They had gotten to floor six of the new dungeon on their first outing before they returned to the adventurers’ guild, where they then ate their fill of greasy bar-food. Fresh made sure to tip the little fairy woman generously. But she wasn’t sure if she was doing her a favor or not, as the fairy has to make multiple trips to get her coins. Despite their expenses, they seem to have made a small profit today and the four of them head inside of their room to fall asleep on their new bed-rolls. The softness of the new bedding makes the night much less cold and is a great relief to all of their sore bodies. Even Shamrock opts to flop down onto his large mat, the floor shaking as he gracelessly lands with a loud thud, in his full armor as always.

“Will you ever take that off?” asks Jubilee, looking over at him.

“No,” says the man as he lays on his back, holding his cursed sword above his head as he continues to stare at it through the slits of his helmet.

“I bet you stink like all hell,” says Jubilee, placing their hands on their hips.

“I do not,” says Shamrock.

“What about you?” asks Basil and Jubilee turns their head, glaring at her.

“What about me, you garden-escapee?”

Basil shrugs. “Are you ever going to take all of that off?”

“I’ll cut your eyes out first, smart-ass” says Jubilee, pointing a finger at the priestess.

Fresh, who was already getting ready to lay down, walks over on her knees between the two of them. “Let’s not fight, everyone! We had a really great day today!” says the girl, looking around at all of them.

Jubilee points at her. “And what about you? You’ve been wearing the same dress for almost a month now! It’s disgusting!”

Fresh clutches her face in horror. Oh no. Her fears were true. Her friends really did judge her for wearing the same clothes all the time. “I don’t have anything else!” argues Fresh defensively. “Besides, I washed it the other day,” she says, crossing her arms and turning her head away in a huff.

Jubilee sighs. “I’m going to start making some new clothes tomorrow. I’ll need the fluff and some fabric. You two go get some.”

Fresh and Basil look at each other and then back to Jubilee and nod at the same time. These terms are acceptable. Too tired to argue any further, they all fall down onto their bedrolls and before any of them have time to talk about much else, they all fall into a deep sleep. Though Fresh does wake up a few times, as Basil who has opted to sleep close to her for whatever reason, kicks and flails a lot in her restless dreams.

Soon, the morning comes.

Fresh finds herself losing track of time as they run around the city and the dungeon again. They buy some tailoring materials in the morning and drop them off at the guild for Jubilee to get started with later. Though it will take a while to make their clothes. In the mean-time, they continue on with their dungeon-diving. Those hours blend together into another day and then into another. Those exciting days continue collecting until they merge together into a full week. Her favorite part of this current life is that every day, they all head into the dungeon together. She isn’t able to be too useful all too often though and Shamrock and Jubilee take care of most of the fighting. Fresh does her best though, using her inventory to carry every single piece of their loot that she can. Everything else that is perishable or that would rot inside of the black-water, she carries on her back, pushing through the spontaneous sharp pains in her lower spine with a clenching of her teeth and a firm blinking to remove the dew from her eyes.

Soon enough, during the second day, they make it to floor twelve of the new dungeon where the next sub-boss lies. A small, ice-blue, baby dragon. Small is relative of course, as the creature is the same size as Shamrock.

Fresh marvels at the thing as they stand at the edge of the arena. The small dragon lumbers around the room at a lazy pace, as it gnaws on the many magic-crystals around it. “A dragon…” whispers Fresh excitedly, clenching her fists. She grabs Jubilee’s shoulder and points. “Jubilee! Jubilee! Look! It’s a real dragon!” cries Fresh.

“Yeah, no shit? I see it too,” says Jubilee who then swings their right arm out, knocking twice on Shamrock’s leg. “Come on, let’s go kill it.”

“Acceptable.”

“Ah…!” Fresh wants to tell them to stop and to leave it alone. The creature is oddly beautiful in her eyes, its sky-blue scales shimmering like the crystal ice that seems to be forming more and more all around them the deeper they go. But she knows it has to be done. She hopes that the dragon understands. She promises that she won’t waste a single bit of it.

“Come on, let’s go,” says Basil, pulling her along after the others.

The fight is a success and the day comes to an end with Fresh having leveled up again.

[Level up! You are now LEVEL 10! ]

{Cooking 4}{Crafting 6}{Gathering 2}{Adventuring 3}{Witch-Crafting 7}{Mercantile 5}

~*+- PROFILE -+*~ HP: 11/11 +1 "FRESH" SOUL: $%§ / §**+'# LEVEL: 10!

STATUS: ???

CLASS: [WITCH]

- of the Black-Fountain

OBOLS: 9806

SUB-CLASS: [CRAFTSMAN]

RACE: HUMAN

[INVENTORY]

STR: 07 WIS: 05 +1 LUK: 05 DEX: 07 INT: 05 +1 LOV: 05

Basil claps her hands excitedly as she looks at the new menu. “Congratulations! You’re level ten! Ah…” Basil stops her celebration short as she looks at her stats once again. “You poor thing…”

“I’m fine, Basil, thank you,” says Fresh as she scratches her cheek, laughing as she takes a new ability under Jubilee’s watchful eyes. She realizes that she still hasn’t ever figured out what ability she chose during that fateful night in the northern city.

[Ability Chosen]

[Crafting 6]{Glassworker}

Allows precision glasswork

“Level ten is a big deal for adventurers,” says Jubilee, nodding to her. “Congratulations.”

Fresh beams. “Thanks Jub -!”

“- Great job standing in the back and being useless for nine whole levels,” adds her friend, turning around and waving her off. Fresh reels, feeling the words stab into her heart. “Well, meat-head?” says Jubilee, snapping their fingers at Shamrock. The man’s chest heaves as he lets out a loud, excited breath and reaches into his own bag that is usually empty. Fresh had gotten him one as well, but most of the time she just ended up insisting on carrying everything herself anyways.

Shamrock holds out a cold, off-white bundle of fabric out towards her. “Tribute,” is all that he says.

“It’s not fucking tribute, shit-for-brains!” barks Jubilee. “Stop giving her ideas!”

Basil does her best not to laugh. Fresh looks around at them all, somewhat confused but takes the bundle. It unravels as she grabs it, the new robe flowing out from her fingers. A soft, blueish-white fabric drapes from her hands, the warm kobold fluff trim along the edges tickling her fingers.

[Winter-Spook Robe] (Normal)

A soft, white robe made from several thin layers of a soft, white fabric. Lined with kobold fur, this robe offers excellent protection against the cold.

+4 DEF

+3 COLD RESISTANCE

Weight: 0.78 kg

Color: Blue/Off-white

Value: ???

“It’s for me?” asks Fresh, feeling her throat tighten.

“Yeah. Congratulations,” says Jubilee.

“Great job!” says Basil, from behind her, placing a hand on her shoulder.

“Strong,” says Shamrock, nodding once and flexing an arm towards her.

Fresh cries loudly, breaking out into tears as she buries her face in the new robe to hide it. The first thing she does when they get back is change and prance around in her new outfit. Jubilee had apparently spent the week making hers first as they all knew she was about to reach level ten.

The girl resolves herself to work twice as hard from now on, to prove herself to her friends. At her request, Jubilee makes her a few long pieces of glass that she carves down using her abilities. Basil and Shamrock watch her work curiously, Jubilee seems indifferent and sits on the bed.

“You have to matte the glass, you see?” asks Fresh, showing the two of them the long, rough-surfaced glass plank that she made.

“How come?” asks Basil.

Fresh thinks for a second. “Ah, because Jubilee’s glass-magic breaks if you see your reflection in it.”

“Huh… I’ve never heard of that before,” says Basil. “Why is that?” asks the priestess, turning around towards Jubilee.

“Because you look like a strawberry that got lost on its way to the surface,” says Jubilee, not bothering to look over at her.

Basil sighs, turning back to Fresh. “So that’s why all of your bottles were always so coarse. I thought it was just a design choice.”

“Practical,” says Shamrock, leaning in as he sits on his crossed legs.

Basil thinks out loud. “I suppose the rough surface did make the bottles easier to hold if you had wet hands.”

Fresh nods excitedly. “Mm! Anyways, see, so I have this glass and now I can just use one of my new craftsman abilities and my witch-crafting abilities to -”

“Witch-crafting?” interrupts Basil, as the lantern floats up from behind her back to hover at her side.

“Ah, it’s like craftsman abilities, but for witches!” explains Fresh gleefully, happy to be able to talk to someone so openly and even happier that they seemed to be not only interested, but also excited to see her do so. She places the glass plank onto her lap and holds her hands above it. “Careful not to breathe in the dust!”

(Fresh) uses: [Witch-Crafting: Glasswork Bloodletter] [Glasswork Bloodletter](High)

This keenly sharpened broad-sword is dangerously sharp, but fragile. Due to its nature, this weapon deals high damage, but has extremely low durability.

+12 DMG

Quality Effect: All attacks, even blocked attacks, cause the enemy to bleed, dealing damage equal to the number of strikes every fifteen seconds. After the effect is applied, the counter resets to 0.

Weight: 0.23kg

Durability: Fragile (10/10)

Value: ???

The light purple aura around her hands fades away as it is soaked into the glass and she proudly holds up the new weapon. “Ta-da!”

“Wow…” gasps Basil quietly and Fresh smiles a smug smile as she looks at the woman’s awed expression.

“Right? And if I had some moonwater, I could enchant this to do more damage and it costs next to nothing to make! It’s like with the potions or the bone-weapons!” says Fresh excitedly.

Basil’s expression turns grim. “Does anyone else know about this?”

“Huh?” Fresh opens her eyes fully now, but sees that Basil isn’t looking at her, but rather at Jubilee who stares back intently.

“The fuck do you think? I’m surprised that we didn’t get killed more than once,” says Jubilee. “You don’t know what a pain in my ass it’s been this entire time, trying to keep her from showing the world her fucky witch-fuckery.”

“What’s wrong?” asks Fresh, looking down at the glass sword in her hands, feeling suddenly much less confident. Her eyes drift further down, locking themselves firmly onto the floor. “…Don’t you like it?”

“Boundless power,” says a heavy voice from across from her.

Basil nods in agreement, looking back at her with a serious expression. “Don’t you get it? Imagine if some noble house found out about your powers?” she says. “They’d want you to make them entire armies worth of equipment for free. Something like this…” Basil looks down at the sword. “It’s more dangerous than you know. People will die if word gets out. Countless numbers of them.”

Fresh blinks. “I just want to make useful things that people can use on their adventures though,” says Fresh, looking at the glimmering sword in her hands.

“The sun sets,” says a gruff, heavy voice across from her. “Adventures end,” says Shamrock and Fresh looks up at the harrowed eyes beneath his helmet. “Then the night will come.”

She stares at him and then looks over to Jubilee who sits on the bed, adjusting their mask and she catches a glimpse of their eyes shining beneath the obscuring thing. As she looks at their spring-tide dew, she realizes that Jubilee has often carried the same exact look as Shamrock. Harrowed. Intense.

This is her first adventure, but the others have clearly had the experiences of past ones. Experiences that made them far less naive and warm than she is. She presses her head down, feeling the warm fluff of the new robe on her skin before looking back up to her friends, promising that she won’t do anything to put any of them in danger.