I discovered quickly that the marketplace was inaccessible from the dungeon lobby. Somewhat awkwardly, I replaced the and stepped back outside to finish my shopping.

The and teeth fetched nearly thirty-thousand Selve. Despite the provocative name for the marketplace—The Selve Standard—Kinsley’s website was pretty barebones in appearance. Some pre-modern mix of The Silk Road and early Amazon. The twenty-minute waiting period seemed to only apply to purchases. Selling, and receiving Selve from the transaction was almost instantaneous.

Best of all? The green, 50% off indicator next to every item. And I do mean every item. Even though Kinsley and I hadn’t exactly hashed out a formal agreement, she was clearly taking her promise of a discount seriously. That, combined with the massively increased selection, meant I had a world of power at my fingertips.

On inspection, my read

From what I read in the tooltip, it could probably still be repaired, but only by someone with the Smith vocation. Maybe we’d eventually expand, sell services alongside goods, but that was a long way off, and any prominent tradesperson, if they existed yet, were likely locked down by a guild.

That was fine. The armor was always meant to be something of a stopgap, anyway, replaced as soon as something better could be either found or bought. And the encounter with the wolf had served as a solid warning that I had outgrown it.

It left me with a bit of a dilemma. I could now afford a much larger variety of armor than before, and even when I narrowed the search parameters for weight to only, specifically narrowed aesthetics to dark and muted colors, and excluded the growing number of sold-out items, the amount available in my price range was still staggering.

That left me with a few different options. Either buy something with decent, well-rounded protections in preparation for whatever was happening in less than two days from now, or try to find something that would assist in dealing with the denizen of the now-empty cage that would more than likely be waiting for me on the fifth floor.

Further delving in the adaptive dungeon was on hold for now, but it wouldn’t hurt to future-proof myself if I could afford it.

I scrolled through the filters, narrowing the armor by resistance. Of the many damage types listed on the dropdown, there were really only three that fit the bill: Dark, Curse, and Eldritch.

I thought back to the cloying, silhouetted form in the elevator. “Cursed,” definitely described it, but it had touched me without inflicting any status effect. Dark felt like an overly generic descriptor for how fucking unsettling the thing was.

Having narrowed it down, I searched for any light armor with Eldritch Resistance.

The search was populated almost entirely with robes. There was only one acceptable option for armor:

Description: This gray-and-black armor is said to have been crafted by a necromancer who conquered death, only to find deeper darkness beyond. A series of complex runes woven into the design makes this armor magic resistant and potentially resistant to rarer damage types, though whether it has the capacity to evade a true abomination is unknowable.

Item Class: Rare

Item Requirements: Intelligence 10 | Will 11

Item Value: S40,000

As soon as I realized that the price wasn’t factoring in my discount, I was thrilled. Magic resistance was an invaluable boon, considering how powerful magic seemed to be. The description was being deliberately coy with how much the armor would help against eldritch enemies, but it was the only armor out of thousands to show up with the parameters I’d selected, and item descriptions had a history of keeping certain aspects hidden.

Once I selected the armor, a little box appeared next to the name, allowing me to pull up a three-dimensional preview. I mentally clicked the prompt.

And immediately facepalmed.

When the description stated the armor had been crafted by a necromancer, it wasn’t kidding. The armor looked like a three-way car crash between a plague doctor, a Hot Topic, and the desiccated remains of Edgar Allen Poe. The so-called runic pattern inlaid in the dark-gray material looked suspiciously similar to feathers, and bits of bone painted gray served as accents arranged circularly around the chest plate.

It wasn’t nearly as difficult to look at as some other User armor I’d seen, the necromancer who supposedly created it seemed to have something of an eye for fashion, but any subtlety was erased by the metric fuck-ton of edge.

I went through the five stages of grief twice before finally reaching acceptance and completing the purchase.

Once twenty minutes had elapsed, the armor was automatically delivered to my inventory. With a sigh, I equipped it and entered the dungeon.

/////

Audrey stuck her head out of the elevator before me, peering at the side where the first Flowerfang had ambushed me, then wandered out into the clearing. The mobs on this floor hadn’t repopulated, so all we were left with was a meadow with a green vista as far as the eye could see.

I reached into my inventory and retrieved the monster core, attempting to ignore the clearly gothic inspired nature of my gauntlet. It didn’t look quite as bad in normal lighting, some of the edgier, I-am-become-death details like the bones and feather etching were barely visible unless you knew what you were looking at. Still, it was exponentially more comfortable than my previous set of armor, and a solid step up considering the resistance and rarity.

Audrey eyed me with suspicion. “Are you… sure…”

I glared at her. “What else do you want? You literally refused to move until I stood in front of the two-way mirror in the lobby. I had a reflection. I am not a vampire.”

“Ooookay.” Audrey said, her chubby face riddled with doubt.

“Just, secure the perimeter.”

“Securing…” Audrey drifted away, but not before sending me a mental image of Flowerfangs taking refuge from a storm in the wrong cave, subsequently chased out by humanoids with sharpened fangs, clad in outfits with more than passing resemblance to the armor I had just purchased.

“Smartass helianthus,” I muttered.

Matt

Level 8 Ordinator

Identity: Matt, Level 3 Page

Strength: 6

Toughness: 6

Agility: 12

Intelligence: 15

Perception: 8

Will: 12

Companionship: 1

Active Title: Jaded Eye

Feats: Double-Blind, Ordinator’s Guile I, Ordinator’s Emulation, Stealth I, Awareness I.

Skills: Probability Spiral, LVL 10. Suggestion, LVL 14. One-handed, LVL 6

Summons: Audrey — Flowerfang Hybrid. Bond LVL 3

Selve: 9,561 (-100 per week)

Skill Points Available: 3. Feat points available: 4.

<>

I held the monster core in my hand nervously. This was it.

I’d banked my feat points from the previous level, hoping to find something capable of shielding me from mental interference from my summons in the likely case the wolf was hostile. If that didn’t work out, the only other recourse was stat dumping into intelligence, something I wanted to avoid.

Thankfully, my patience was rewarded.

At the cost of four feat points, it was expensive, but completely worth it. The section about those under the Ordinator’s thrall was confusing—from the way it was stated, I didn’t think counted. But the description explicitly stated that it covered summons.

Along with Volition, I slotted two additional skill points into Will, just to be safe, and another into Agility.

Pain racked my body, mainly localized to my arms and legs, but significantly less than before. It appeared that my previous suspicion was correct. Will really didn’t hurt the same way the others did.

Then, holding my breath in anticipation, I consumed the monster core.