Glass shards fly everywhere, waves of the crystal daggers slicing through the air in a hailstorm as the ghoul runs along the walls of floor twelve. Thousands of glass splinters crash into the stones behind its sprinting form. But they all always just miss the creature, as it rushes after Fresh, who is on her second lap of the arena.

“JUBILEEEEE~!”

“I told you to stay upstairs! Idiot!” shouts Jubilee after her, swinging their arm out in a wide arc. The ground shakes and the ghoul leaps away just in time as a jagged glass spire bursts out of the wall in front of it. With strangely nimble, apish reflexes, the creature drops back down to the ground, swinging off of the crystal.

The ghoul takes another tick of damage from her curse and twitches as a black dribble seeps out of its decaying body. Its already elongated neck spasms once.

Fresh Ghoul HP: 7/7 62/66 SOUL: +-^°#*+?/&&& 1/1

(Ghoul) took 4 DARK DMG {Malady}

The ghoul rights itself back upright and continues the chase, running across the arena to try to cut the girl off, rather than chasing her in a circle. It doesn’t even care about Jubilee, who can’t seem to hit it. It just wants her. Fresh slides, her boots kicking up some dirt as the girl, sweaty from running, stops and then bolts back the other way, doing a sharp turn-around to try and confuse it.

The ghoul jumps, its long neck stretching forward as it springs after her. Fresh yelps and dives out of the way, falling towards Jubilee who slams their hands into the dirt. A strange, wet squelch rings out and the arena goes quiet.

Looking up and behind herself, Fresh stares over towards the ghoul. The undead thing is impaled on a spire of glass that is coming straight down from the ceiling. The crystal shard has pierced through its head from above. It hangs there, its body limp beneath itself. A moment later, it slowly starts to slide downwards, as the weight of its body pulls its impaled head free, the gestalt sinks with a wet squeak, like rubbing of a finger against a foggy window.

A moment later, the ghoul flops to the ground, as dead as can be.

You got [78/78] ! (Party)

[Level up! You are now LEVEL 7 ! ]

{Cooking 3}{Crafting 6}{Gathering 2}{Adventuring 2}{Witch-Crafting 7}{Mercantile 5}

~*+- PROFILE -+*~ HP: 8/8 +1 "FRESH" SOUL: $%§ / §**+'# LEVEL: 7

STATUS: ???

CLASS: [WITCH]

- of the Black-Fountain

OBOLS: 11507

SUB-CLASS: [CRAFTSMAN]

RACE: HUMAN

[INVENTORY]

STR: 05 +1 WIS: 04 LUK: 04 DEX: 06 +1 INT: 04 LOV: 04

*~+- PLEASE CHOOSE AN ABILITY -+~*

[1] Choice Remaining

[Witch-crafting 7] {Abomination}

(AOE) A witch’s midnight whisper that corrupts the hearts of the living.

Select a location within your line of sight. Within a 12m radius of that spot, you will deal damage dependent on the phase of the moon. Additionally, corrupted enemies have a chance to become rabid and to attack their own.

If cast during the day, this spell will work as if on the night of the new moon.

Fresh sighs in relief. “Thank you, Jubilee.”

“Don’t come down the stairs, dumb-ass!” barks Jubilee at her. “Ghouls always go after the lowest leveled target.”

Fresh pushes herself upright, sitting on the ground next to her friend as they look over at the twitching corpse. Picking up a fistful of dirt, Fresh holds it up to Jubilee who takes a pinch of it and snaps their fingers. A dozen small crystals of glass burst out of the ground before them, the jagged formations growing in all manner of different directions, tearing the ghoul apart for good in a rather grisly display.

She tilts her head, looking at the sight, realizing that, while it is disgusting, she isn’t really fazed by the violence of it all anymore. Scratching her head, she looks over to her new abilities together with Jubilee.

[Witch-crafting 7]{Abomination}

(AOE) A witch’s midnight whisper that corrupts the hearts of the living.

Select a location within your line of sight. Within a 12m radius of that spot, you will deal damage dependent on the phase of the moon.

Additionally, corrupted enemies have a chance to become rabid and to attack their own.

(If cast during the day, this spell will work as if on the night of the new moon.)

“No,” says Jubilee plainly in the second that Fresh looks at the ability. The girl purses her lips and looks at the next one. A combat ability would be nice though and an attack with a large radius too? It would be great for her progress in the dungeon.

[Witch-crafting 2]{Cauldron Bubble}

Allows you to create Moondust by boiling Moonwater down to its residue

“Fucking moonwater,” sighs Jubilee and Fresh tilts her head, the two of them scanning the last choice together.

[Party]{Taking the lead}

As party-leader, gain +1 to INT/WIS for each current member of your party, up to a maximum of six.

“That one. Take that one, please,” says Jubilee pointing to it. “It’s the only fucking normal thing here.”

Fresh taps her chin, thinking. “But I really want the first one, Jubilee. Having a new attack spell would be nice. I could really help you fight things!”

Jubilee locks their hands on their hips. “I saw your freaky, ‘melt everything but the eyes and the loot’ curse already! Do you really think this is a good idea?” They look over to the ability-windows. “What about the moonwater one? Maybe you could make something out of moonwater powder?” they suggest, shrugging. “But what the fuck do I know?”

Fresh tilts her head back the other way. “I’m going to take the first one, Jubilee.”

“Area of effect attacks are dangerous. You might end up killing somebody with it,” warns her friend, looking at her seriously.

Fresh thinks for a moment, her finger hovering above the window in pause, before she looks back to her friend with a smile. “I know, Jubilee. That’s the point.”

Ability Chosen: [Abomination]

Fresh gets up, wiping her dirty hands off on her dress and looks over at the dead ghoul. She doesn’t want to have to kill anyone. But she’s decided that if a day comes when she has to follow through on her promise of ‘whatever it takes’, then she’s going to. She’s sure of it. She’s not going to let anything or anyone take this life from her. No gods, no people, no hero. Nobody is going to ruin this. Though, she hopes that it will never come to that.

“So what do ghouls drop?” asks Fresh, walking over to the mangled corpse that is melting into a puddle of black goo. Apparently, the curse does its thing even if she isn’t the one who kills it.

“Three guesses,” says Jubilee. “Here’s your hint. It becomes a vampire if it gets old enough.”

Fresh scratches her cheek. “Teeth?”

“Teeth,” says Jubilee.

Somewhat nervously, the girl stares down at the bubbling pool of sludge that the ghoul is melting into, coagulating into a thick, oily soup. Two milky eyeballs float through the sludge, together with a pair of large, sharp looking teeth. Fresh looks at her hands and then back towards Jubilee’s gloves. “Jubileeee~?”

“Forget it,” says Jubilee, waving her off and walking down the staircase. “I’m not going near that mess. If you want 'em, you go get ‘em.”

Gulping, Fresh looks down at the ooze, at the pair of dead eyes staring back up her way.

A minute later, two objects more in her bag than before, Fresh carefully walks down the stairs towards floor thirteen.

(Fresh) got [Ghoul-tooth](Normal) x2 [Ghoul-tooth](Normal) A large, sharp, jagged tooth made out of unusually dense bone. It’s pointed and has an unusually sharp, stiff edge.

Weight: 0.1kg Value: ???

The two of them spend another hour in the dungeon, this time, Fresh stays up the stairs however and lets Jubilee clear the floors alone, despite her fingers itching to try out the new spell. She doesn’t want to even think about using it though, as long as Jubilee is anywhere near the area.

Floors eight to sixteen are apparently rife with plentiful undead, who give a small amount of experience points individually, but are also large enough in number to cancel that out. Each group of zombies is easily a dozen or more. Each pack of roaming skeletons is a strong four to six members. Fresh has no idea how she would manage to deal with this many creatures on her own.

She wonders how the red-wizard and the man from the sect do it? She supposes that they do it just like Jubilee does. Fresh tilts her head, watching as a glass impaled skull flies past her and gets stuck on the wall. “They must all be so strong…” she says to herself, scratching her cheek and watching the mayhem unfold below.

Eventually they reach the boss-door to floor sixteen and Fresh is already close to another level up. But Jubilee wants to call it quits for the night. “We have work tomorrow.”

“Jubileeeee~?” begs Fresh, wanting to clear the boss-room for the experience. But also for the shortcut.

“No,” says Jubilee, waving her off and starting to walk back up the stairs. Fresh sighs, but then perks up. Why is she feeling sad? She should be happy that Jubilee took her through all of these floors already. Maybe she’s just being greedy now, actually? She runs after her friend.

“Thank you for helping me through the dungeon again, Jubilee!”

“Yeah,” says Jubilee, waving her off and yawning as they walk. Ten minutes later the two of them are back at home. Fresh falls asleep before she has long to even think about how tired she is. She’s certainly not going to get a full night’s sleep tonight. But she’s content nonetheless with her new level and ability.

The next day comes and both of them wake up late, heading downstairs to open the door for Basil who is already standing outside. The priestess is trying to console a particularly twitchy red-wizard. The red-wizard bolts inside, rushing past all three of them to the shelves.

“Good morning,” calls Fresh over the wizard, looking at her curiously as she scoops up armfuls of various potions.

“I was standing outside for an hour yesterday!” complains the red-wizard.

“We were closed,” says Jubilee. “I put up a sign.”

“But I needed potions!” says the wizard, running to the counter.

Jubilee shrugs indifferently. “We were closed.”

The red-wizard sets the potions down, together with a few coins. Fresh hasn’t even managed to walk across the room to make their change, as she already starts bagging her own bottles into the red tote that she had brought. By the time Fresh gets there, the wizard has already cracked one open and downs the entire bottle, slamming the glass down onto the counter and rattling the coins.

Picking up the tote-bag, the red-wizard runs out of the store without another word, squishing past Basil and Jubilee who stand there, watching her, perplexed. The red-wizard runs straight towards the dungeon, pulling open another potion as she runs without slowing down in the least.

“What’s with her?” asks Basil.

Fresh laughs, scratching her cheek. “She uh… she really likes the potions…” Jubilee shuts the door and the three of them get the store ready to actually open in a little bit.