots, we continued onto floor six, the first floor on which the snakes were venomous. There was also, for the first time this dungeon, multiple monster types on the floor. Venomous green cobras acting alone, and groups of lesser pythons. Neither posed a threat, but it still took three hours to reach the floor's exit. Apparently, no-one had crossed this floor since the last storm, and Cluma once more failed to find a scent to follow.

"This is boring," she complained. "Why don't dungeons let you start at a lower floor if you're obviously over-levelled for the upper ones?"

Good question. I'd suggest it to Erryn, but she wasn't exactly available to make further upgrades.

"Once we get to floor fifteen or twenty, I can leave a beacon in the boss's antechamber."

"Yes, but that doesn't save us from having to get to floor fifteen in the first place. It's like the great dungeon. We can jump to any floor even without you cheating, but only if we've both been there before."

"If you're bored, you can wait in Dawnhold the next couple of days, and I'll make my way further on my own. I can teleport you once I get to a more interesting floor."

"Thanks, but it's not that bad, just annoying."

By the time we reached the portal to floor seven, we mutually decided enough was enough, and that it was time to quit for the day.

"Want to come over to my place for dinner?"

"As much as I'd love Clana's cooking, shouldn't you ask her first?"

"I already did, this morning."

I'd expected her to want to return to Synklisi for another monster core, but I wasn't going to turn down a visit to my future in-laws, even if Camus still didn't like me. We returned to Cluma's home, where Clana put her third rank cooking skills to excellent use. And where not only was Camus being suspiciously friendly for some reason, but that I learnt that building a wall around the village would have been an insufficient precaution.

"I saw Grover in the canteen today," commented Clana. "Apparently he gave some new rune patterns to Lucy? He said to tell you he'll be interruptible any time tomorrow, if you want to drop in."

Cluma's head snapped up from her plate of kobold meat. "So that's why you were embarrassed this morning!"

"It's just some items mum sewed that she wants to get enchanted," I said, but I'd felt my ears flop over, so there was no way I was fooling her.

"Well, that's fine. I'll come with you tomorrow morning, to save having to spend so much time on the boring dungeon floors."

I opened my mouth, intending to protest, but my charisma stat was regretfully informing me that it could offer no way out of this. I closed my mouth again. On the bright side, this could be my opportunity to ask about extra arms for [Superimpose].

"You two are never going to grow up, are you?" complained Camus.

"Nope!" happily agreed Cluma.

"...I'd like to think I'm already grown up," I grumbled, only to elicit a snort of laughter from all three of the others. Meanies.

And so, the following morning, me and Cluma ended up at the institute, walking down the quiet corridors towards Grover's workshop.

"This is a lot easier without all the pitfalls and glue traps," commented Cluma.

"Huh? The what?"

"I came here to give Grover thank-you hugs for enchanting my birthday presents. It turned out he was really against surprise hugs. At least at first. It took a few attempts, but I think I've broken him in now."

I think I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that. Grover trapped the institute corridors in an attempt to keep Cluma out? And people complain that I'm immature?

I knocked on Grover's door and stepped into his workshop. He glanced up suspiciously.

"Are you alo..." he started, before the invisible Cluma pounced him. "Guess not," he added. "I really wish you'd stop doing that."

"Nu-uh!" exclaimed Cluma.

"Just be thankful she isn't trying to scent-mark you."

Cluma snapped into visibility. "What?! I... I would never! No-one does that!"

"That time you got drunk, you were rubbing yourself all over me."

Cluma blushed madly. "That's... I don't remember doing that! You're making it up!"

"Afraid not."

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Cluma glared sternly, hands on hips, tail swishing angrily behind her. "Stop talking about me, and hand over the clothes Lucy sent you to get enchanted. And don't you dare forget the panties!"

Dammit! I'd intended to 'accidentally' neglect them!

"I honestly have no idea if you two are friends or enemies," muttered Grover, taking the stuff off me. He inspected the dress carefully. "Looks good. I don't think I've ever used that enchantment before, but I can't deny it's interesting. Give me five minutes."

He pulled reagent after reagent out of his item bag, poking and prodding each item in turn, eliciting brief glows from the items of clothing.

I stood watching, when my attention was stolen by the door clicking open behind me. I turned to look at the visitor, only to see Kari staring at me, carrying a large box. Our eyes met, and the fake ears on her head immediately drooped. The tail hanging behind her likewise fell limp. Without saying a word, the door closed once more, rather more quickly than it had opened, and I heard pounding steps rapidly retreating down the corridor.

"So, you got Kari, then?" I laughed. She apparently wasn't taking it as well as I had. She hadn't even left the box behind, which I assumed she was supposed to have been delivering.

"Of course. I would advise you not to underestimate Adele."

"Adele is awesome," agreed Cluma. "But you two are too!"

"How'd you get the tail to work?"

"We used a series of them, with progressively increasing length and higher quality biological integration enchantments, waiting for her to adapt between each one."

Wow. That must have taken ages, and caused a lot of itching. They weren't kidding when they said running away would be worse for her.

"Oh? You want one for yourself?" giggled Cluma.

"Honestly, if it was real, I'd be tempted. I'm not going to go through all that effort just to get a fake, though."

Cluma looked away in mild disappointment, but there was a limit as to how much effort I was willing to put into it.

As promised, it only took Grover five minutes to work his way through the pile. I swiftly stored the incriminating evidence, then brought up the topic I was actually interested in.

"Something interesting I discovered with these enchanted ears is that I can use [Detach] on them. I have another skill called [Superimpose] that I was wondering about. It would be very interesting if it worked on artificial body parts."

"Oh? And what does that skill do?"

I explained the details, as best as I knew them. Having never used the skill to its full potential, I could hardly call myself an expert.

"So, you think that if you had several duplicate faux arms, each with a biological integration enchantment, you could implant one, use [Detach] on it, implant a second in the same place, then use [Superimpose]."

"Yup."

"And the only advantage over using your normal arms is the lack of need for healing? It's not as if rank four enchanters are in plentiful supply compared to rank four healers. I suppose you'd end up with three arms. Or four, if you wanted to remain balanced. That's an advantage in itself, but you fought hard enough against your extra ears. Wouldn't extra arms be worse?"

"I'll admit I haven't spent an extensive amount of time thinking this through. It was just an interesting idea I had. Besides, I don't remember fighting particularly hard against these ears."

"Well, given the difficulty adapting Kari to her new tail, I don't think it's feasible; it may not feel uncomfortable to her anymore, but she still has no conscious control over it. Not a problem for her tail, but a fatal flaw for an arm. If you want to remove your original arms, then maybe."

"No thanks."

"What about using [Detach] on an arm, slotting a fake in its place, then swapping them back?" asked Cluma.

"I'd need to use stage two of [Detach] to add the fake arm, and I can't reattach the original part after that."

"Can't you? But you use [Redistribute] all the time?"

I pondered. That was a good point. Using [Redistribute] effectively regrew my body from my detached part. It didn't normally matter, because the detached part and the bit I left behind after [Redistribute] completed would be identical, but in this case, they wouldn't be. Teleporting to my original arm would effectively replace the fake with the original.

"Why do these skills have to be so complicated?" I complained. "Right, so use stage two [Detach] on an arm, attach a fake to the resulting wound, use [Redistribute] to get my original arm back, then [Superimpose] to get the boost. Either [Redistribute] or [Superimpose] could fail, given that the original and its replacement would be completely different things, so I could end up with a lopped off arm. If we're going to try this, we need a healer on standby."

"Sounds interesting," commented Grover, sprouting a disturbing grin. "And since the artificial arm wouldn't even see real use, the design could be tweaked to favour whatever [Superimpose] looks for. Not that we know what that is, of course. Some experimentation will be required."

Suffering a sudden flashback to his failed attempt to bestow me a tail, I gave a slight shudder. Still, it would be worth it, if this worked. And at least this stupid experiment would be taking place on me, and not on Cluma.

"Right, so, when are we going to do this?"

"I'll measure you up now, and can bash out the arm tomorrow. It'll need to be mythril and mana reinforced steel, rather than orichalcum and adamantite, given how much material it'll need, but that'll be plenty good enough for an experiment. Why don't you call in the hospital and see when Raymond can make himself available?"

"Umm... Are you actually going to try it?" asked Cluma nervously. "We don't exactly have the best track record for this sort of thing. What if you end up hurt again?"

"Then I'll have to spend a few days in hospital waiting for my arm to regrow. I can't see anything going more badly wrong than that."

"Yes, but... the System. You know what it did to me."

That was a valid concern. Just because the experiment shouldn't fail in a way that cost me any more than an arm, didn't mean the System wasn't going to step in with some random effect and screw me over as badly as it had Cluma. Although, to be fair, she'd come out on top in the end. It had been scary at first, but now she had more mana and discounted spells. An unexpected taste for monster cores was a small price to pay for the perks.

Still, it wasn't like I'd be making biological changes to myself. I'd known that Cluma was adapting to denser mana long before the System kicked in. I'd had warning, if only I'd understood it. What I'd be doing here wasn't the same.

Of course, there was always the chance of a [Self-Destructive] evolution.

"I understand and accept the risks," I confirmed. "Now let's try to convince an actual healer to take part."

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