“Your [ Inventory ] might be the best place to start. What do you know about it already?”

“Not much,” Sláine admitted. “It can store… things? Somewhere?” Her uninspired extrapolation was punctuated by a helpless shrug.

“Yeah, it’s, uh… damn, why did you have to come from the boonies? None of my usual shorthand descriptions will work here.”

“I am so very sorry about my nation of origin.”

The dryness of Sláine’s tone earned a bark of a laugh from Red.

“At least you’re not an elf. Being stuck a hundred years in the past is practically a point of pride with them.”

She cleared her throat, then cradled her hips with her hands. “Anyway. The specifics aren’t important, but your [ Inventory ] is a small, personal piece of the database the System allocates to every adventurer so they have a convenient place to shove their stuff. It doesn’t play by the rules of the real world - you don’t have to worry about shit like weight or breakability - but time still applies, though its pretty weird. ‘Rot’ only kicks in after a thing comes out of your [ Inventory ], so… if you’re cleaning out your virtual fridge, best to do it by a dumpster where you can evict all that gross, smelly garbage you’ve forgotten about for months directly into the trash. Got it?”

“I… think so.” Context clues helped Sláine infer that Red was talking about an icebox. “I’ve heard that various limbs and organs harvested from monsters have alchemical uses. So, I could cut open one of these bugs and add its innards to my [ Inventory ] to sell?”

“Sure could,” Red cheerfully supplied. “That’s why crafters like [ Alchemists ] bother with dungeoneering at all; after enough whining over people without the right [ Skills ] butchering their precious materials, some of them just cut out the middle-man and do it themselves.”

“And entire bodies? They can be added to someone’s [ Inventory ]?” She was getting used to the feeling, now. Slowly.

“Yep. Well - normally, people do this.” Red knelt, gesturing over the pile, and Sláine watched an eviscerated corpse melt into light much like the flower had. Instead of simply vanishing, however, it condensed into a small cube of crystal, and Red picked it up to show her companion. “This is known as ‘loot’. It’s, uh, a more efficient storage method for monsters, one that fits better into your [ Inventory ] and that the Protocols like eating more. You knew that, right? Adventurers don’t just kill monsters because they’re icky and servitors of ancient eldritch fear-gods, but also because the Protocols think they’re really tasty and we can exchange them for money and power?”

“Not in those words, but yes.” A slight pause. Sláine considered delving more into that, but humanity’s theological weirdness was a bit too much for her at the moment. “You mentioned ‘fitting better’. Weight may not be an issue, but there have to be some limitations, I assume?”

“Yeah - uh, it’s kind of a complicated formula, but once you learn how to [ Inspect ] things, you’ll be able to see the numerical ‘weight’ value Protocols assign shit to make inventory management easier. Size and physical weight do matter, but so does magical potency and, mm… metaphysical importance.”

“Huh,” she replied, then continued asking theoretical questions to help puzzle this odd system out. “What about living things? Can living things be added to your [ Inventory ]?”

“Sort of?” Red drew out her words in a way that indicated skepticism. “Uh, there’s… some [ Classes ] that have to do with keeping familiars or pets, but those are special cases. Mostly, no.”

Sláine nodded. “But bodies can.”

“Yes.”

“So if I died, you could put my body in your [ Inventory ].”

“Yes,” Red replied, and Sláine could practically imagine all the extra ‘e’s in the word. “That is a thing I could do.”

“And if you kept my body in there long enough, I wouldn’t smell, but when you took it out it would be rotten? Or just bones?”

“That’s - yeah, if I wanted to do that, that’s about how it works.”

Sláine nodded again. “Can anyone see into your [ Inventory ]? Steal from it? Etcetera?”

“No. I mean, it’s logged into the System, so presumably your Protocol or anyone with administrative privileges to your Protocol could see into it or search it, but they wouldn’t be able to, like… take anything.”

“So, what you're saying is, hypothetically speaking your [ Inventory ] would be a great place to hide the body of someone you murdered, as long as no one in a position to do so thought to check it.”

Sláine had absolutely no idea what was going on behind that mask, but she could just tell from Red’s voice that she was grinning from ear to ear. This is probably what Amelia was vaguely talking about when she’d called Red a lunatic. “Hypothetically, yes, that’s true. Also important to this scenario is how you go about said murder. Protocols keep track of [ Skill ] use, so if you used one to kill someone else, there’d be a record of it - at least for a little while. If you wanted someone dead, it’d be a better idea to engineer an accident.”

“Completely hypothetically.”

“Yes, of course.”

There was a pause. Both of them crouched there silently by the bodies, observing the pile of insect remains. Then, “…So I’m not going to ask but also I really wanna know - “

“There’s not,” Sláine said. “It was just a thought experiment.”

“Well, alright!” From Red’s bright tone, Sláine had no way of discerning whether or not she believed her. It was no matter, though; if Sláine had been here to kill someone in particular, she certainly wouldn’t be asking a relative stranger for pointers. She now had a lot of information about the sorts of things Red knew and thought about, though, which she filed away for safekeeping. And… she had a sense that Red was the sort of person who enjoyed finding ludicrous uses for things.

She still was trying to foster a pleasant work environment, after all.

“Any more questions?”

“Yes. How does it work, exactly?”

“Hm. Actually, I’ve got a trick that might help. So, the potions I gave you - hold one in your hand. Then close your eyes, check your stats, and just… keep focusing on that. Okay?”

“Okay,” she repeated as she did so.The parameters appeared in her head, and she tried to keep them there - revealing a few more lines in the process. [ STR ]? Wait, strength. It was like she saw the acronym and heard the word. Weird.

“Now, in the space beside your name, picture the word [ Inventory ].”

“It’s not really…” Sláine tried to explain it wasn’t really seeing, not really - like, it sort of was, but it also really wasn’t, but on the third hand, Red was actually trying to be helpful right now and Sláine wanted to encourage that behavior. So, grunting, she attempted to imagine a word written in nonexistent space next to letters that felt like they were written simultaneously in two different languages and also imprinted directly on her brain. Great.

At first, it was an exercise in sheer futility, but perhaps something about Registration changed the way Sláine’s brain worked on a fundamental level, because she began to become aware of just how much was beyond her current realm of knowledge, how the edges of her world and capabilities had expanded, and it started with the flickering not-words spelling out the word [ Inventory ] next to her name.

“What now?” Sláine asked, trying (and failing) to not sound excited. It wasn’t that she was interested, it wasn’t that she cared about this, she was just trying to get a handle on it so people stopped talking to her like a child, really - (In her momentary lack of focus, the buzz sputtered out, and she dropped all of her self-justifying pretenses as she reclaimed it. So it was a bit like meditation. Okay.)

She did pick up on Red’s somewhat pleased tone - a subtle thing, humming beneath the general veneer of mockery and sarcasm. “Now - while not closing the men— er, letting that tingling feeling slip away, feel the weight of the potion in your hand. Its presence. Now picture a space forming around it - a box, a sphere, weird wibbly oval, whatever - and… move that box over the word [ Inventory ].”

Red watched as Sláine silently attempted to navigate these instructions. It wasn’t instantaneous, nor was it easy - she lost the connection a few more times while trying to hold both the swimming letters and the imaginary bubble in her head at once. Still, she could feel herself getting better at seeking out the growing familiarity of the System’s hum, and finally, after a few minutes of focus -

[ Basic Antidote x 1 added to Inventory ]

Sláine nearly gasped, but she managed to contain it as her eyes flew open and settled on her now empty palm. She didn’t restrain the satisfied grin that crept across her features though, and not even Red’s ugly cackle could expel it from her face.

“Finally, we’re getting somewhere! How does it feel, gaining the mastery of a four year old human?”

“Oh shut up,” Sláine let out with a huff, though it didn’t really have much bite to it. “How do I take it out again? Can I do it in combat?”

“You can, though at the moment it might be a little difficult for you. To check your [ Inventory ] though, go through that entire fun using your imaginaaation process, but instead of brain geometry, try looking harder at the word [ Inventory ]. Treat it like a… door you can push on, or a drawer you can open. Got it?”

“Maybe. Hm…”

Sláine gave it a try. After a bit of confused fumbling, she found Red’s drawer metaphor to really be quite helpful. Perhaps it was because the brackets already gave her the visual impression of one - and the sensation of pulling at the mental sensation helped connect her to it, and it to her. When the words in her head shifted, she felt a rush of success, even though her space in the System wasn’t filled with anything of particular note.

[ Basic Antidote ] [ x1 ]

Still, it was victory, and now that she’d opened her [ Inventory ], retrieving things felt more intuitive. Summoning that mental bubble around the only item there, she imagined it moving to her hand, and when she opened her eyes, it sat there like she’d never stashed it into unreality in the first place. She continued to practice, and once all the medicine she’d given her had been deposited, Red awarded Sláine’s success with an only slightly condescending “Bravo!” as she checked her final tally.

[ Basic Antidote ] [ x1 ]

[ Health Potion ] [ x2 ]

“You’re certainly being more… congenial,” Sláine commented after Red had finished clapping, though the only real reaction she got was a rough shrug.

“Eh, after seeing just how good you are at slaughtering shit, I figured this isn’t actually too bad of an arrangement. Maybe you’ll even be useful.”

“Useful,” she repeated, and watched as insect by insect, Red transformed the pile into small cubes. “Regarding what?”

Red didn’t look up. “What do you think? Quests, making money, work. Being an adventurer sort of boils down to ‘stomp around horribly inhospitable hell-mazes and beat up all of its inhabitants’, doesn’t it?”

“Hm. Would any of that have to do with all those crystals you have in your room?”

Red’s face might be hidden, but Sláine was certainly perceptive enough to notice the way her shoulders stiffened and how she forced them to relax after a brief silence.”Perhaps it does. Why?”

“I simply wanted to idly state, just for the record… that I’m not particularly interested in material goods. As long as the job gets done well enough that people don’t complain and keep letting me fight things, I’m satisfied.”

“Hm.” A beat. Then, ”Well, maybe this will work out okay.”

With a snap of her gloved fingers - no sound, just the motion - the cubes littering the ground disappeared simultaneously, and the masked woman stood with a rustling flourish of cloth. Sláine wasn’t sure how much she believed that statement, but as Red strode forward, leading her deeper into the nest of crawling things scuttling in the dark… she shouldered her axe and felt vaguely optimistic about the promise of future fights.

>> Proceed, but this time, avoid splitting the party