Chapter 20: 21

[New Floor: 5]

Fresh leans back against the wall. It’s been about ten minutes since her heart-to-heart with Jubilee. Her bag is entirely full, stacked full of mushroom-caps and snail-shells and more goblin-teeth than she is comfortable thinking about. The goblins were becoming more common now after the fifth floor, the little mushroom-creatures from the top, slowly waning in their numbers.

Fresh pants, gasping for air, a torrent of sweat drips from her face and stings her eyes as she leans against a wall, entirely winded. Her legs shake beneath her.

The girl drops down, reaching her limit. She had hoped this new level-up would give her some more strength, but it doesn’t seem to have been the case. She sighs, realizing that her maximum health is also only going up by a single point each time she levels. Is that normal? She doesn’t think so. Jubilee has a lot more health than she does and Jubilee is a caster of some kind. Fresh groans. Wiping the sweat out of her brow, she accidentally hits the bottom of a low hanging torch and it flies off of the wall, falling down to the ground next to her and rolling away with a loud clanking, as she pulls away from it in shock.

Nervously, she looks around herself, hoping Jubilee didn’t see her latest blunder. Why is she like this? She was never this clumsy or brainless in her old life. Is it because of her stats? That makes sense to her and she takes a deep breath in defeat, before bending back down to pick up the bag and to very slowly and arduously, continue on her way, her legs shaking from the exertion. But she’s not going to quit.

Fresh smiles as she rises back up to her shaking feet and aching legs. Her steps forward are a little quicker, but not much less strained than they were when they had been here the last time. Still, she smiles as sweat and grime drip down her lips and she goes down the next staircase.

[New Floor: 6]

A series of screams is cut short in an instant.

[ You got {19/22} Experience ! ] (Party)

You got [22/22Experience] ! (Party)

[Level up! You are now LEVEL 4 ! ]

{No-class} {Cooking: 1}{Crafting 2}{Gathering 1}{Adventuring 1}

STATUS: ???

OBOLS: 01

[INVENTORY]

“Huh?” Standing on the stairs, Fresh looks at the abilities window. There’s that weird ability again from a little while ago. It’s the only one listed.

But… well, something is clearly wrong with it. Fresh looks at the janky looking menu. It seems distorted and wrong, as if it were breaking apart at the seams. Idly, not thinking, she just taps it, trying to ‘fix it’ like she would have done by tapping a defective computer screen or television.

“AH!”

The window pops away, her ability having been chosen. Fresh stands there, wondering what she just did. Did she choose that weird looking ability? Quickly she looks down towards Jubilee, to see if they saw her mess up yet again. It doesn’t look like it. Taking in a deep breath of relief, she goes down the last steps on wobbling legs.

[ You got {3/35} Experience ! ] (Party)

[ You got {6/35} Experience ! ] (Party)

[ You got {9/35} Experience ! ] (Party)

Fresh pants, holding her hand against the wall, looking at her party-member. “Jubilee, I’m tired…”

The small figure, standing amidst a grisly display of five headless goblins, laying in a circle around them, speaks. “What level are you?”

“Fooour~” sighs Fresh with a long exhale.

“Then tough it out, goo-brain,” says Jubilee, rolling their eyes. “I don’t want to have to come back here twice because you need to take a potty-break,” they say, leaning forward with a rather annoyed posture. “Besides, there’s a boss just ahead. So we’re almost done.”

“Okaaay, but I can’t carry anything else,” says Fresh, tilting her head forward, her legs buckling under the weight of the bag as she flops down onto her bottom again, down onto the lowest stoop of the stone staircase.

“Huh? What kind of attitude is that?” asks Jubilee. “I’m the one doing all the work here.” Jubilee snaps their thumb, sending out a new pinch of dirt that they had held. Five tiny glass-poles shoot out of the bloodied ground and five severed goblin heads fly towards Fresh. Their black, beady eyes almost fixated on her as they land at her feet.

“IAAAH-!” screams Fresh as she scrambles backwards, crawling up the stairs, as the heads land down before her. Though she doesn’t get far and she ends up pressing herself into the backpack.

“See? You have plenty of energy, cry-baby! Get the teeth, they’re worth an Obol each,” barks Jubilee, walking down towards the next staircase.

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“Okay…” relents Fresh, trying not to cry as she looks at the pleading faces staring back up at her. Once Jubilee is out of earshot, she does take a moment to sniffle and wipe her eyes however; before setting to the grisly work before her, apologizing profusely to the dead goblins the entire time, as she cracks their teeth noisily free from their skulls with just her hands and a small rock laying nearby. Despite her shakiness, her hands seem to become pretty stable in the exact moment that she sets to her task. These goblins are different from the ones above. These are larger, the tone of their skin a little more blueish, than green. Is that why they were worth three experience-points each?

Found: [GOBLIN CANINE TEETH (small)] ! x20

It’s rather macabre, but as she works, Fresh marvels that the goblins didn’t seem to have a single cavity between any of them.

“The dungeon must have a great dental plan,” she jokes to herself, trying to lighten the mood. Fresh packs the teeth into her bag, eternally thankful that they aren’t much larger than a human tooth and didn’t weigh much at all. Looking at them, she thinks.

Goblin teeth are far more efficient to collect than the mushroom-caps. Mushroom-caps are cumbersome and large and only worth five each. But even if one goblin is ‘only’ worth four, if you get all the teeth, you could just put them in your pocket because they weighed next to nothing.

[ You got {12/35} Experience ! ] (Party)

[ You got {15/35} Experience ! ] (Party)

[ You got {18/35} Experience ! ] (Party)

Fresh does her best to stay chipper as she rises up again, just one more level and she can choose a class. Pushing herself up onto the tips of her toes, she raises her arms up and stretches her lower back. She stretches her body out, rising up to the tips of her toes, in order to test her new flexibility. “Iah!” Something pops in her back and she buckles forward, her hand shooting out to grab the aching spot on her spine, beneath the heavy bag. Like an old witch, she stands there, hunched over.

“Ow…” groans Fresh quietly to herself, rubbing her sore spot, not sure what she’s crying about specifically anymore, since there are so many things on the list now. The girl bends back upright and tugs on the straps of the heavy bag, wrapped around her bare shoulders. The skin there is already red and rubbed open in places, bleeding just a tiny bit here and there. It stings as it touches the tender spots. Fresh grits her teeth, presses her eyes tightly shut and grunts one last time, loudly, exerting herself with all the energy she has left, as she lifts the bag up higher and walks through the room and down the next staircase.

Fresh pushes further, it hurts. Her legs hurt. She takes a step down. Her shoulders hurt. She takes a step down. Her back hurts. She takes a step down. She’s tired. She takes a step down. She’s hungry. Gritting her teeth tighter, she takes a step down and reaches the bottom. The reward for her efforts; three new goblin heads lay there, neatly arranged as if by hand, waiting for her, looking up towards her as if to welcome her. The girl feels her lips quiver again.

[New Floor: 7] {Lucky number}

“Hey! Are you coming or not?” calls a voice from the distance, down the next staircase.

“I’m coming, I just need to take these teeth out first!” She sighs. Getting ready to set the bag down again.

“I already did, come here! I’m waiting on you.”

“Huh…?” Fresh looks down at the goblin heads. They’re all missing their canine teeth. She has been saved once again. Her debt is slowly becoming unmanageable, she realizes, laughing to herself as she struggles further across the room. The dungeon rooms are slowly shifting in their designs, the deeper they go. The compacted dirt and roots above, which made up the rooms, becomes less and less present the deeper they go. Rather, the brickwork, laid some ancient eons ago, becomes more dense and coherent the further they push. The dungeon is becoming less of a cave and more of an actual dungeon, the floors are slowly becoming larger as well, each time. Fresh only notices that last detail because of her sorely aching feet, as she finally makes it to the other staircase.

Jubilee stands at the bottom, near the edge of the staircase, leading to a small landing and a large, wooden door that is covered in ornately ghastly decorations.

[New Floor: 8] {Bossman}

Razmatazz

Boss fight tomorrow. The dungeon mini-arc will be over in chapter 23. Then we can finally get our class at around chapter 25! <3

Thank you kindly for reading!

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