Chapter 54: 55: Maybe

“You’re up early,” says Jubilee, coming down the stairs.

Standing behind the counter, Fresh looks over at her friend with tired, but fulfilled, eyes. She had spent all night down in the dungeon. It was tricky work for her, with her low health and stats. But the cursed-dagger really did its job. Together with a few jinxes to steal some luck from Mr. Mushroom, she managed to beat him. It was a real scuffle and she had to fight dirty. Plus it wasn’t worth much exp at all. But she needed to get as much as she could and more importantly, she needed to find ways to protect this new life of hers.

The curse modification had gone surprisingly well, she wishes she had thought of reading about curses earlier, to maybe have done something about the necklace. But in truth, she sort of half-forgot it because of all the chaos. The new dagger is floating in her inventory now, as much as she dislikes opening it. If she ever finds the necklace, she’s going to throw it in there too and leave it there forever. She hates it, but she can’t let such a useful tool like her inventory be wasted, just because of some abstract fear of the dark hole.

A small, heavy dagger made out of a single piece of solid, dense bone. The sharp edge of the blade seems to glint with an unusually dark luster.

Melee: +3 DMG

Element: +1 DARK DMG

Curse of Gnawed Bones

Constantly drains the user’s SOUL while held. As long as the user has SOUL, the following effects are active.

- *2 DMG against enemies with bones

- All PHYSICAL damage is converted to DARK damage

Warning: If wielded while under 0 SOUL, this item will drink the marrow from your bones.

Weight: 1.1kg

Durability: 20/20

Value: ???

“I couldn’t sleep,” she explains, only telling half of a lie.

Jubilee looks across the room towards the new shutters, walking over to inspect them. “These are pretty good,” they say, nodding to her. “Not bad for someone who isn’t even a carpenter.”

Fresh scoots her bag to the side with her boot, pushing it beneath the counter. “Thanks! I wanted to do something, so I figured I’d keep working. Ah…” she thinks. “I hope you don’t mind that I’m doing stuff to your house.”

Jubilee swings open the shutters and closes them a few times to test them and nods, seemingly satisfied, before looking back towards her. “It’s our party-space. You live here too.”

The tired girl beams. “You’re such a nice person, Jubilee.” Jubilee’s eye twitches, but they don’t say anything. “I had an idea last night,” says Fresh, slapping the iron-key of the adventurer’s guild onto the counter. “We should move all of our -” she looks around the empty room. “- ‘secret stuff’ into the adventurer’s guild. If people are snooping around here.”

Jubilee walks towards her, shrugging. “It’s not like I haven’t thought about it, but have you thought about what that means? Logistically?”

Fresh tilts her head. “Huh?”

“The potions? The armor we need to repair? The weapons? All of it,” says Jubilee. “We’d need to take it in here during the day, then transport it to the guild after closing, do all the work there and then transport it back here each and every night.” Jubilee shakes their head. “There aren’t enough hours in the day. We’ll just have to be careful, especially since the church is watching us.” Jubilee sighs. “Maybe we’ve gotten them off of our backs for now though. I think they’re pretty satisfied with our ‘work’ so far.”

“About that…” says Fresh. Jubilee narrows their eyes in suspicion. “Can we ask Basil if she wants to work here on the side?”

“No. Are you stupid?!” snaps Jubilee, placing their hands on their hips.

“But she needs to earn money and we need to find someone to help us,” protests Fresh. “I can’t keep up this pace forever, Jubileee~” she whines, laying her head down on the counter.

“You want to hire the person whose job it is to investigate us?” they ask. “Am I hearing this right?” Jubilee tilts their head. “You want a literal priestess to work ten steps away from whatever the hell it is you do up there in your nightmare-workshop all night?”

“It’s not a nightmare workshop, it’s my bedroom!” she protests. “Besides -” Fresh raises a finger. “’Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer’, right?” Jubilee groans uneasily. Fresh goes on, rubbing her arm. “…I feel terrible for her, Jubilee.”

“Don’t. If she knew the truth about you, you wouldn’t like her anymore. I can promise you that.”

Fresh goes on. “- And if it makes you feel better, we can just put a door upstairs to block the staircase and lock it. She can sit behind the counter during the day.”

Jubilee waves their hands. “This is a horrible idea. I mean…” They think for a while. “It would certainly seal the deal on the church trusting us, if we integrate one of their own into our business,” they consider. “They might make us saints at this rate. But it’s beyond risky and stupid.” They shake their head. “There’s no reason for us to make this kind of gamble. We can just hire any schmuck from the guild, who won’t ask so many questions.” Jubilee thinks. “Hell, we could probably ask that weird wizard if she’ll work for potions instead of money.”

“Pleeease~?” begs Fresh.

“No.”

“Pleeeeease~?!”

“No!”

“Jubileeeee-!”

Jubilee clutches their hood as the girl continues her plea. “Your softness is going to get us both killed, you dimwit!”

“-eeeee~” finishes Fresh, letting out the last of her breath.

Jubilee cries out in exasperation. “Fine!” They raise a finger, pointing at the girl who perks up with a beaming smile on her face. “But this one is on you!” they exclaim. “If this goes wrong, if she finds out, don’t count on me to save your witchy-ass a second time.” They lean in towards her. “I’ll be running out that gate alone with my bag full of money before the first torch is lit to burn you alive!”

Fresh frowns. “Would you really?” She rubs her arm again. “If I ran, I’d take you with me,” she mumbles, lowering her gaze and looking down to the side.

Jubilee doesn’t respond. Both of them stand there quietly for a minute, until eventually her party member sighs and waves her off and heads towards the glass-chickens. “Offer her fifty Obols a day, plus two-percent of our daily-sales,” says Jubilee. “AFTER deductions.” Jubilee begins rearranging the chickens. “If she accepts, she can work the counter. But only after you’ve built that door upstairs with a lock.”

Fresh smiles. Her happy mood overrides the exhaustion in her body for now.

The plaza begins to fill with the usual bustling crowds and a surprisingly large amount of people find their way into the store after they open for the day, much to Fresh’s surprise. She had expected this to be their slow phase, after the few hectic days before.

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“- like when I found it!” says a leather-clad man.

The large, muscular, dark-elf woman that Fresh recognizes as her main source of orange mushroom-caps walks along with him, laughing and slapping him hard enough on the back that the man stumbles. “Found? The way I remember it, it found you when that hollow-armor crushed you,” she remarks to the man, who rolls his eyes.

“-‘scuse me! Pardon me!” The red-wizard pushes her way through the crowd, rushing to the wall of minor soul-potions and grabbing a large handful, filling them in her tote-bag and rushing to the counter. “Good morning!” she proclaims excitedly.

“Good morning, you’re excited today!” laughs Fresh, seeing the figure bouncing before herself on the tips of her toes. The wizard sets the bag full of potions down on to the counter, together with a single silver Obol. She takes it, giving back five small ones as change.

Sold: 5 [Minor Soul-Potion](Normal) for [{95} Obols] !

The wizard nods excitedly. “I’m going to get to floor sixteen today! That’s the next boss!”

“Wow,” exclaims Fresh, handing her back her change. “That’s really impressive on your own. You must be really strong. Isn’t that dangerous?”

“It’s the soul-regeneration!” she explains. “Usually I’d have to stop to take a nap once my soul-points run out. But because of the potions, I can just keep running around in a circle until they regenerate.”

Fresh scratches her cheek. “That sounds exhausting.”

“It is, but I’ve gotten a lot of dexterity from running so much,” laughs the red-wizard. “I don’t have a lot of health or resistances, but as long as I keep moving it's fine, so far. Monsters are still slow near the top.”

Fresh purses her lips, thinking. Looking for a moment over the wizard’s shoulder at Jubilee, she sees that they are distracted and arguing with a customer about something. Fresh leans down below the counter and grabs one of her resistance necklaces, slipping it into the tote-bag and shushes the wizard, sending them off with a wink. “Stay safe!”

The red-wizard smiles, grabbing the bag excitedly and turns to leave. “Thank you! See you tomorrow!”

Soon enough, the line starts forming at the counter and Jubilee has to take over, while Fresh starts lugging equipment upstairs and then more of it downstairs as people come to pick up their gear from the day before. Repairs really are a lucrative business model if you’re just outside of the dungeon. But it’s exhausting work. However, Fresh smiles as she carries the next heavy helmet up the stairs, as she thinks about the red-wizard spending perhaps hours running in a circle with the monsters chasing her. If she can do that, then she herself can do something this easy.

The antidotes are becoming more popular as well, which makes her very happy. They were her first idea, after all and it was a rather big let-down that she couldn’t sell them due to all of their flaws. But now that they were averaging at normal-quality, people were decidedly becoming more interested in them.

There’s also the simple fact that they are the only place in the inner-city that sells them these days, so there is little choice for those unwilling to walk to the alchemists down further roads. But Fresh tries not to think about that too hard.

The barkeeper comes by eventually as well and Fresh recalls her desire to spend some time talking with the elf about herself and the adventurer’s guild. But before she can get past a quick greeting, more armor comes in that needs to be carried upstairs and the potions also need to be restocked again, as the shelf is already half-empty, despite it not even being the afternoon yet.

The day passes with a steady stream of quiet customers running in and out of their business. Fresh quietly hopes Basil would show up sometime, but the priestess never does. Apart from that however, many of these faces are slowly becoming familiar to her. Soon enough however, one comes in that she doesn’t recognize.

Fresh stops as she comes down the staircase, perhaps sensing some shift in Jubilee’s body language as the cloaked man comes towards the counter and places an old, worn bone-dagger onto it.

“I need this repaired, please,” says the man.

Jubilee nods, eying him and sliding the dagger to the side. “Is that all?”

The cloaked figure shakes his head. “We would like to place an order.” He taps the dagger. “Fifty of these.”

“Done. Come by next week,” says Jubilee and Fresh winces. Fifty was a few extra hours of work for her.

The man nods satisfied. “Also, are you able to make other items with such properties? In particular we’re looking for five racks of arrows and three swords.”

“What the fuck are you people up to now?” asks Jubilee, placing their hands on their hips.

“Can you do it?” asks the man, ignoring their question.

“You fucking cloaks… ugh…” Jubilee looks up to Fresh. “Can we do it?”

The girl thinks for a moment. “I’ve never tried… but… maybe?” she says, rubbing the back of her head.

Jubilee looks back to the man from the thieves’ guild. “There you have it. Come back in a week and we’ll have something for you. Maybe.” They tap the counter. “Payment in advance.”

The man nods, not saying anything else and places a small pouch of coins onto the counter, not bothering to count them. “See you in a week,” he says, walking off towards the door. “Maybe.”

Jubilee sighs, counting the money.

Razmatazz

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