Chapter 35: Chapter 35 – Finding the Key

Chapter 35 - Finding the Key

Once we came back to ourselves, it was to the realization that we had been rolling about in a storm drain filled to overflowing with gigantic dead rats. It was not a welcome one.

“I feel sticky,” I muttered, as I attempted to retie my loincloth. I was not having much success. Somehow, no matter which way I started, the front pocket always ended up being slightly off.

“Y’ain’t alone,” Jax agreed, readjusting her top. Distracted for a moment, I fondly recalled our rather exuberant exploration of her most recent feature. There was not much of anything there, but she was quite overjoyed at my desire to play with them, just the same.

As soon as the thought crossed my mind, her eyes found me, and biting her lower lip, she made a questioning tone.

“Uh… no,” I said, intuiting her question. “Not here again. Ever. No, we really need to get going.”

Apparently, she was not keen on taking ‘no’ for an answer, and doing her best to be seductive, she attempted to put a bit of sway into her step as she sidled closer to me. Her very obvious inexperience was telling, but it made the act more than a little cute. As she enfolded my arm into hers, she rubbed her cheek against me, but it stuck there. The mood effectively assassinated, she peeled away.

“Ugh… please tell me that isn’t all rat blood,” I said, nauseated.

Tentatively, she sniffed at it and recoiled. Glancing at me nervously, she reported, “Are ye sure that be what ye want me to say?”

I had to think about that one for a moment for it to sink in, and I closed my eyes. “You know what? Never mind.”

With a glance, we silently agreed never to speak of it again.

Seeing me still fiddling with my ever crooked front flap, she tsked. Taking me in hand, she pulled it away and began the process of putting on correctly, “Honestly. How can ye not know how to tie one o’ these yet?”

I sighed, slightly embarrassed yet defensive, “What can I say? I have never once had the occasion to wear a loincloth before today.”

“Nay surprising,” she muttered. “I can only imagine the fancy clothes ye be used to. Did ye ever even have to dress yer ownself?”

“I’m not that helpless,” I retorted, neatly sidestepping the topic. “I even managed to start a fire earlier with nothing but a spindle.” I was still quite proud of that feat, so I did not mind in the slightest bragging about it.

“Oh~ did ye now?” she grinned at me indulgently. “And how long did that take ye?”

I coughed to the side, “Look, the point is I managed it, okay?”

“As ye say,” she chuckled. Giving my belt a final tug, she patted the pocket into place. “There now. That should do it.”

“Easy now,” I said, twinging from the jostling she had just delivered. “I’m still a little sensitive down there.”

“Oh, sorry,” she frowned. “I did nay knick ye with me teeth did I? I still ain’t quite used to ‘em.”

I flushed crimson, though at this point, there really was not much left to be embarrassed about. “Uh… you did poke me the once,” I admitted. “Nothing serious.”

Despite my assurances, she turned away, mortified.

 

As Jax went about the onerous task of converting the recently deceased, I took the opportunity to reread the card for my mid-battle skill acquisition. I was hoping there was a way to cast the spell on its own so that I would not have to hold them both at once. For one thing, it would be nice to be able to see as we explored down here. We still needed to find that key, after all. But mainly, Jax was having quite a bit of difficulty rooting out all of the corpses in the darkness. About which she was loudly complaining.

“Give me a minute, will you?” I said, starting to get irritated.

“What be the trip up?” she asked. “All o’ yer spells be so complicated. All I gotta do is think about yer drip stick, and poof! Out pops a nice little me. Ready to go!”

I paused, my train of thought completely derailed, “My… did you just say drip stick?”

“Aye! Ye know…” and she held out her finger at her crotch and gave it a little twirl.

I cleared my throat, studiously ignoring her wheezing at her own joke. A lot had changed around here, but Jax was still Jax.

Pulling up the card again, I gave it another look.

I shook my head at the name. Bline certainly had a sense of humor. Whether it was a good one or not was still a matter for the jury.

From the description, it certainly seemed as if I should be able to do what I wanted. Unfortunately, the instructions were less than clear. How exactly was I supposed to include the first Word from Fortunate Shadows? It was all just a jumble of syllables in my head, with no indication as to where one began and the next ended. For all I knew, the whole thing could have been one long Word.

Giving a light shrug, I figured the only thing I could do was begin with trial and error. If it wanted the first Word, then I would undoubtedly have to start with the first syllable and go from there. Unless, of course, this magical language functioned in some kind of weird back to front fashion… or worse. I frowned. Surely not. Bline would have given me some indication if that were the case. Right?

Deciding there was nothing else for it, I mentally prepared the first syllable and opened my mouth. But the spell died on my tongue. It was not like when I was trying to push out the Word I actually knew, either. With that, my throat would seize up like I was trying to lift an Atlas stone through my windpipe. This was more like… it just evaporated. As if I were bailing water with a sieve.

Hmm… that… must not be it then. So, going with two syllables, I tried again but with similar results.

“What are ye even doin’?” Jax asked, standing to the side of me. I had not noticed her approach.

I blinked a few times, derailed yet again. She was impatiently waiting, her hands to her hips, jingling what Gems she had managed to collect in one of them. “I’m trying to get the Light Tracing effect going without affecting the Darkness at the same time.”

“And? What be the problem?” she asked.

So obligingly, I explained. As best I could.

Still not quite understanding, she nonetheless let out an appreciative hoot at the complexity of it. Then, taking on an expression somewhere between the speculative and the lascivious, she said, “Wonder what happens if ye tacked that to the end o’ me lovely, eh?”

“Your… oh.” My eyebrows rose as I considered the idea. The spell card had not said anything about combining with my heal, but they were all still Words. It might do something. Actually, that brought to mind a whole slew of possibilities. Like, could I somehow cram together Fortunate Shadows with Renewal of Consumption? Would the two effects merge somehow? Create something entirely new? Or more likely, just die on my lips like my current project. In any case… “That’s an interesting idea, but I don’t have the Life Energy to spare right now.”

Taking on a regretful look, she cupped my cheek, “Ah, ye poor thing. Here I be full to burstin’ while ye be wastin’ away.”

I blushed slightly, still unused to such gestures of familiarity.

“Get yer spell goin’ then. Once I get the rest o’ these Gems, I can hunt ye up some tuck.”

Giving her a little smile, I set to. Assembling what I wanted in my head was a little tricky. Despite the assurances on the spell card, it felt as if Fortunate Shadows had never truly been intended to be broken apart on the fly like this. It was kind of like trying to separate an egg yolk from the white with my brain. In the dark.

Eventually, I had the syllables roughly lined up and tried again. Luck was with me that time. It turned out that three was the magic number, and the spell came to life. Sputtering.

“Why do it look the scab this time?” Jax asked.

I had to shrug. She was right, but I had not a clue as to why. The nice bright lines from before were now much fainter, to the point of barely being there at all. They still emphasized motion fairly well, which was nice, but everything else was there as only the merest suggestion. On the plus side, casting the spell this way was much easier to maintain. “Can you at least make out the rest of the bodies?”

Taking another moment to look around, she gave a curt nod and began collecting the rest.

“I’ll help,” I said after a moment, figuring that there was no point in my just standing there. Jax looked like she wanted to protest but kept her peace, and after a few minutes, we had the entire horde collected up and converted to Minor Gems.

Jax handed me her portion for safekeeping, as I had the pocket, “How many we got?”

“Thirty seven,” I announced after silently counting them out. I could have sworn there should have been more from the severity of the battle, but then it was hard to keep track in a situation like that. Still, with just the two of us, it was impressive enough. “Thirty eight altogether with the one from earlier.”

Jax, for her part, was too busy being amazed that I could count so high without speaking aloud or using my fingers to worry about the seemingly low count.

 

---

 

I gave a satisfied nod as I closed out my main page.

We had once again resumed our trek through the drain, and I had decided to take the downtime to assign my stat points for their next increase. They were slowly but steadily getting there. My intelligence was a nice, round eight now, and even though I had no idea if that was particularly good or bad, I still felt rather impressed with myself. I also took note of the fact that my Core Layer was now reading as 4F, which was probably for Foundation.

It was kind of neat, I decided, that the Goddess tended to change and fill out my stat card as my understanding of the world became clearer. If I had started out with a Core Layer of 1F, I probably would have assumed it was using hexadecimal or something. Although, that would have put me at Layer… I paused, having to think it over. Thirty-two? No, that would be thirty-one, I think. You have to compensate for zero. In any case, that would have been a huge misunderstanding.

The only other thing of note was Jax’s loyalty rating, which had been skyrocketing lately. In fact, I was pretty sure that she had been somewhere in the fifties when we had first entered this Dungeon. Then again, we had been… connecting a bit more as of late. Idly, I wondered if there were tiers to loyalty like Hess had mentioned with skill levels. If so, then it was possible that certain behaviors might correlate to them. Jax had certainly been acting differently than she had used to, but it was such a gradual process that I could not really place what had started when. Of course, it would have helped if I had been bothering to check.

Plus, there was the whole ‘also becoming a new species’ thing. If I ever wanted to know exactly how loyalty worked, then I was probably going to need to bind an actual lilim from the get go. Otherwise, I would have a terrible time trying to parse out which behaviors corresponded to what.

In any case, she was pretty close to ticking over to the next tier, if that was a thing, and I made a mental note to start paying closer attention. Not to worry about. I had promised her that I would let that go, and I intended to. Still, one of these days, Hess would be joining in on this little band on a more permanent basis, and I was curious to see if she experienced similar patterns. And then there was the question of whether I could influence that in any way. Or if I should.

Jax paused at an intersection, taking a quick look before starting down one of the paths, but then she hesitated. “Oosh… I think I be turned around. Which way were that thorn pointin’?”

I hesitated for a second as I thought back. The maze we were in was laid out in straight, squared lines, but not every path led to the next tunnel. We had needed to backtrack on several occasions. “That way,” I said, pointing at a slight angle off to our left.

“Yer sure?”

“No, not totally,” I admitted. “But it should be from what I remember.”

“Yers be better’n mine then,” she said and started away.

Suddenly, a trio of rats jumped out at us from a small pipe set high in the wall. The first one went right for me, and I awkwardly punched it away. Not before it got a swipe at my wrist, though. Jax immediately intervened, savagely ripping it apart before turning to the other two. She looked pissed.

“Donum’s flesh ain’t fer the likes o’ ye,” she growled, using the light from her axe materializing to punctuate her threat. The fight did not last long.

When she was done, she hurried over to check on my wound. I had a hand clapped over it to help staunch it. “It’s not that bad,” I assured her, but that did little to assuage her fretting.

“But yer bleedin’,” she said, with a worried little bounce. “Why ain’t ye healed it yet? Just a little one? Like ye did fer yer ankle?”

“And that one made me feel faint,” I retorted with a sigh. “I’m just going to have to hold out until we can get some more Life Energy.”

Jax made a mewling sound in her throat, “This be my fault. I weren’t lookin’ for rats to come from up high, and I nay can get me doaty skill to work when I want it to.”

I gave her a little grin, “It’s okay. We learn as we go. As for the skill, it’s only gone off once in something like forty rats? That’s… let’s see… something like a two… two point five percent chance?”

“Percent?” she asked, hurriedly ripping at her shorts to make a bandage for me.

“Oh. Yeah, that just means times in a hundred. So at that rate, you can expect it to go off maybe two to three times every hundred rats,” I explained while she wrapped my arm. “Or wait… does it require a killing blow?”

“Nay. Just that I draw blood,” she explained quietly. Tying off the bandage, she gave me a thoughtful look, “Three in a hundred? I do nay think I can count so high as that.”

I quirked an eyebrow. It was high time we changed that. Smiling, I said, “Well, then. It’s best you learned. And I have just the thing to help you practice. I want you to count every time you land a blow until your skill goes off. And no using your fingers to help you.”

“What?” she exclaimed, a little panicked.

“That way, we’ll get a better idea of how frequently it goes off, and you’ll gain a very important life skill.” Honestly, I should have thought of this ages ago. And once that was done, we could start on reading. We would need Hess for that, but it was going to become necessary sooner rather than later.

Jax had an expression on her face, like she was fishing for some way out of her sentence. “What about yer aura?” she said, brightening. “Don’t it make me skill more like to go off? That’d throw the count, it would!”

“True,” I admitted. “But we need to get an idea of how that works, too. And yes, ideally it would be best if we could isolate the two skills, but we don’t have that luxury.”

She began to pout, and I could tell she was still trying to squirm her way out. However, right about then, the motion lines highlighted something dripping off of one of her legs.

“What is that?” I asked. “Did one of those rats get you?”

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She looked away, blushing. “Aye. One managed a scratch.”

I narrowed my eyes. One generally did not blush at having been wounded. “You let it. Didn’t you?”

“Whaaat?” she said, exaggeratedly. “That… that’d be foolish. And… and irresponsible. And…” The mumbling and lack of eye contact were doing little to solidify her case.

“Yes. That would be foolish. And irresponsible,” I agreed, folding my arms.

“It were just a little one…” she said, slowly folding into herself under my stare. “T-to keep me shadows goin’.”

The way she was acting, you would think she was a child with her hand stuck in the cookie jar. I sighed. If I was going to let her keep this masochistic behavior, I was going to have to put some limits on it. Squatting down, I began ripping some fabric from her other leg.

“Wait, Donum,” she said. “I can do…”

“Hush,” I said, shortly.

“B-but…” she sputtered, yet she let me continue. Though, every time my fingers would graze her bare skin, she would twitch and her breath would catch.

“Lilims who are trying to be the best lilim ever probably wouldn’t go around letting rats chew on them just so that they can get healed. Would they?” I asked, ignoring her antics.

“N-no,” she managed, her head twisting back.

“No,” I agreed, wrapping the bandage around her thigh. “No, I would think that lilims who are trying to be the best ever might be embarrassed at resorting to such things. Especially when their healer was so very out of Life Energy.”

“Aye, I s-suppose,” she agreed.

“Yes, I suppose they might,” I continued, firmly tying the bandage in place. She winced, shivering slightly. “Especially considering how very many other options are available. For instance…” I stood up, still standing right next to her, “our Cores are in need of Power again. You could eat a Gem. Or ask me to eat one. Right?”

She nodded silently, leaning into me.

Taking her chin in hand, I leaned over and held there, just out of reach of her lips. Then I smiled, and gave her head a little shake, “Good. I would hate to give you another command just to curtail your bad behavior.” Letting go, I stepped back.

Eyes widening, she gasped, “Donum! Do nay tease me so.”

“Tease you?” I asked innocently. “With what?”

“Ye know perfectly well!” she said hotly. “Ye were… ye were touchin’ me so close… and then ye almost… Ye know perfectly well!”

“Close to what?” I asked, half feigning ignorance and half genuinely curious. It was not like she had actually let me get anywhere near there yet, even in the heat of our earlier encounter.

“Never mind that!” she said quickly. “I want me kiss!”

“Oh, is that what you want?” I asked, quirking an eyebrow. “But only good little lilums get kisses. As I recall, a certain somebody just let a rat chew on her just so…”

“Boil ye! Fine. It’ll nay happen again.” Quickly striding back up to me, she grumpily poked my chest. “Now bend down.”

Choosing to ignore her for now, I took a speculative breath, “By the by, Jax. Do you think my aura is starting to build up again? I can’t help but notice…”

“Who gives a rat’s puckered arsehole?!” she exclaimed.

And then she jumped me.

 

Some time later, the pair of us were standing in front of a large archway leading into a squarish room. In the middle of said room was a quite familiar looking pedestal with a similarly familiar triangular green gemstone. Neither of us moved.

“So that’s obviously a trap,” I opined. We had been here before, after all. The tutorial had been thorough. The question, though, was in what form the trap would take. Frowning in thought, I rubbed at my aching backside.

“Aye,” she agreed, before noticing. “Will ye stop that? I said I were sorry.”

“Well, it hurts,” I said defensively. “You’re a warrior, not some dainty flower. You can’t just jump a guy and expect him to hold you up.”

She took on a pained expression at my words, “I guess I ain’t girly enough for ye yet.”

I rolled my eyes, “Did I say that? I don’t think I said that. You can be as girly or whatever as you want to be. Besides… I didn’t say I didn’t like it.”

She grinned, slightly mollified, “Maybe one day I’ll have ye jump me then.”

“We’ll see,” I said, with a wry shake of the head.

The both of us turned our attention back to the room. It was still the same. If anything was hiding in there, neither of us could make it out, though we were doing our level best to spy out any potential ambush points. There were several of those pipes that the rats seemed to favor, so there was some potential for trouble there. Otherwise, we were at a loss. With the key just sitting there, I was fully expecting some kind of guardian.

Idly, I scratched at my bandage. It had not been a deep cut, and it was started to itch.

“Fourteen,” Jax reported unnecessarily, catching the motion. I had been supplying her with the numbers past ten, after all. “Fourteen bloody strikes and I still ain’t got that blasted skill to work.”

I nodded. Just because you had a chance for something to work, that was no guarantee. I had tried explaining that to her, but she was still getting used to counting. Statistics was a thing totally out of her wheelhouse. Besides, our sample size was still pretty low. Though it was fourteen strikes, that was only for nine rats, putting our Gem count at an even fifty. Technically, the skill had procced twice in that time, though the first one was undoubtedly caused by my aura. Even so, that put it at a combined four percent chance per rat. I did not yet have enough data to guess at the rate per strike.

“How strong is the aura buildup right now?” I asked curiously.

She tilted her head to give it a mental nudge and sucked in a breath. Biting at her lip, she reported, “Maybe half as strong as it were before. Guessin’.”

“Well, it’s only level…” pausing for a moment to check with Bline, I continued, “only level nine. Hopefully, once I get it to high novice, it’ll be more useful. What about your skill?”

“Five,” she said sourly. “Bloody five!”

“Probably only improves with successes then,” I mused. “That sucks.”

She grunted by way of reply, apparently tired of the topic, then added, “Shall I send in me shadow, then? See what happens?”

I started to nod, but then I hesitated, “Wait, what about your skill point? Probably ought to spend that beforehand.”

“Right,” she sighed. “Been thinkin’ on that. I’d like to take sommat that’d give ye more Life. Or makes me skill work more often. Be drivin’ me crazy, that is.”

I smirked. She was becoming a regular worry wart. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea. Eventually, your skill should improve to the point where it’s not as much of a problem. If you take more in that vein now, I’m concerned that you might over invest.”

She growled in frustration before sighing, “Aye, yer probably right. What do ye suggest then?”

“Well, let’s see…” I said, tapping my lip. “You said before that you’re not really putting your Life Energy to use. Could pick up something like that?”

“Maybe,” she agreed. “But then I’d be runnin’ out just like ye. Then we’d both be starvin’. An’ like ye said, me skill ain’t reliable enough yet to keep it filled.”

“Alright, that’s fair,” I nodded. “What about your shadows, then? They’re pretty good for a distraction, but to someone who’s smart enough to tell the difference, they’re not really much of a hindrance. Could you get something to improve them? Make them more life-like or more exact clones of you?”

She tilted her head to think that one over before rejecting it as well. “Nay. I’d like to see what they do when I get me skill up. Could just be a problem with the lack.”

I nodded. That was a fair point. “What about something like… trading places with them? Like if you were about to get hit, suddenly you switch with one of your clones, and they take it for you?” I suggested.

“Oh~ I do like that one,” she brightened. “Or maybe even to trade with ye. That way, I could use ‘em to protect ye better.” However, after a brief chat with the Lady, she reported, “Be sayin’ me Core ain’t strong enough for it yet.”

I sighed. That figured. “Well, keep that one in mind for later then.”

We both lapsed into a silence that stretched for a while, lost in the various pathways from which to build up Jax’s class. Tenebrous Warrior… fighting from the shadows. That should be something like an assassin, I decided. More about avoidance than taking blows head-on. Her shadows were an interesting step in that direction. Taking blows for her and distracting the enemy. It was a nice pick-up. Although… “You know, it occurs to me that your shadow clone thing doesn’t make any sense.”

“How do ye figure?” she asked.

“Well, think about it,” I began. “What is your class supposed to do? From the name, you would assume that it would use misdirection. Avoid the enemy and strike when they least expect it. So what good is it to have an ability where you have to moan in order to use it? Doesn’t that give away your location?”

She bobbed her head back and forth for a moment as she thought about it. “Aye,” she agreed finally. “I suppose ye have a point there. I just been thinkin’ it were me way of keepin’ their attention away from ye, but it do make it harder to use me Tenebrous Dance.”

“Did you maybe miss something in the skill description?” I asked. “Or maybe it might have changed? You never know. Sometimes my stuff does that when I learn new things.”

She shrugged, “I listened to Her pretty thorough, but sure. May as well check it.” Quietly, she asked her question, and I sat back to wait until her attention returned.

“Well?”

She took a breath and held it for a moment before saying, “Ye were right. She were sayin’ it be a ‘scaffold’ measure. And…” She hesitated.

“And?” I prompted.

“She wants to know if ye can guess the rest,” she explained after a moment.

I blinked. Oh, boy… Here we go. The last time the Lady had done something like this, I had ended up with a broken language skill and days of embarrassing myself as I tried to use it. “Why doesn’t She just ask me directly?” I wondered aloud, mostly just to stall.

Jax just shook her head, her hands spread. Apparently, Bline was not telling.

“Is She offering another boon?” I asked, fishing.

She started to shake her head again, but then she hesitated, “Maybe. Says She might if ye impress Her?”

“Okay… well,” I paused. I needed to be as thorough here as I could be. I had no idea what was on the table, but I might as well try just the same. Why give Jax a skill with a scaffold attached to it? Okay, Donum… reason this out.

“A scaffolding is a temporary structure to assist in the building of a larger, more permanent one. But in this case, we’re talking about a skill. That implies that it’s a learning aid.” I stopped again. Why would she need a learning aid to use the skill properly? That implied that she could not use the skill properly without it. Why not?

“Okay… okay, what is the scaffolding asking you to do? Moan. But we experimented. We know that you have to moan in a certain way. In a feminine way.” I took a breath, “Except… except you said that you are not becoming female. You’re becoming a lilim. So you need to moan like a lilim would?” Whatever that meant.

Hmm… no, wait. “The moaning is the scaffold. So the question is, what remains when you remove it?”

Taking another moment to think, I started fishing around for more pieces to the puzzle. “Right… when you bought the skill, you asked for something that would let you use your arousal in combat. So… that means that the moan is there to help teach you how to be aroused like a lilim would be. Or… no.”

I began to pace as I reconsidered, “Eventually, you would get there anyway… as you became more of a lilim. No, it’s there to teach you to express your arousal as a lilim would. And that means that in order to use the skill properly, you would simply need to express a lilim’s arousal.” Somehow.

“So, bringing it around… the reason that you were given the skill like that is because… you couldn’t use it otherwise. Because you were too much of a man, maybe? And beyond that, there is the further possibility that the skill itself is not designed for regular people. It’s specific to the lilim kind. Because if you have to express a lilim’s arousal, then there’s no way that a regular person could pull it off.”

I stopped to look at her, “Am I close?”

Jax had a look on her face that I could only describe as flabbergasted. “I… uh… She be laughin’? Keeps sayin’ she won?” Then she jerked, “Oh! It cut off.”

We just stared at each other for a long while after that.

Finally, unable to think of anything else, I used that universal phrase that comes to a person when there is nothing else to say. When the universe has collectively decided that, at least for today, the rug was going to be unceremoniously yanked out from under your feet, leaving you nowhere to rest save for the imprint your face leaves in the concrete.

“What?”

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