Chapter 22: 23: Leaving the dungeon

*~+- PLEASE CHOOSE AN ABILITY -+~*

[1] Choice Remaining

[Daggers: 1] {Heartstrings}

When wielding a dagger: Allows you to sense where a monster’s heart is located.

[Adventuring: 2] {Flower Power}

Gain an implicit knowledge of low level botanical items.

[Gathering: 1] {Tunnel Rat}

You can move faster on your stomach.

Level five! Fresh’s eyes shine brightly as she jumps up to her feet, looking at her new menu. Her legs are weak and shaky, but her body feels surprisingly light right now. Something thuds just behind her and she looks back down, curiously. Her eyes vacantly stare at the stack of mushroom caps and goblin teeth at her feet. Glass slivers are embedded into the sides of some of them.

“Huh? Where did these come from…?” she stares at them curiously for a moment, as the mental cogs slowly turn in her head. “AH!” She rips the bag off of her back and looks at it, her eyes welling wet, as she sees the sight. The brand-new bag is entirely ruined. The material is sliced to shreds from the hailstorm of glass shards. The few slivers that managed to slide through, caught thankfully by the loot inside. Fresh looks up towards Jubilee, who is walking around in the distance by the dead boss, doing whatever it is that they’re doing. Fresh can’t really tell from here.

She looks back down to the ruined bag. This is her fault too. She wasn’t careful and because of that, her present is now broken after not even a few hours. Fresh starts to wonder if maybe she didn’t have any friends, because she’s just a bad person to have as a friend. With a sigh, she holds the empty, shredded fabric against her chest and looks back to the menu.

There’s a new combat skill at least, that seems neat. Though she isn’t sure she likes the idea of being able to see still-beating hearts. It feels a little squirmy and grim to her. The next one though… she looks at it, tilting her head. Implicit botanical knowledge? That could be just what she needs. Though, she scratches her cheek, do mushrooms count as ‘botanical’?

She isn’t sure.

Still, if she’s going to do this the way she has been envisioning, this is the clear choice. Unless she got into some kind of… weapons or armor crafting somehow, plants could be generally useful for everything, from cooking to potions to miscellaneous items. Heck, there might even be some weapons and armor that use plants. It’s a solid investment for her new future. Fresh nods and presses the button.

“I got your boss-drops. You ready to go back?” says a voice from just next to her, surprising her. Fresh jumps back with a yelp and looks down, quickly hiding the broken bag behind her back. Jubilee stands next to her and looks up at her with their arms at their hips. They tilt their head, beckoning with their fingers to her. “Give it here.”

Fresh smiles weakly. “G-give you what?”

“Give me the bag, goo-brain.”

Fresh winces and shuts her eyes, slowly holding her hands out before herself to put the ripped bag on full display. “I’m sorry!”

“Yeah, yeah. Lemme see that,” says Jubilee, yanking the bag out of her hands.

A light shines through Fresh’s closed eyelids and, her curiosity overpowering her fear of reprimand, she opens them carefully to take a peek at the source of the magical glow. Jubilee holds the bag in their hands, the material shining with a shimmering white-light, as the fabric strands pull themselves back together, like roots growing over a hole in the dirt. A second later, they hold the repaired bag back up to Fresh. “Be more careful next time.”

“Are you some kind of wizard?!” asks Fresh excitedly. “Teach me magic!”

“Do you have a slime for a brain? Mending is a tailoring skill,” explains Jubilee.

“You’re a tailor?” asks Fresh, looking at them curiously.

They sigh. “No, I just know a few things. Tailoring is my sub-class. I have to fix my clothes literally every day. Glass is sharp,” states Jubilee, waving her off and going to collect the pile of their loot back together.

“Thank you!” cries Fresh. She holds the bag up proudly into the air, before turning to help her companion pick up the loot and to pull out any shards of glass still stuck into the mushroom caps.

“Let me do it. You have one health-point. If you cut your finger, you’ll literally die.”

Fresh pulls back and listens, rubbing the back of her head. She wonders if she should tell Jubilee about her ability to respawn but… maybe she shouldn’t. Jubilee has been so worried about her and what if they think she’s just gone crazy and is talking nonsense? She doesn’t want to make more of a fool of herself.

It sounds stupid. But it sounds stupid enough that it’s reasonable. So, she looks around idly instead, waiting until Jubilee has finished cleaning up the loot. Looking down, she looks at the little pink thing tucked into the side of her companion’s belt. Fresh’s eyes light up and she lets out a high-pitched exhalation, as she sees the gifted-flower tucked in and hanging off to the side.

A small window appears.

Petunias are very resilient to extremely high temperatures, but quickly die in colder climates. A minimum of five hours of sunlight are generally needed for these flowers to flourish.

[Pink Petunia]'s are only found underground and require no sunlight. They only grow in areas with above average environmental SOUL and thrive in areas with a positive energy.

Petunias have a variety of uses from spirit and monster warding to potion brewing.

Is this from her new ability? Fresh’s eyes light up further as she sees it. This could actually be really useful! She beams brightly, finally she did something right! Fresh wobbles on the tips of her toes, excited to take another look at their mushroom-powder back at the guild. As she rises up to the tips of her toes once more, her legs give out and she thuds down onto her bottom, laughing meekly as Jubilee stares back at her with some annoyance at her childishness. Wanting to change the subject before she can be scolded, Fresh asks her next question. “So what kinds of crafting classes are there?”

Jubilee chucks a piece of glass off to the side and it clinks against some rocks. “There are like a million, but it depends. The two big categories are dry and wet.”

“Huh?” asks Fresh, lost.

“Non-magic and magic. It’s adventuring jargon.”

“Oh,” Fresh thinks for a second. “Huh?”

Jubilee groans and gets up, spinning their finger to motion for her to turn around. Fresh does so, scooting in a semi circle to turn her back to Jubilee, who begins loading the caps into the bag. “Dry-crafters use their hands and tools to make things. Magical-crafters, wet-crafters, use abilities to make things.”

“Is there a difference?” asks Fresh.

“Eh, it depends,” says Jubilee, shrugging. “Not everybody has enough soul-points to become a decent magical-crafter. So they either leave the field and do something else or they take the hard way and do everything by hand,” they explain. “Though, some snobby nobles prefer dry-crafters, because they feel the items are more… ‘authentic’. Whatever the fuck that means,” says Jubilee. Fresh nods, this makes sense. “Some dry-crafters charge a premium, because their items are handmade.”

“Oh,” says Fresh, thinking about it. That concept of authenticity is vaguely familiar to her, she was pretty sure that happened a lot in her old world too. Wait… soul-points? Her eyes go wide.

“Wait! So I can’t use magic to craft?!” she turns back to Jubilee who simply shrugs in response.

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“Hell if I know what the deal with your soul-points is.”

“How do we find out? You use magic, right?!” says Fresh, leaning in towards them.

Jubilee, pulling back a little to win some personal space, thinks for a second. “I guess you just need to learn a spell and to try using it. Either it’ll work or it won’t.” They pat Fresh’s bag, motioning for her to get up. Fresh purses her lips, taking in a deep breath and then pushes herself up back onto her shaking legs with great effort. It’s heavy. As she stands back upright, her world spins just a tiny bit and the girl holds her head, as the blood seems to leave it for a moment.

Jubilee grabs the rest of the loot. “Come on, we’ll take the shortcut. We’ll be back out in a minute.”

Taking a second to catch her breath, until her head feels more normal again, Fresh purses her lips and takes a step. The heavy bag digs into her raw, red shoulders again as they walk towards a large door. It looks much like the one they had entered this room through. As for her shoulders, she’s quietly thankful that they just hurt and that the pain isn’t taking her last health-point.

“Maybe I can give you an idea for a class. What kind of stuff do you like?” asks Jubilee.

Fresh thinks for a moment. What does she like? She isn’t actually too sure herself. Weapons are cool, but so is armor, but so are magical-items, but so are strange potions and concoctions. She thinks, placing a finger idly to her cheek as she does so. Magical-creatures are a neat idea too, maybe there’s some kind of… magical-creature trade? Or what about tailoring, like Jubilee? Fresh bets it would be fun to hang around all of the casters all day who would come to buy their wares. Or maybe something relating to the dungeon, like oddities and curios? She rubs her hair as they walk towards the door. Food is fun too, though she isn’t much of a cook. She bets it could be a nice life though, having a place that’s perhaps more ‘lively’ than the somber adventurer’s guild. The girl sighs.

“I like everything.”

Jubilee lets out a simple. “Huh?”

“It all seems so fun!” she says, sighing as they stand in front of the door.

“Huh…” repeats Jubilee, not expanding any further. They simply push the door open wide. Behind it is no further passage, rather a simple wall of the nebulous, blue fog. Without another word, Jubilee steps inside and vanishes. Fresh pulls the bag up higher one last time and steps through it herself.

A bright light blinds her as they step out of the dungeon. The noise of the bustling city, ready to settle down for the evening, comes to her ears. Fresh opens her eyes and looks around. They’re standing outside of the dungeon’s gate, in the center of the plaza.

“Heck of a shortcut,” she mutters to herself.

“Right?” says Jubilee, who Fresh forgot about for a second in her daze. “Come on, let’s get you out of here before a bee stings you to death.”

“Okay!” laughs Fresh, straining forward as she walks towards the adventurer’s guild.

“Where are you going, dumb-ass?”

Fresh stops, turning around with some effort to look back at Jubilee, somewhat confused. “…The guild?”

“Like hell you are, come on,” says Jubilee and rather than walking down the usual way, they turn right from the gate and walk towards the ring of run-down houses, lining the plaza. Without turning around, Jubilee waves back to her, motioning for her to follow. Fresh looks at them curiously, but opts to follow them to wherever it is they’re going. As she chases after the obscured figure, the girl can’t help but feel like maybe she isn’t really the party-leader just yet.

“Where are we going?”

“Here,” says Jubilee, pulling a key out of their pocket and unlocking the wooden door to the first ramshackle house, just outside of the gate. “I’m staying here.”

Fresh looks around herself at the plaza. “Are you rich?”

“Are you stupid?” snaps Jubilee back at her, not waiting for an answer before stepping inside. “This place is a dump.”

“If you can afford a house here, don’t you have the money to pay the guild?” asks Fresh curiously, as she looks back towards the dungeon. It was in pretty bad shape, but still. It is right outside of the dungeon. Surely it had to have cost something substantial?

“Okay, first off, it’s rude to ask people about their finances.”

Fresh gasps. “Sorry! I wasn’t thinking…” she admits, stepping inside and scratching her cheek.

Jubilee waves her off and walks towards the single wooden staircase that is in the back of the entirely empty downstairs room, nested against the wall. “Yeah, I know. It was… it was a group investment.”

“Oh,” says Fresh. That made sense to her. She closes the rickety wooden door behind herself and looks around the space. Thick dust-motes hover through the air, rising up from the rarely disturbed floor that is thickly coated in the stuff. The windows, while being actual, functional windows, are so old and dusty that they might as well have been the opaque ones from the guild. There’s nothing here, apart from the evening light that shines past the tattered, moth-worn curtains.

Fresh pinches her nose, suppressing a sneeze as she breathes in the thick dust and follows Jubilee up the staircase. If there had been other people here once, there’s certainly no sign of them now.

Jubilee looks down at her from above the staircase and mumbles “Welcome home…” before turning to walk away down a tiny, equally as dusty and depressing upstairs-corridor. Fresh looks their way, confused for a moment as she stands there on the stairs. But then a smile grows on her face and she hurries up to follow after her friend.

Razmatazz

Today was the finishing touch of some deeper worldbuilding. Next chapter will be some deeper Jubilee character development. Then 25 is the big day we get our class. Everything is coming along to plan nicely so far, it's been a ride for sure so thank you all kindly for reading so patiently! <3

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