As Spartacius was protesting that my toilet was taking too long, I tried to explain to him the complexities I was encountering:

“Sorry Sparty, I still have some trouble finding the passing boots for these trousers or jacket, besides even worse, the trousers do not fit with the jacket. Maybe with this other jacket? White Flower will need to spell me another blouse that should fit with the ensemble...”

He sighed a bit exasperated.

“You too? Sparty!? You just narrowly escaped death and all you care is to find the passing boots to your jacket?“

“It is not all I care, but I do care. As simple as that. Boots and jacket, trousers and belt, all these must fit! This is the basis for human decency! I don't know how you can't understand this?”

“That'll take the whole night. Why don't you just let her spell you a robe until you finally decide on something!? I am getting torticollis talking like this!”

“Oh, good idea!”

White Flower found also the idea good:

“ A red, white, or a blue dress? Should I put a specific model on it?”

“Ahm? I need to try and see how it works. Can you make me a mirror?”

Spartacius yelled from his side, not realizing we were making fun of him:

“It's just temporary!!”

White Flower answered unperturbed:

“Sure, that's my specialty! I could even dress a mannequin that looks like you.”

“What? You could do that?”

“Sure, I am a master of illusions!”

Everybody laughed whilst Sparty raised his hands in surrender falling to his knees.

“Nooo!”

“You can turn now, I do have a pink dress...”

“Finally!” - he turned and came closer - “Well, hell! A dress suits you well! Why don't you wear a robe instead of trousers?”

“Ahm? No. I'm rather the trousers type of girl. Let me see, these trousers here...”

White Flower interrupted me:

“Before you dress on new equipment, let me tell you my proposition first. That is if you are still interested? It may be useful that you are ahm... dressed only with illusions.”

“Okay? I am all ears!?”

“We could become one person!”

“What do you mean, why would we do that, who will be making the decisions and how can we separate?”

“It will be almost like before when I was a tattoo, but if we become one, then you could use all my magic power not only a fraction of it. Of course, you will need to learn to use it, but I could do some easy shortcuts, I could serve it to you as prepared tattoos. It can work as I did it for healing when you had to say the words: I want to heal you. The difference will be that I will not be able to heal on my own, but only when you would give me the lead. So you could heal or spell fireballs. You will hear me as you heard the tattoo, but now, not in a whisper, but directly in your mind. You could also reply to me in your mind. You could also let me lead, and I would be in charge and do then all my spells. To separate we would need to ask a high-level specialized mage or priest. There are not many who could do the separation properly, but I do know a couple who would gladly do it for me. Does this answer your questions?”

“Why do you propose this?”

“We would be much stronger. I think it is the only way how we could fight the wolshi and get out of here. Unless we want to wait until it gets bored and leaves. Before, it almost killed both of us in mere seconds. Being one would change that equation. You would not die from a couple of corrosive bullets. Even inside it, you would have a much higher chance of survival when we are together. We could heal and blast that thing from the inside until we get in one way or another out again.”

“I... I don't think I want to try that!”

“Oh...”

“But this does not mean that your offer is not interesting. Let me think a little about it. So we have a bit of a separating problem if we want to separate?”

“True. That's a bit of a problem, but it's solvable.”

She said that lowering her head.

“As I said, I cannot do it properly from the inside, we will need the help of a great mage, sorcerer, or priest for this. I have a couple of friends that I trust and would do this for me. Old Oak for instance. When we want to separate I can bring us to Serenity City to get us separated by him. Might cost some gold, but that is not really a problem. Well, it is only an idea, a proposal after all. You decide what the best way is, but think about the last couple of fights and then re-think what would have happened if you would have had the possibility to spell. Maybe you need a better understanding of what I can spell and what you could learn, but consider that in addition to various healing spells you can say the spells of a mage, fire mage, light mage, lightning mage or ice mage, and more!”

What? This fairy is not limited to healing spells? Several elemental spells too? Various ones? (!) She also has those camouflage spells and illusion spells, which she called mirrors. I'll need to learn those. Yeah, I need to ask her how she did it.

In reality, I was feeling like having stricken gold. True, but it comes with a package: a voice in my head. Let me think this interesting proposal through.

Well apart from the relative small annoyance that some people with assassin level senses might 'hear' my magic, the only change for me would be that I can talk in my mind with her, instead of speaking. As a tattoo, she was rather quiet most of the time. Plus I can even let her fight for me, that is a kind of a cheat actually, I wonder how good is her fighting. Her magic is strong, I have seen it a couple of times. A magic Cala would be almost unbeatable at this level. A second Grackak. When I think about the idiot, he was not really good at fighting. He had these super-duper items and high firepower but apart from that, he was a rather mediocre mage. That witch that I fought in Ivar's ruins was better. OK, whatever. The game is good but too realistic. Then again this is hard-core Mephi, this realism is what people want, but do I really want to feel how the worms feed on me? Or maybe that is also a result of the world out of control issue? The template is here and things happen now based on that template?

Maybe I overthink this. We need an option to get out of the cave and the game gives me one.

So is it still a game, or is it as Cala thought: not a game? As Cala, I was one hundred percent sure it was not a game. As Dolores, having logged in now, I am not so sure anymore even if it seems to be the most realistic game I have ever seen. Drats.

I grinned at her:

“We do it!”