I lay in my borrowed bed pondering. Lord Reid hadn't seen my soul affinity. Either that, or he's the best damn actor I've ever met. That means the brainwashing isn't from him. Then what of the other suspects? The Emerald Nest? That third rank space mage from wherever was pretty damn arrogant, but hadn't technically lied or breached the law as far as I knew. The earth mother? Maybe? The problem with blaming things on gods is that such theories are very rarely falsifiable. For all I knew, the elves did it as a means to keep their new neighbours friendly.

The problem with any of these suspects was that while I could see why they'd want to eliminate me for being immune, what reason would they have to force me to grow stronger? Because I had soul affinity, and they wanted to recruit me? Have me help out in maintaining their spell? Plausible, but if that were the case I would expect them to have made contact, or at least taken some action to encourage me to take [Soul Mage]. There's no point in advancing my growth if they don't direct it in the way they want. Besides, Lord Reid had proven that he couldn't see my soul affinity, which meant it was likely that there were actually plenty of people around attuned to it, but the brainwashing simply didn't let them notice.

I only had one other theory. I wanted to meet the goddess, which supposedly you could do by reaching the lowest floor of the world's biggest dungeon. What if the goddess wanted to meet me? No-one had made it that low before, which implied a great amount of strength was needed. But if that were the case, why would the goddess not just visit me wherever? If she could magic an orc into existence, she should have been able to make it speak. In the end I had no good theories for why anything was happening... No point laying awake all night thinking about it. I drained my mana pool and meditated myself to sleep.

ding

Skill [Minor Wisdom] advanced to level 8

Skill [Meditation] advanced to level 11

The next morning I was hit with the realisation I was about to go and order proper weapons and armour. Not the poorly carved stick of wood with some iron bands wrapped around it that I had been using, but real professional gear. It hadn't really clicked the day before, when I was too focused on orcs and conspiracies. This was going to be awesome! I'm sure that as soon as I actually get it, it'll turn out to be difficult to get on and uncomfortable to wear, but for now I could let my inner child rejoice. Or maybe my outer child. Did it still count as an inner child if my actual body was only seven?

Dawnhold turned out to not have dedicated stores for different classes of weaponry or armour; the town was too small to need them. I wondered how many delvers were active in this town in total? Maybe a hundred? If half of those were mages and they each needed to replace their staves once a year, a store that sold nothing but staves would barely sell more than one a week. That explained why neither Lord Reid nor the guild master had told us which store they wanted us to shop in; there was only one.

A rather excited lady measured me for my armour, making constant squeaking noises about how cute this was going to be. That was somewhat concerning. I didn't want to be cute; I wanted to not be dead. She seemed so distracted that her measurements were all over the place, but apparently that didn't matter; they only needed my approximate size and a comfort enchantment would take care of the rest. We asked for something that was light and didn't restrict movement, but there was really only one option. Armour here was either steel or dire wolf leather, since they were the only good armour materials that were easily obtainable from the dungeon, and there was no way I was going to be wearing steel. Apparently the armour would be enchanted for durability as well as comfort, but the enchantments wouldn't last for longer than a year despite dire wolf leather being quite good at holding mana. It didn't much matter; a year was beyond the expected lifetime of a set of armour, and if it did somehow survive in good condition, the enchantments could be renewed easily enough.

Next up was a weapon, where it turned out that what I thought I wanted was not what I actually needed. When I asked for a mage staff that was sturdy enough to whack things with, the clerk looked confused.

"A staff enchanted to aid your magic isn't going to be durable enough for use as a primary weapon. What's your main fighting style? Magic or physical combat?"

"Umm... both, I guess. I'm a [Body Mage], so I enhance my physical stats with spells then fight with physical combat."

"Ah, I see. Then you don't want a staff that's enchanted to reduce mana consumption or empower spells, you want one built for combat. Given your age, I imagine your base strength is quite low?"

"Yes, it's twelve. My magic doubles that."

"That's not actually as low as I was assuming," she responded, looking a little surprised, "but it is still a lot lower than the average front-line fighter. I would suggest an oak staff with steel banding, enchanted for durability and weight. Normally we'd do durability and damage, and perhaps add steel spikes on the ends as far as that's possible without the System considering it a polearm, but I think a plainer design and weight enchantment would be more effective in your case."

"Weight enchantment? To make it lighter?"

"Not quite, it makes it variable. You need to carry it around while your reinforcement spells are not active, but you also need to swing it with as much momentum as possible when they are. A weight enchantment will let you add or subtract half of the physical weight from the staff at will."

I had to admit that did sound useful. I had thought that all mage staves just reduced spell costs or something, but obviously that was another bad assumption. There was a wider range of enchantments available than I knew. Which reminded me that I wanted to pick up [Basic Runecrafting] at some point... But her offhand mention of polearms was an interesting one too; I'd gone with a staff proficiency because I knew they could have mage related enchantments, but if I wasn't going to use such enchantments, then maybe I'd have been better off with a different weapon type. Given how small I was, I really needed something with significant reach, but maybe there would have been a better choice than staff. Too late now though, unless I want to restart a skill from level one, and waste a soul point.

Other necessities didn't need to be custom made. A knife, crystals for light, water and heat, healing potions, food rations and so on. We could pick them up when I returned in the spring, which meant it was time to go home. I could have gone looking for an enchanting teacher or visited the library again, but I didn't want to risk the weather worsening before we got back. The trip would be bad enough as it was. And so we ended up piled back into the cart, Warren driving us back towards the village.

"Umm, maybe a bit late to be asking this, but I don't suppose any of you know the way?"

Huh? He... doesn't know the way? But we got to town easily enough... "You got us to Dawnhold. How can you not know the way back?"

"Dawnhold is a bigger target than your village. I just set off in the right general direction, then corrected myself when I saw landmarks that I knew."

I saw dad facepalming out of the corner of my eye. "It's fine, just do the same thing again. Head west, and I'll tell you when I spot something I recognise. Worst case, we hit the forest, and just have to travel up and down it a bit until we find the right spot."

Going was slow due to the winter, but fortunately we didn't get lost. I can imagine that if we'd hit a blizzard or something else that restricted our vision, the journey would not have gone so well. I'd rather have fought another orc...

Everything was perfectly ordinary in the village as we returned, bringing a nice contrast to the previous couple of days. The dirt tracks were their usual empty winter selves, and all was quiet. We split from Warren, who went to return the cart, and returned to our home. Sitting in our living room, it was easy to pretend that the previous couple of days never happened.

"Well, that happened. Looks like you're going to break your promise after all."

Trust dad to lighten the mood. "Totally not my fault."

"Oh? I don't remember you arguing against it."

"Arguing against what?"

Camus walked in and inserted himself into the conversation. That was quick; he must have jumped out of his house the moment he heard the cart outside. It was also the first time I'd ever seen anyone walk into someone's house uninvited. I opened my mouth to answer before thinking better of it and closing up again. Best not to share that with Camus. Both parents obviously shared my concern, but instead of any sort of attempt at a cover-up, they just sat there looking shifty. That's going to be a bit of a giveaway. Just fob it off as... ah, right, the whole no lying thing. They can't. Just as I was desperately searching for a distraction, I spotted that Camus had grown a set of extra legs.

"Cluma?"

She was hiding behind Camus, clutching at his waist. He turned and lifted her in front of himself, but she just buried her head into his chest. Her ears were laying practically flat atop her head and her tail was hanging limp. I'd never before seen her so depressed. A quick glance at Camus was enough to tell me why they were here and what he wanted, so I walked up behind Cluma and hugged her.

"Thank you for protecting me, just like you promised. You saved my life."

That certainly got a reaction. Not quite the one I wanted, but it certainly snapped her out of her silence. She spun around and angrily pushed me away. "I didn't! I ran away, like a coward!"

"You did exactly what I told you to do. You went to fetch help, and thanks to that Warren arrived in time to rescue me. If you'd stayed, we may very well have both died. Would that have been better?"

"No... But... You beat it even on your own. If we'd both been there..."

"I didn't beat it. It was a draw. Without Warren and Angus turning up, both me and the orc would have died together. Like I said, you saved my life. You were no coward, and you never ran away. You ran towards. Towards help. You used your speed to do something I couldn't, while I bought you the time to do it. It was perfect teamwork. So please don't call yourself a coward."

Her ears perked up slightly and she managed to look me in the eye. "You really don't think I'm a coward? You really don't hate me?"

"Hate you? I believe I told you that I wouldn't be your friend anymore if you stayed. So since you didn't stay, naturally you're still my friend. My best friend."

That was enough to break her, and she tackled me full in the chest, bawling her eyes out. I dragged her back to the table and sat back down, mission complete.

"Thank you. She wouldn't believe it coming from me or Clana. She needed to hear it from you."

"Any time. It's the truth after all."

"And with that said, would you mind filling me in what you were talking about before?"

I could see my parents resume their dithering, so I quickly made an excuse before they could answer. I looked down at Cluma, who still had her face buried in my chest, in a way that would obviously convey my meaning to him. "Can we leave that topic for another time?"

He frowned slightly but dropped the subject, switching to small talk with my parents while I comforted Cluma. She was as bad as this even when I was here in front of her telling her she'd done the right thing. If I hadn't made it back safely, I don't think she'd have ever forgiven herself. And thus are people like Camus or Angus made.

Camus left with Cluma not too long after. Today already had more than enough content in it, and I just wanted to tuck myself into bed and not move until tomorrow happened. Unfortunately, Camus had other plans, returning less than five minutes later on his own. Seriously? It's not as if we'd said anything particularly juicy, even if he'd eavesdropped on our whole conversation. Why was he being so insistent?

"So now that Cluma isn't here, I want you to tell me what was said in Dawnhold."

Mum sighed, defeated. "We met with the delvers guild master and Lord Reid, and the conclusion was that it was likely that something is trying to spur Peter's growth rather than trying to kill him. We did acknowledge that this entity held little regard for the safety of Peter himself or those around him. The course of action we accepted was for Peter to take actions to push forward his own growth, thus leaving the entity without a reason to take further action."

Camus' face darkened and his fists clenched, his ears trembling but his tail sticking out as rigid as a statue. This was the most anger I'd ever seen on him, even more so than when Cluma had told him he was afraid. "You agreed to send your own child into there?!"

Wow, make assumptions much? I mean, he's right, but that's beside the point. And he's not questioning at all some mysterious entity taking an unexplained interest in me? This was exactly why I didn't think it was a good idea to tell him.

"No, she's not sending me anywhere. It's my choice. Don't you dare try to take this out on my parents."

"You... You're just a kid! You have no idea what you're getting yourself into."

"You know, at the end of my fight with that orc, I was down to two health. [Minor Endurance] was active and was giving me four extra temporary points. It had a few seconds left to run, and I had the mana for one more cast, which would last another forty. I had nothing to heal myself with. I was laying there on the ground, unable to move and fully believing I had less than a minute to live. As I lost consciousness, do you know what I was thinking? It wasn't 'I don't want to die', or 'why did Cluma not make it in time?', it was 'thank goodness Cluma got away safely'. Don't you dare think you're the only one prepared to put yourself in harm's way for the sake of those you care about, and don't you ever be so arrogant as to think you're the only one allowed to. This is the plan we agreed to with Lord Reid and the delvers guild master. Do you think that you know better than them? Believe me, I know what I'm getting myself into."

Mum and dad were looking aghast. This was by far the biggest outburst I'd ever made, but Camus was really pushing my buttons here. Of course I knew what I was getting myself into, and it terrified me. But it didn't scare me half as much as the thought of our village in ruins, my parents dead, monsters consuming their bloody corpses.

Camus hadn't lost any of his anger either. "I will not approve of any plan that sends a defenceless kid into the dungeon."

My grip around my staff was so tight my knuckles had turned white, and I saw the red veins of [Strength] emerge from my sleeves despite me not being conscious of casting the spell. What right does he have to come in here and act like this? The whole thing was hard enough for my parents already. I added my other enhancement spells, and flicked my wrist. [Far Reach] projected my staff behind Camus' knees, catching him by surprise. I added [Minor Slow] and [Minor Speed], stepping behind him and holding my staff over his head before he could react. Mum was still watching, obviously upset but having no idea what to say. Dad wasn't even looking at us any more, staring off in the direction of the door instead.

"I am not defenceless, and we never asked for your approval."

"You're just proving my point, not yours! No matter how strong you are, all it takes is to be caught by surprise once and it's all over."

"That was never your point! No-one is arguing that the dungeon isn't dangerous. Your argument is that I don't have the right to accept that danger for myself. You want to just stick your head in the sand and pretend monsters don't exist, and maybe that would have worked if I hadn't spoilt it for you by attracting them, so for that I apologise. Even so, it's not fair for you to force your views onto others. If I remain here, sheltered, I'll be putting the whole village at risk of another monster attack. How would you feel if Cluma dies in the next one? Your phobia of the dungeon is putting the whole village, even your own family, at risk! Cluma said you were afraid, and she was right. Can you not let go of just enough of that fear to ensure the safety of your own family?"

Camus climbed back to his feet and stormed out of the house without another word, his tail still rigid behind him. I felt that could have gone better...