Chapter 229: Chapter 211: Echo

The following couple of days followed much the same pattern. Breakfast and hihi'irokane production in the morning, followed by lunch and a tail upgrade, then some time in the dungeon, and finally a dinner in which I pushed my runecrafting abilities to their limit.

ding
Skill [Advanced Cooking] advanced to level 3
Skill [Advanced Runecrafting] advanced to level 8

It was possible to inscribe a mana-battery into a grape, charge it, and have it remain stable enough for Cluma to pop it into her mouth. That was as small as I could go, though, and it did require something with a stiff rind or skin to work on. It was blatant skill abuse, but skill abuse was always good for levels. I'd hardly had this class for any time, yet my [Advanced Runecrafting] was already reaching for the regular level cap.

The hihi'irokane couldn't be drawn into flexible threads like orichalcum, so couldn't be used for permanent enchantments on clothing. Giving up on that possibility, with Adele's help, Grover improved the enchantment quality on any clothing we owned that had more than a basic durability and comfort combo. Perhaps it was unlikely to make much difference, but I wasn't the only one needing to train new skills; Grover needed to put his [Grandmaster Runecrafting] to use too.

Thankfully, that meant the pair of them had made me a few more items of clothing to boost my crafting skills. An apron that boosted etiquette, runecrafting and cooking, for use in the kitchen and occasionally bedroom. Overalls that had carpentry, masonry and farming, for outdoor use, and another set with smithing, runecrafting and alchemy. My enchanted underwear became dismantling, tailoring and—for no reason other than the rest of the skills were covered already—glasswork.

It also wasn't the only thing Adele had helped out with.

"Here's something new for you to try," said Grover on the morning of the third day, handing me an ear.

Costume Catkin Left Ear (Quality: 52)
- Enchantment: Durability (Quality: 84)
- Enchantment: Biological integration (Quality: 84)
- Enchantment: Irremovable (Quality: 84)
- Enchantment: Body affinity enhancement (Quality: 84)
- Enchantment: Spatial affinity enhancement (Quality: 84)

Umm... Where should I even start? "Congratulations on gaining a level?" I tried, going for a polite opening before following up with the real question. "But why?"

"Why what?"

"Why everything? It's missing the comfort enchantment, and why spatial affinity? And why one new ear at all?"

"We made two, obviously. We just want to try one to start with, while Jason is visiting, to make sure nothing unexpected happens. We have very little documentation of rank five skills, but from what has been teased out of the dragons, we should expect things to get interesting. And as for the enchantments, you don't need comfort with your new helmet, so why not free up the slot? I couldn't think of anything better than affinity enhancements for the spare slots, so why not try it and see what happens? Perhaps the combination of body and space will make it cheaper to [Detach] them."

I glanced at Cluma, who, as expected, was looking somewhat unhappy about the use of the word 'interesting'.

"This is safe, right?" she asked.

"We have Jason here, lass. A monster could smash through the door and chop his head off, and I'd give it a coin toss that he'd survive."

"He makes a good point," I said, shrugging and activating the first stage of [Detach] to remove my irremovable ear. "Best to try this with a rank four healer standing by and a single ear."

Besides, he'd already enchanted a bunch of other stuff, and there had been no signs of other rank five enchantments getting interesting. They were just incremental improvements over the lower rank versions. Why would this be any different? I activated the second and third stage to cut my link to it completely.

What if I'd used the second stage, then manually reattached it? Wouldn't it be connected normally and via [Detach] simultaneously? Maybe I'd try that with my other ear, once this was...

My thought was interrupted by the Itch.

"Argg!" I screamed, desperately scratching at the ear that was no longer there. They hadn't even added the new one yet!

"Huh?! What's wrong?!" exclaimed Cluma.

"The opposite of when it was added, I assume!" I squeezed out through gritted teeth, thankful that I'd been sitting down so that the dwarfish Grover could reach. "You should probably add the new one before it stops. I expect it'll be worse if we wait."

Through [Mana Sight], I could see the mana in my head circulating turbulently around the top-left of my head, unlike the right-hand side, where it was running neatly through the ear. I watched in fascination as Grover placed the new one and my mana circulation hiccuped, redirecting itself through the new fake body-part. It took only a few seconds for the turbulent flow to straighten itself back out, and the itch died away with it.

"Huh. Maybe that itch is more closely related to what happened when I tried boosting people's mana regeneration than I thought," I commented. I'd previously assumed it came from the System rewriting my brain to make space for the new sensations, but it wasn't as if any of my sensory skills had itched.

"Feeling better lad? You certainly sound it."

"Much. It feels... about the same as before. Nothing 'interesting' as far as I can see."

My mana was circulating more cleanly than before, to the extent that through [Mana Sight] alone, I could barely tell it was artificial. [Soul Perception] didn't show anything abnormal, though, and I certainly couldn't hear through it. I gave it an experimental poke, feeling it twitch in response, but that was nothing the old one didn't do. Perhaps I'd felt the touch a bit more clearly, but that was all.

"I got my [Grandmaster Runecrafting] level from making it. It's a rank five skill. I can't imagine I levelled it for no reason, lad."

So that must be why he was expecting something from this one, but not his earlier creations. I still wasn't convinced. The rank five skills used by the dragons all had utterly ridiculous names, like [Athena's Insight] and [Hecate's Power]. Grover's [Grandmaster Runecrafting] was boring by comparison.

"Well, I dunno what else to say. Anything look odd about it to you, Cluma?"

"..."

"Cluma?" I asked, looking around and not seeing her.

"Boo!" she shouted, snapping into sudden visibility right in front of my face.

"Eep!"

"Thought so," she continued, as if she hadn't just scared me half to death. "The new one started moving a fraction of a second sooner than the old."

"Yes, it's certainly more responsive, but again, that's just a small incremental improvement. I was expecting... more," said Grover.

"Can't we all just be thankful that we didn't need the services of Jason? Except maybe to cure my heart attack... Especially since all the hihi'irokane we made earlier means that his healing wouldn't have worked at full effectiveness."

"I suppose. It would just have been nice if you could hear through it or something. Well, we might as well swap the other one out, too."

"Let me run [Diagnosis] first," interrupted Jason. "Just in case there's something we can't see."

"Go ahead. Sounds sensible."

"And done. You're fine," he declared after casting his spell, but I didn't miss the slight frown.

"Really? Then what was that grimace for?"

"It's not you... It's just that your affinities reminded me of someone else I know. You don't get... night terrors, for want of a better description, do you?"

"Huh? No. Not at all."

"Good. You don't have the same status condition either. What about when you were younger?"

"No?"

Oddly enough, he looked a little disappointed at that. There was someone out there with affinities similar to mine, with some weird status condition that gave them night terrors? Someone younger than me, and he was hoping they'd grow out of them? Was it another reincarnate? Heck, was it Daniel?

"Uh, who are you talking about, if you don't mind me asking?"

"My daughter," he replied with a slight smile.

Not Daniel then... Not a reincarnate at all; I'd learnt my lesson about trying to fool parents. Well, everyone was prepared to believe my affinities were the result of a unique trait, so someone else having impossible affinities wasn't much of a stretch.

Diversion over, I let Grover swap out my other ear for the upgraded model, because why not? Then we returned home briefly before jumping to floor twenty of the dungeon.

Eighteen and nineteen had been much like seventeen. The floor eighteen monsters were simply longer versions of floor seventeen, but on nineteen they'd learnt a new trick. The spatial distortion they used to pack themselves into a two-dimensional skin extended very slightly from their surface. Only a millimetre or two, but the effect was that the millimetre around them was spatially expanded by three or four orders of magnitude.

Cluma could swing her dagger at them and it simply wouldn't reach. I stabbed with my sword-staff, the head and shaft vanishing into the compressed space. A swing with it was really weird, the head contracting down as it impacted the region of compressed space. Despite a substantial part of the length starting out on the other side of the monster, it simply didn't make it.

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I was able to kill one by zapping it with lightning from point-blank range. Cluma managed to kill one by imbuing an arrow with [Assassinate], but it drained over half her stamina. She was right about needing a ranged weapon upgrade, but I wasn't sure what sort of form it could take. Arrows were, to some extent, disposable. We could enchant them all as heavily as our melee weapons, and perhaps Grover's durability would be sufficient to keep them reusable. Maybe with metal shafts, too. But I couldn't see us being able to retrieve every arrow. We could enchant a bow, but an enchantment like sharpness wouldn't transfer to the arrows.

While she had a lightning glove of her own, her control was nowhere near sufficient to use it in combat situations.

For now, it didn't matter too much, but when the time came to solo this dungeon, the lack of an effective ranged weapon would be a serious handicap. This must be a problem faced by other delvers; I'd seen plenty of them using bows. I'd just have to ask what they did. Maybe there was a special class of enchantments for ranged weapons that did transfer some effects to the ammunition. There were none granted to me by [Advanced Runecrafting], but perhaps there were some at higher ranks.

"So, what new quirk do the monsters have on this floor?" she asked.

"Same as yesterday, except as well as targeting themselves, they can target us."

"Huh?"

"Basically, as well as the slow mana blasts they normally shoot, they also fire beams that will shrink you if you get hit."

"What? Forever? And what if it hits my head? Would I end up with a tiny head and normal sized body?"

"Not forever; it wears off after ten to twenty seconds. And it's 'safe', in that if the beams hit you, you'll shrink uniformly. Of course, it's not safe in that there's a monster willing to take advantage of your predicament to kill you. Oh, but if the boss hits you, it'll last a full minute, so watch out."

Cluma tilted her head, tail swaying behind her. "Is it bad that I kinda want to get hit by one to see what happens?"

"A little. Yes. If you want to play with that sort of effect, do it with a caster that isn't trying to kill us."

Darren had spatial affinity. Maybe he could learn to replicate whatever they did?

"What, you aren't interested yourself?"

"..."

"See!"

"Just because I'm interested doesn't mean I'm going to do it!"

"Maybe once we've had some experience on this floor, and know how they're going to react, and you think we can do it safely?"

We made our way through the floor, cleanly killing the monsters and harvesting their cores. A quick test proved that I could still make them explode, which was a nice safety net, but nevertheless, I still resisted the urge to let them shrink me. Thankfully, so did Cluma.

As usual for this group of five floors, we didn't even look at the boss, detonating it from a safe distance instead, and then cringing at the brief waterfall of blood.

"What's in the chest?" asked Cluma as we made our way back out to the boss room's former ceiling.

"Dunno. The maps didn't say, so it must be something standard."

"Huh? Isn't it... bigger than normal?"

"Yeah. It certainly is..."

It turned out to contain no money, but twenty ingots of copper, ten of iron, five of steel and three gemstones.

"Huh," went Cluma. "I always thought it was odd that we never found any iron or copper."

"I thought iron came from stripping armour off low-level monsters, and copper from non-boss chests."

"How long have we spent in dungeons, and how many non-boss chests have we come across?"

"Copper isn't actually cheaper than steel, you know. Iron is, though. Not that iron and steel are different things; you can forge steel from iron just like adamantite from steel. It just needs more work than pumping it full of mana."

Assuming the System didn't cheat, and dungeon 'steel' was something unproduceable by human or dwarven hands.

"Yes, you've mentioned that before. Repeatedly."

"Have I? Sorry. I lose track of which random facts I've already come out with."

And yet I could remember the descriptions of the Earth diplomatic squad. Maybe my intelligence stat had been lower the last time I mentioned it?

"Anyway, back home?"

"Yup. The next floors are similar to the first five, except that the invisible portals move. Shouldn't be a problem, given that we can both sense them. Also, the monsters use illusions."

"Illusions?"

"Kinda. It's actually spatial gunk again, but the effect is the same. You'll see tomorrow."

"Oh, so like what the dungeon was doing on this floor, but the monsters do it?"

"More or less."

"It'll be the deepest we've ever been in a dungeon. And we haven't struggled at all, aside from that once on floor sixteen."

"True, but it'll be harder when I can't explode the bosses. Anyway, home!"

Another teleport, an enchanted pumpkin and bed, with bonus hugs inserted between each step, and the day was over.

I woke up the next morning, got dressed and made my way downstairs, feeling a little disorientated, as if the room wasn't quite staying still. I'd suspect I was coming down with the flu, if the flu was a thing here. Hopefully, it wasn't something spread from Earth.

"Morning," called Cluma, her voice slightly echoey.

"Already invisible?" I asked, before I reached the dining room and saw her sitting at the table.

"No?" she confirmed, tilting her head in confusion, but her voice still having a slight echo.

"Your voice sounds weird," I commented, before realising it wasn't just her voice. "So does mine."

"No it doesn't. You sound fine."

I paused and listened to the ambient sounds of Dawnhold. There was always a background of grumbling delvers at this time of morning, not to mention the birdsong. All of it sounded wrong.

"I think there's something wrong with me," I hazarded, taking a step forward, only to find the room swimming.

"Peter?!" exclaimed Cluma, vanishing from her seat and catching me as I fell. Yay for [Shadow Strike]. "What's wrong? I'll get you to the hospital."

What was wrong? Loss of balance and hearing irregularities pointed at my ears, and as coincidence would have it, I had indeed been messing around with my ears yesterday. Just, it was my fake ones, not my real ones. They weren't actually functional!

Or, more accurately, they hadn't been. A scan with [Soul Perception] revealed that my soul now had a pair of bumps atop its head, starting to grow into the space of my new ears. Things had apparently got interesting after all.

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