Questionable Gifts

Chapter 51

It took me two days and help from the skeletons to get the blue and green stacks fully sorted. They banded together in parties and walked down from the entrance to check the layout. I didn't do anything to help them, letting them explore it naturally since that was the point. Their perfect dark vision made it a little less than accurate to a mortal's experience, but it was close enough.

Predictably they didn't have any trouble with the blue stack, and the green provided only minor irritations. No one even came close to ending up respawning, which raised a question. They were sixth level, and while I wanted the green stacks to be easy, I wasn't sure I wanted it to be that easy.

"Thoughts, questions, concerns?" I asked as a party arrived at the mirror. They had traversed the yellow stack as well, but I wasn't focusing on that for the moment. I'd already decided to move the necropolis down to become the orange stack boss encounter. I just needed to finish putting in the red stacks floor plan before I could make the switch.

"It was kind of… Boring, to be honest, Mistress," Angelo piped up easily. The rest of the skeletons milled, clearly not feeling up to critiquing the experience to my face.

"Not enough of a challenge from the traps, too little combat?" I prompted, pen in hand. I was offended though I was getting a little irritated at the poor quality of the feedback. I really needed to make a standard form and just text it to everyone.

"Yes, to both. The bats were interesting, but I feel like there should have been more than one major fight," Angelo offered.

"Yeah, that's been pretty common. I'm going to add some floor boss challenges starting with the green stack. Blues not supposed to be hard anyway," I explained. Chris had given me a pretty thorough dressing-down about my trap placements. I wasn't going to take all of his advice. That would end with not a dungeon so much as a Rube Goldberg murder machine. All the same, I was going to push the difficulty up.

"Aesthetically?" I asked though I wasn't super hopeful.

"It's probably nice if you like caves. I mean, some of it was pretty… Are we allowed to go above ground?" Angelo asked. I was caught off guard since I'd been scribbling some notes.

"Right now? Sure, I don't think you can leave the dungeon even up there but feel free to walk around if you want," I said, probably a little too quickly. Of course, I could take the offer back if I needed to, but it seemed harmless enough. I didn't really enjoy going above ground without reason myself. It was probably why I hadn't thought to ask the skeletons before.

"Thank you, Mistress. I believe I'll excuse myself to watch the sunset then," Angelo said, giving a slight bow. I nodded and excused the rest of the skeletons with a gesture. Then, thinking about the matter for a couple moments, I decided to send a text. It wasn't fair to let him go and not inform the rest of the bone brigade, as they called themselves, of the news.

The popularity of the idea was confirmed a few minutes later when most of the population of the necropolis started drifting by me. Alone, in pairs, a few in small groups, they all gave the odd wave or bow as they passed. Seeing them, I felt bad that the idea hadn't occurred to me until someone else brought it up.

Aside from the exchanges with the skeletons, I paid attention to my work. Sorting the green stacks floor plan was going fine, but Angelo's words were nagging at me. Adding a floor boss would be easy enough, but mid-bosses were also staples of games I'd liked to play. Of course, that would mean adding additional layers.

Additional layers weren't a problem, but they would need more planning. So would how adventurers got around the expanded dungeon. Stairs were going to be an enormous pain in the ass, mainly since I hadn't found a method to prevent someone from going the wrong way on them. I didn't want people to be able to skip straight to the bottom of a stack.

I didn't doubt that some people would be strong enough to farm lower-tier bosses. I just didn't want them to be able to walk straight to them like it was a free lunch. They were a bit expensive, but there were the linked teleport circles in the store that I'd been eyeing.

After a couple minutes of thinking, I decided that I'd use them to teleport to the start of stacks and up from the safe zones after the boss fights. Getting between different layers in a stack would require stairs. Ones found at the beginning and end of the layers.

It was a pretty basic set up in my opinion, but it didn't bother me. Internal systems needed to be functional and provide utility. They were one of the only things I'd emphasize function over form with. Not that I wouldn't try to make them aesthetically pleasing later.

I kept an eye on the system clock as I worked. Then, when it was only a half-hour before the refresh, I sent Elim a quick warning text. That done, I went ahead with buying his blessing.

I was glad to be alone for the moment since I wasn't sure what would happen after. If I had to deal with a bunch of pop-ups, I'd look like a lunatic staring into the air and mumbling to myself. Not the kind of image that instilled confidence in one's subordinates.

I could have done it in share mode so others could see but chose not to. This was dealing with personal information, and I felt like that should be respected. Information privacy, as I was familiar with it, probably wasn't a thing locally. However, that didn't mean I would ignore it.

As soon as I confirmed the purchase, I felt like battery acid was coursing through the veins I no longer had. Corroding and destroying as they gushed through me until I filled with it.

Visions and pain slammed through me too fast to process much of it meaningfully. Kings Played Chess On Fine Green Silk while the world heaved and burned around them. Both had hands enough to cover their eyes, ears, and all the mouths of creation. The runes I had seen made up their crowns, and them, and everything else. All data was for the worms, and no matter if the game was chess, dice, or scrabble, they were just fucking a dead horse to wring the last vestige of pleasure from a well run dry.

I woke up did something new. I threw up. Compared with the simple heaving wretches of a mortal body, this was much worse. The entirety of my consciousness seemed to bunch up before tearing something from itself and forcing it out.

The thing that came up was a glittering fragment of crystal, and I recoiled from it though my body was leaden, and I ended up slithering away from it a few feet before collapsing rather than hovering.

I huddled against the wall and tried to gather my thoughts. The experience was done, the pain and the visions were gone, but it lingered in a way upgrade sickness hadn't. It wasn't until I heard someone approaching from the necropolis that I pulled myself together a little.

Quickly I put the crystal into my inventory. I was scared of what it might mean but more afraid of it being seen.

"Mi-Mistress?" Henry called out. I felt relieved at the sound of his voice. Aaron might have been able to sense something about what happened. Or not. I had almost no idea how magic worked outside of a handful of encyclopedia entries I'd read but only partly understood.

"Yes?" I said, glad my psychic voice didn't reflect the state of my body. If it had, that would have come out hoarse at best. As it was, there was still a tremor in it, a hint of my fear.

"Are you alright?" Henry asked, suddenly close to me. Skeletal hand reaching out to touch my face. I wasn't sure if he'd used his movement ability or if I'd just zoned out. Either way, I froze in surprise.

"Yes… Just feeling a bit off," I said, uncertain if I was lying or not. I still wasn't hovering, but I could sit on surfaces with effort, so it wasn't totally unnatural.

"A-are you sure?" Henry asked, obviously still concerned. I chuckled a little, tilting my head into his hand without thinking. I couldn't really feel the contact, but I knew it was there and that was comforting in its own way.

"Thank you, but I'm fine," I said, sounding more confident than I felt.

"Were you looking for me?" I asked, trying to derail the current conversation.

"Y-Yes… w-would you you-" Henry broke off, looking away in distaste. I put a hand on his shoulder, knowing he didn't like it when his stutter got worse than usual. It didn't feel right to ignore his discomfort after he'd come over to check on me.

"It's okay, take your time," I said gently. Henry nodded but stayed silent a moment longer.

"Would y-you ac-accompany me star-stargazing?" Henry asked. I was surprised by the offer and almost said no. I should have been checking on the crystal and trying to figure out what happened.

Despite knowing what I should do, I was reluctant. The pain and visions were still too fresh in my mind. So a distraction was most welcome.

"I'd love to," I said, trying to push myself off the floor. It was awkward, my tail not really cooperating at first. Henry had to help me up, and it took a couple tries to figure out a kind of serpentine slither. This time when Henry offered me his elbow, I genuinely needed the support.

"What's that," I asked, finally noticing he was carrying something. It looked remarkably like a picnic basket, but neither of us ate. Thinking of that, I quickly grabbed a pair of chaos cola's from my chamber of machinations.

I'd thought I'd used them all up at the party until a few hours after it. Then, to my surprise, the plastic ring holder had spawned new ones. The old cans disappearing without a trace. At some point, when I was feeling brave, I was really going to have to put on in my inventory and find out what made them tick.

"A a s-surprise," Henry said archly. I could have checked with the system but refrained. It was a bad habit to rob life of its little mysteries, in my opinion. Not that I wasn't occasionally tempted to cheat at board games with it, particularly against Chris.

"Alright," I said, laughing. It felt good to be moving away from the necropolis. To have something novel to do rather than worry. Just using my inventory had made me flinch a little when I caught sight of the crystal. As if it might notice I was looking and hurt me again, though I knew that was silly.

We started traversing the stacks at a sedate pace, my slither hardly quick. I was still getting the hang of it. Despite that, Henry didn't seem put out by our slow going. Instead, he waited patiently when I stumbled and had to figure out what exactly had gone wrong.

When we reached the descent chamber, as I called the formal entrance to the dungeon from the top layer, we paused. Henry was waiting for me, but I was looking up.

"Shall we, or did you have somewhere else in mind?" I asked as I pulled a ramp up with ease. It had been a few weeks since the systems new year, but the view up top was one of the best available.

"Not not at a-all, that would be lov-love..." Henry gave up on the final word, and I just nodded. It didn't take a rocket surgeon to know what he'd meant.

Once outside, Henry revealed his surprise. A quilt in black with blue starbursts that he laid out on the ground. The night was clear as we sat down and looked up to find countless stars glittering above us.

I knew thanks to the system that below us, plenty of skeletons had climbed up the mountain's slope. They'd stopped further down but were taking in the view just like us. I was glad Henry hadn't minded the more secluded spot. It wouldn't have been right to spoil the other's fun with my presence.

"Drink?" I asked. I held out a can of chaos soda to Henry. He accepted, popping the top and taking a few sips. I did the same and got strawberry kiwi and wondered what Henry's had ended up being.

"The view really is lovely," I said instead, laying back on the quilt. The sky was magnificent, and I felt myself relaxing a little more.

"Indeed," Henry said softly. He'd looked toward me as he said it, and for a moment, I'd been stunned. I had to stifle a laugh in the next instant. I was probably all but invisible. Only my fiery orbs glowing eerily in the night to be seen.

Tickled by my own vanity, I let a laugh escape that turned into a sigh. Neither of us said anything more, and Henry laid back beside me on the quilt. We stayed like that for nearly an hour until I felt safe.

Finally free of the shadow of what happened, I decided it was time to take a serious look at the elephant in my inventory. The crystal was a milky white in color with surface details that reminded me of a mouth and ears. All of the information fields came up gibberish save for one, Boon, its name.

Given that I'd been activating a blessing for Duello, a god of communication, it made a kind of sense. I tried looking up what a boon was and how it worked, but the encyclopedia but turned up nothing form than a basic definition. It was something meant to be useful or grant a favor. How, why, and when were not covered.

"Ugh," I moaned, embarrassed by my earlier reaction. I'd been caught off guard, but I shouldn't have been so frazzled. To be fair, though, I wasn't subject to blinding pain out of the blue and vomiting glowing rocks on a typical day.

"Are you al-alright, Mi-Mistress?" Henry asked. He'd pushed up on an elbow to get a look at me.

"Fine, thank you... and you can call me 42, just 42," I said, laughing again. He always said it so seriously that I couldn't help finding it a bit funny despite the situation.

"A-As you wish, ju-just 42," Henry replied. I laughed harder and gave him a little push, throwing him onto his back beside me again. We both laughed then, and I felt relief sink deep into my pseudo flesh. Everything was fine for now.