It looks like I slept a bit longer today, as the sun is already up and shining. I force myself out of my bed.
It got quiet late last evening, so I am not the only one waking up late today. The second bed on the other side of the room was still occupied by two people. One being my trusted fox-kin companion Fiola, the other one, buried inside of Fiolas moderate chest, little girl [Eir].
Her cuts and bruises looking a lot better compared to yesterday, but still covered in dirt, she slept soundly. The old bag she called clothing lies on the floor next to the bed, since it was simply too dirty to wear while lying on top of the somewhat clean bedsheets.
I watched over them for a bit. The sunrays didn’t reach the other room site yet but illuminated the room in a dim warm light. It is nothing special but after traveling for a while and sleeping outside every day I can appreciate these little moments a lot more than before. I know I may sound like an old man but still…
As my gaze is slowly wandering through the room, the old bag on the floor came back into my mind. We will have to let the girl, Eir, take a shower after she wakes up but if she puts this bag on again she will be dirty again in an instant. I have to find some cheap clothes for her to wear. Unfortunately she cannot wear Fiolas spares since those are far too big for a 5 year old looking girl.
So I put on my outside clothes and take some of our money, as quiet as possible to not wake them up, and leave the room. The somewhat aged wooden floor occasionally whined under my footsteps while leaving but the two girls didn’t seem to notice it.
On my way through the ground floor of the inn I saw Silm working, high energy as always, but since she was busy I didn’t bother greeting her and she didn’t notice me either. The colosseum on the outside was already filled with people and while passing through the masses I try to recapitulate the last evening.
*13 hours ago*
[Historia]!
My vision blurs and I am in a familiar place.
The dungeon from earlier. In my hands an old and cheap looking knife and in front of me a bunch of rose whips lashing out at me. It’s the scene from right before the girl screamed and Fiola and me ran over. No need to watch this again.
I am searching for her home… home…home…
There, I found something.
My vision blurs once again and I find myself inside, what looks to be some sort of tent. Laying on my back my head moves to the left and to the right but the tent is empty. I can spot some high grown grass right outside the entrance. I don’t think that this place is inside this city and, since I never saw this kind of highly grown grass anywhere during our travels, I doubt that it is nearby. However, it seems like I cannot find any other memories she is associating with “home”.
In that case, maybe the most recent memories regarding “family” could help me find her place.
There they are.
Once more my vision shifts to a different scene.
I can see the walls of Primul in the distance but my eyes are currently focused on the group of people right in front of me. Since all of them are fully grown men I am looking almost straight upwards.
“You are a disgrace!”, one of them starts shouting.
“You are a disappointment for our entire clan!”, another one continues.
The first one starts again talking again.
“The only reason you are still alive is because your mother is our leader but with this we cut our ties! You will no longer be part of our clan! You will be completely unrelated to any of us from now on!”
The rest of the men start cheering angrily.
“Whether you manage to keep on living with that cursed blood of yours or not is irrelevant to us but know the following. In case you will ever seek us out again or relate to us in any sort of way and be it only by using that now former name of yours, than we will put all our effort into ending your disgrace of a life.”
My vision is blurring again but this time it is not because of [Historia] but because of the tears starting to run down this girls little face. In that moment the group of men vanishes as I cancel [Historia] and the scenery starts fainting away.
I am sitting next to Fiola again. The little girl is laying, still fainted, on the same bench as us, with her head on Fiolas lap.
I take a deep breathe.
This was pretty heavy and hard to swallow even for me and I am completely unrelated to this. I cannot imagine how the girl must be feeling.
Fiola gives me a questioning look but before I give her an answer, I take the girls right hand and try to use the second stage of my unique skill, [Profile]. It is the first time I am using this on a human. It takes a while but eventually the familiar black box appears.
NAME: Eir
RACE: Dhampire
AGE: 2
LEVEL: 5
PROFESSION: none
SKILLS: Minor Regeneration
SPELLS: none
That’s all the information I could see for now but that’s enough. Her name is Eir, and she is a dhampire it seems, half human race and half vampire race. The thing surprising me even more however is her age. It says she is two years old but she looks clearly older than that. Also I doubt a two year old could even reach the dungeon on their own, not talking about walking up to the 4th floor.
As I am thinking about this, one of the girls fingers twitches a bit, after which her head starts moving and her eyes slowly open. She slowly gets up and looks around. After she probably figured out where she was she looks at us and after a short bow she turns around without saying a word and starts walking her way.
Fiolas questioning look turned into a surprised one and finally a worried one.
“Wait!”
She walks up to the girl, grabs her hand and pulls her back over to the bench the she was laying on just a second ago.
“Are you alright?”
The girl nods shortly.
“Where do you want to go now?”
The girls thinks for a second and points towards the dungeon entrance.
However, before Fiola, who didn’t know the girls situation, could say anything else I intervene.
“You don’t have a place to stay at right?”
She quietly looks at me.
“I heard about your situation. Can I call you Eir?”
She nods.
I know I shouldn’t try to help everybody I come across, else there would be no end to it but … how can I leave this girl alone after figuring out what happened to her.
“Do you want to stay with us for a bit? We could help you out in the dungeon until you can handle things on your own.”
I glanced over to Fiola while speaking while she seemed a bit surprised she didn’t seem to oppose to it, she gave me a kind smile. Despite that, the one making the decision is the little Eir, who seemed deeply in thought.
I mean even in case she would be an extremely naïve kid, she would think twice about following two complete strangers.
After a while she takes a step towards me and makes eye contact. She holds out her hand like a business man trying to finish of a deal. I shake her hand slightly. Her, until now, indifferent looking expression brightened up ever so slightly.
“Now that that’s decided, let us go back to our room.”, Fiola said.
She walked up to Eir, grabbed her under her armpits and lifted her up.
“So your name is Eir? I am Fiola and that over there is Veltin. Nice to meet you.”
The two of them looked cute together like this. Well… for a second at least. Because while Fiola thought Eir would like being lifted up, Eir felt differently. Still keeping up her indifferent expression, she immediately tries to free herself and tries to punch Fiola with her two too short arms. Of course Fiola let her down immediately as she saw that.
It might be my imagination but I think that on our way back Eir was pouting a bit.
Well, that’s pretty much what happened yesterday. As we came back to the inn Eir looked far too sleepy to be able to take a bath but after what we lived with on our way towards Primul we were able to deal with this degree of dirty easily. Once we got to our room Eir immediately fell asleep while Fiola and I took that opportunity to go back to the bottom floor of the inn and get some food and drinks. We also talked with a bunch of people gathering some more information. Turns out most of the adventurers here are pretty easy to get along with as long as you offer them an ale or two.
While slowly going through this again I picked up the clothes from the cheap shop close to the inn. They mainly sell second hand stuff, similar to the shop of Laras father in the capital. Considering I was only searching for something clean and cheap for now it was a quick shopping trip. However, walking through the inns door, this time, I got caught.
“Good morning Veltin!” The bundle of pure energy saw me entering and immediately came over.
“I see you bought yourself a new dress. But I think you might be a bit too tall for that one already. Should I try to make it fit you?”
“Good Morning. Actually it is for you. I saw it in the store and thought ‘If only I knew a person tiny enough to fit into that.’ and then I thought of you for some reason.”
“Hey, trying to tease back is unfair.”
“You should be happy I didn’t think of anything else instead.”
“Please, spare me! But jokes aside, who is this for?”
“We found a girl yesterday and long story short, we decided to grab her under her arms for a bit. Quite literally so.”
“What?”
“It’s complicated…”
If I would start explaining it to her I would have to mention my unique skill. It should be alright to tell people but I prefer keeping it only to the people close to me like Fiola for now.
“I am waking up the two girls really quick. Could you already prepare a bath and some breakfast? We will be back in a second.”
“Alright, alright.”
Said, done. I woke them up and we came down. Although the smaller one of the two seemed to be still asleep while walking, so my success was only moderate.
Today it was pretty empty, even considering most customers come in the evening it was still pretty empty. A majority of the customers are adventurers so I guess there are those days, too. Since progressing through the dungeon can be quite time consuming, especially on the higher floors, so I heard, adventurers often have to camp inside the dungeon to make significant progress. So there would be days where large groups or just coincidentally many individual adventurers decided to stay inside the dungeon and it seems today was such a day.
We simply picked the first table we came across and sat down. A few seconds later Silm saw us and rushed over.
“Long time no see. Who is the cutie sitting next to you?”
Eir raised her head and looked at Silm, the drowsiness still in her eyes.
“Eir.”
This was actually the first time she said something since we met her. Her voice is cute, she is still a little child after all, but similar to her face it lacked a bit of emotions.
“Ohhh, Eir. Listen Eir, beautiful girls like us shouldn’t look dirty. Come with me, we will clean you up and make you pretty again.”
Eir stares at me silently as she gets dragged of by Silm. I gave Fiola the clothes I got for Eir and told her to bring those to them. I would bring them myself but I wouldn’t want people to think that I sneak up on little girls bathing.
We slowly ate our food and ordered some more for Eir to eat after she finished. After a few minutes, Eir came back, wearing her new clothes. I wished I could say it looks good on her but since I just bought some temporary cheap stuff it is far from being incredible. She still looked quite adorable despite that however. She didn’t seem to mind the clothes herself so I guess I am just overthinking it.
Happy about the clothes or not she sat down next to me. After giving the food in front of her a quick glance she looked at me waiting for a response.
This time Fiola answered before I could with a “Dig in.”
Taking her time, she made sure to eat everything placed in front of her. She probably ate about twice as much as Fiola did in the end. Who knows when the last time she ate something was. After she finished everything Silm, who was just walking by, start patting her head. The two of them seemed to get along well. If I remember correctly, Silm told me about her being the oldest of her seven siblings, so I guess she was good at dealing with kids.
The sun was at its peak when we left the Inn. It must have been around twelve by now. Of course, there is no way for to know for sure since clocks are rare and expensive to find. Even in the castle I lived in as a child, I could count the amount of clocks with 2 hands. It was seven to be exact. I am sure that over the last years they got a lot cheaper and more common but not common enough to be found in the inn of a small town.
Anyways, it was time to help out our new friend. I promised to help her get to the point from which on she can take care of herself. So we decided to take her with us into the dungeon and teach her how to defend herself and help her raise her Level. Our only problem is that her only weapon is a small, somewhat rusty knife and her clothes offered nothing in terms of defense.
That is why yesterday night Fiola and I discussed our schedule for today. The plan is simple. I will teach Eir how to fight with a sword and Fiola will teach her how she can defend herself with her bare hands. Of course we both are far from being able to call ourselves experts but it is probably better than not teaching her anything. After teaching her on the lowest floors where nothing can really hurt her we will move on to the higher floors to help her raise her Level. One of us will take care of the enemies, one will stay on guard to protect Eir and after a while we switch roles.
We reached the dungeon a few minutes after leaving the inn. The guards seemed to remember us from yesterday and didn’t even ask for our cards. I was concerned about Eir entering because I couldn’t find her card so I asked the guard I talked with yesterday.
“It’s okay. There are a bunch of kids like her on the first floors. Most of those kids don’t have a card. I am sure you noticed that there is no danger at all on this floors but the kids can gather food for themselves and sell stuff they gather for some money.”
I kept quiet about how we found her on the 4th floor. There was no need for them to know and punish her now. I will definitely talk with her about this later on though.
The training we planned yesterday went pretty smooth. Once we found a nice spot on the first floor I taught her how to properly hold a sword, how to properly swing it and let her do a few practice swings. Three of the kids wandering around close by got curious and walked over. They talked with Fiola for a while, who ended up showing them some moves. It looked a bit funny, seeing her showcase some techniques while the three kids, who barely reached her hips on average, try to imitate her moves behind her back.
After around an hour I left Eir to Fiola, whose followership grew up to ten kids by then. Fiola felt somewhat bad to tell the kids, who were having a lot of fun, to leave, so she taught them along with Eir. The kids all seemed to get along pretty well and two of the girls tried to get closer to Eir during the practice. She seemed to enjoy herself and the company of the other kids as well.
Maybe if those kids get along with Eir they could create a party at some point, which maybe could help her get on her feet a lot quicker. However, helping and taking care of one child and taking care of 10 children is a completely different story so let us stay away from that for now.
After watching for half of the time, I got somewhat bored and joined the kids. I didn’t really care about learning it but it looked like a nice exercise and helped passing the time.
With that we finished a total of two hours training today. We said goodbye to the kids and moved to the upper floors. Eir looked considerably exhausted by now but the hardest part for her is already over. Since my stamina improved greatly the last month, Fiolas even more so, minor workouts like that hardly affect us anymore.
We reached the fountain on the 4th floor and shortly after we reached the point where we heard Eirs scream yesterday.
Now… I mentioned how Fiola and I spend a majority of the last evening gathering information. It was mostly information on the monsters in the first 20 or so floors. It seems the environment and monsters you can meet stay pretty much the same for about 3 floors before making any drastic changes. The monsters we saw yesterday are called [Thorn Whips]. They can appear as individuals or in groups. Almost every time they appear in groups there is actually a different monster alongside them, the [Devious Rose]. It is a monster controlling the [Thorn Whips] mostly unnoticed. It makes fighting them a lot harder but the good part is, that it has no way to attack on its own and gives many experience points, I was told.
Those two are the only monsters on the 4th to 7th floor however. So let’s see how much experience we can get out of hunting for those [Devious Rose] for today and maybe take a little peak at the next floors.
The best thing about hunting here is, that Eir can kill those roses on her own, once we took care of the whips, and since the experience points you get are somewhat based around how much you participated in the fight, she will get a lot more experience points than with any other method. Enough talking though, it’s time to hunt!
There could still be a rose left close to the place where we saved Eir. Eirs face is hard to read but she looks a bit anxious. When we arrived at the place, Fiola took the lead.
“Let me take care of finding it. [Fox Fire]”
Bunches of sparks appear in the air and start rotating in a circle while quickly getting bigger. After less than 5 seconds, a fox with a body of pure flames appeared and landed on the ground in front of Fiola. It immediately starts moving around her legs. Since she tried to improve at using the spell I saw it quite often by now but it keeps impressing me. At first, the fox would only listen to straightforward commands like “Attack this” .By now however, Fiola was able to give a far bigger variety of orders. It also feels like the fox grew a bit in size but not enough that I could tell for sure.
“Sen, can you search for monsters which look like flowers?”
Sen was the name Fiola gave the little fire fox. Most of the times it feels more like an adorable pet than a dangerous fire spell, so giving it a name is understandable. Still, Nori is cuter. Also Nori doesn’t blow up when it feels like it, like a certain someone. As you might be able to tell, I already had my own experiences with little Sen.
Anyways, Sen starts his search mission and vanishes in one of the hedges. His body might consist of pure flames but until he touches something, he recognizes as any enemy, it feels like warm fur. It is quite mysterious but better than incinerating everything getting close to him so I am not complaining.
After seeing the little fox leave, we also split up and start searching the area. Finding a specific flower, while not even knowing what it looks like, proofed to be quite difficult. It took us 15 minutes to find the right one and it was actually Eir who found it.
At first glance, it seemed like all the other flowers we found but when Eir tried to touch it, it tried to evade her finger. I thought the [Devious Rose] would hide in a hard to spot area but it actually grew right in the open on the left side of the path.
I handed Eir my sword to kill it, so she does not get hurt by the flowers thorns. Good she did some practice swings earlier. She makes a big swipe while holding it in both of her hands, since the sword was still too heavy for her to hold it just in one hand, cutting right through the Rose.
It is a bit anticlimactic but oh well.
“Should we search around for some more?”
“On the upper floors are probably more of them, so maybe we should go there?”, Fiola answered.
“Yeah, that’s probably the better choice.”
“Let us wait until Sen returns before going. He might have found another one as well. We can just eat something while waiting. I asked Silm to prepare us some bread and sausage this morning.”
She pulled three breads covered in paper out of her back pocket and unwrapped them. The breads were sliced in the middle and in between were a layer of salad, a layer of some kind of sausage and a fried egg on top. It was unexpectedly tasty.
The bread still was crunchy without being hard. The sausage was a bit salty and spicy which went well with the fried egg. The salad made the bread look really appetizing and gave it a bit of freshness as well. It was definitely one of the better things I got to eat over the last few months. Well… we mostly ate preserved food or grilled meat from monsters so there was not much variety in that.
While we were enjoying our bread Sen came back. It seems like he found something but we decided to finish our meal first. Fiola took a piece of her sausage and fed it to him. I am pretty sure that he has no use for eating but Fiola seemed to enjoy doing so. He is more of a pet than a spell by now anyways.
We finished our short break and followed Sen to the place he found. He actually managed to find another [Devious Rose]. It actually looks a bit different compared to the previous one. The only thing they have in common is having thorns. It does not really matter but it could make it a little bit more difficult to find them if they all look different. Anyways, Eir quickly killed the flower.
Roughly 30 minutes passed since Fiola summoned Sen, which is her current limit on keeping him out. Her [Fire Fox] spell uses her mana every time she summons the fox but it also drains her mana while the fox is summoned. After summoning the little fox for this long she needs a break of a few minutes until she can summon him again. She has enough time for that while we head to the 6th floor so it is no problem at all.
Reaching the 5th floor, it looked just like the 4th one. The plants grew a bit higher and there seemed to be a few more monsters around.
On the 6th floor the plants grew to around 3 meter height. It now was a real maze.
Just a few steps in and we already got attacked by [Thorn Whips]. They are not much stronger than the ones on the 4th floor but there are a lot more. Fiolas affinity with these monsters is a lot worse than mine since cutting them does a lot more than fighting them with your fists. Of course Fiola had Sen who has great attack power and also uses Fire. However, there are a lot of [Thorn Whips], which would force here to use a huge amount of mana if she was to use Sen while fighting.
In the end, Fiola started grabbing the whips one after another and holding them together so I can slice through all of them at once. She also used a dagger she had in her back pocket to take care of a few herself.
Meanwhile, Eir carefully searched for [Devious Roses] in the vicinity. She used a sturdy stick she found to hunt them. Whenever Fiola could, she used [Fox Fire] to summon Sen and help Eir find the monster flowers.
In the end Eir found quite a few, it must have been around 20, while Fiola and I had to nonstop kill the attacking [Thorn Whips]. We also found the way to the staircase leading to the 7th floor. That was the point where we started heading back however. As there is no sunlight from the outside reaching us here it is hard to judge how late it is right now.
When we finally reached the exit again the sun was already setting. The spoils of the day: whatever we could easily transport and hopefully a lot of experience for Eir.
We stopped by the guild material vendor we visited yesterday already. It appears the next shift just took over as we arrived. It was a young man not much older than I am. We sold our materials for a few coins. While the 4th to 6th floor are pretty good in terms of gaining experience they seem to be pretty bad in terms of earning money. We hardly got enough to feed ourselves tonight. We still got enough money to not be worried but we should try to advance to the next floors as fast as possible. It just depends on how quickly we can power train Eir.
Speaking of which, our next stop is the guild. We need to get Eir her guild card still. Also we get to check on her level. I could just look at it by using [Historia] but then I would have to tell her about my unique skill as well.
There was no problem in getting her guild card. While we were at it we updated ours as well but there was no change in our levels. Eirs however went up from 5 to 13. Gaining levels is easy at the beginning but 8 is still impressive. As expected of a beginner dungeon it helps you big time with raising your level. Just like Fiola when she started out, she still has no profession yet.
All in all this was a pretty successful day I would argue.
We decided to split up for the rest of the evening. I payed Nori a visit and brought some snacks for her along, Fiola decided to take a look around the shops and stalls and Eir followed Fiola around for a while and then decided to join me with some food in her hands. She was a bit intimidated at first but in the end, Nori and her got along in no time.
It was dark outside when we came out. Lanterns covered the stalls and shops in a dim orange light and a cloud free sky made the stars shine brightly. I bet it must look even more amazing when looked at from above.
As we were walking up to our room we met Silm who just finished her shift and chatted for a minute. Eir was visibly exhausted so we kept it short. When we reached our room she immediately fell asleep.
I lighten up a candle and take out all of our money. Until now, I was in charge of it and apart from our collective expenses like food we never really spend anything the last months. I think it is time to split the rest of the money so everybody can buy what they want. I took a bit from our earnings today out for Eir as well, it was her who killed all of the rose monsters after all. Fiola and I both get 15 Gold coins for now, for living expenses we got 60 gold coins and Eir gets 80 silver which is almost half of our todays earnings.
I just finished as Fiola comes into the room. We talked about my plan for our budget and she was fine with it. With that we both went to sleep.
LYLDY Novels 