Ch.11
Mia's knife was hitting the cutting board when I walked in. A heavy, steady chop coming through the kitchen wall, regular as a metronome. The Hostess was mostly empty at this hour. Two dwarves at a corner table splitting a plate of sausages and not talking to each other. Ryuu wiping down the bar counter with the same efficient strokes she used for everything, each pass covering exactly the same width.
I took my usual seat and put both of Hestia's lunches on the counter. The bite mark on my collarbone throbbed when I leaned forward, and I caught myself reaching up to touch it through my shirt. She'd drawn blood this time. The spot was tender and warm and I kept pressing it without meaning to, like a loose tooth you couldn't leave alone.
Ryuu set a water down in front of me without being asked and went back to wiping. Her mouth was a straight line, which was the closest thing to friendly she ever got.
"Morning, Ryuu."
"Good morning." She moved the rag in a precise arc around a mug ring on the wood. "You look well."
I was trying to figure out whether that was a comment or small talk when Syr came out from the back.
She was carrying something that wasn't food.
"Good morning!" She set a cloth-wrapped package on the counter beside my water, then leaned her elbows on the bar and rested her chin in her hands. The smile was warm, tilted slightly to the right, the one that was designed to look like it just happened. "A customer left this last night. I thought you might like it."
I looked at the package. Rectangular. Book-shaped.
My pulse picked up and I kept it off my face.
I knew what this was. I'd known it was coming since the first morning she'd handed me a bento in the street, since the anime episode where a silver-haired goddess in Babel decided to speed up her favorite pet project by dropping a Grimoire into his path. Freya's second gift. The first had been whatever nudge made the Minotaur run to Floor 5 instead of dying on the expedition. This was the one that mattered.
Syr's fingers were still on the cloth wrapping, close to mine.
I unwrapped it.
Dark leather cover, cracked with age, no title. The binding was tight but the pages had a yellow cast, and when I opened it the text inside wasn't any language I could read. Dense columns of looping script, hieroglyphic, running top to bottom. The paper hummed. Low, almost subaudible, a vibration in my fingertips before it registered as sound.
"Huh." I turned a page. "Weird book."
"Isn't it?" Syr hadn't moved from her lean, chin still in her hands, gray eyes level on mine. The cheerful voice was the same as always, but her mouth was smiling and her eyes weren't. She knew what the book was. What it would do.
I read.
I don't know how else to put it. The symbols on the page weren't readable but reading happened anyway, the meaning coming in sideways and settling into a space behind my sternum I hadn't known was there. An empty slot. Each page filled it further, the hum in my fingertips climbing my wrists and into my forearms, and whatever was being written into me didn't have a shape I could describe. It was just there. Getting more solid with every page.
I turned pages faster.
The last page.
The book turned to dust in my hands. One second it was solid leather and parchment and the next it was fine gray powder sifting between my fingers onto the counter, dissolving, becoming nothing.
And the slot filled. Locked shut. Permanent.
It settled into my body and stayed. My first magic slot, inscribed. The Falna on my back pulsed. A single warm throb, like a heartbeat that wasn't mine. The hieroglyphs absorbing what the Grimoire had written.
I looked at my right hand. Dust on my fingertips, already fading. And a word in my head that hadn't been there a minute ago.
Firebolt.
Three syllables. That was it. The entire chant. Point, speak, fire. Swift-strike magic. The most broken ability a Level 1 could have.
"Was it a good book?"
I looked up. Syr was still leaning on the counter, chin in hands, same tilt to her smile. Patient. Waiting.
"Life-changing," I said.
She held my gaze. Then she straightened up, smoothed her apron, and said, "I'll get your breakfast," and walked back toward the kitchen. Her ponytail swayed and she didn't look back.
Anya appeared at the counter and stared at the gray smudge where the book had been. "Did you eat a book, nya?"
"Something like that."
She looked at me. Looked at the dust. Reached over and grabbed one of Hestia's lunches off the counter.
"Hey-"
"Payment for the cleaning, nya." She was already unwrapping it. "Ohh, rice and egg. Your goddess can cook."
I pulled the other lunch out of reach before she got ambitious.
The Dungeon was waiting.
I cleared the upper floors without stopping. Floors 1 through 4 were below me now. Monsters spawned, the Knife put them down, magic stones went into the pouch. D-rank Agility made the corridors feel like they'd gotten wider. I was reading the spawns before the monsters finished forming, moving to intercept while they were still orienting, and the gap between seeing and killing was shrinking every session.
Floor 5 passed. The corridor where I'd woken up in this body was somewhere to the left. I didn't look for it.
Floor 6.
The War Shadows came out of the wall.
Black-bodied and fast, four-armed, they peeled from the stone in pairs and came at me from both sides of the corridor. Dungeon's idea of a pincer move. These were the Newbie Killer. Quick enough to overwhelm a careless Level 1, strong enough that bad positioning meant a trip to the medical ward or no trip at all.
I stopped walking. Planted my feet. Raised my right hand, palm open, fingers spread.
"Firebolt."
The bolt ripped out of my palm.
White-hot. Fire and lightning wrapped together into a single streak that crossed the corridor faster than I could track it. It hit the first War Shadow dead center and punched through, the body blowing apart around the impact, black fragments dissolving before they hit the floor. The bolt kept going and caught the second one in the shoulder, ripping the arm off at the joint. The thing shrieked, stumbled sideways. I closed the gap in two steps and drove the Knife through the gap between its neck and skull. It dissolved around the blade.
Two magic stones clinked on the stone. Both fights over before I'd finished exhaling.
I looked at my palm. It tingled, warm, a residual glow fading from the skin. The corridor smelled like ozone and burnt chalk.
This is the real cheat.
Liaris Freese was growth. Foreknowledge was planning. This was raw, spendable combat power, available right now. In a game it would've been flagged for a nerf patch. In a world where the monsters were real and the dying was permanent, it was the difference between a fast career and a short one.
I pushed deeper.
Floor 7. The monsters changed. Killer Ants came in swarms, dozens pouring from tunnel mouths in the walls. Hard Armoreds, living tanks, slow, with armored plates across their backs and skulls. Purple Moths that hung near the ceiling and dropped toxic powder.
I used Firebolt for the clusters and the Knife for the rest. A bolt into the center of an ant swarm scattered them, burning through three or four and sending the survivors into panicked circles, and then I moved through the chaos cutting down the ones still twitching. The Hard Armoreds took two bolts. One to crack the shell, one to finish. The Moths died to a single shot each, fire catching their wings before they could release.
I was farming. Kill, collect the stone, move to the next spawn. The valis from these floors was triple what I'd been making above, and I was clearing rooms faster than the Dungeon could repopulate them.
After the fifteenth or sixteenth Firebolt, my head got heavy. A new kind of fatigue that sat behind my eyes, distinct from the muscle tiredness in my legs and arms. Each bolt drew from a reservoir I was only now discovering existed. The Mind stat, awake for the first time, draining with each cast. The well was deep enough that I wasn't in danger, but the bottom was there and the distance to it was shrinking.
I stopped on Floor 8 after putting a Firebolt through an Orc. The thing came around a corner and I fired before it finished raising its club. The bolt cratered the wall behind where its torso had been and the stone smoked.
I sat on a rock shelf and ate the lunch Hestia had packed. The one Anya hadn't commandeered. Rice, grilled fish, pickled vegetables. She'd added extra rice and wrapped everything tighter than last time, a separate cloth for each component. I ate it all and drank half my canteen, and the corridor was quiet except for the deep grinding sound the Dungeon made when it was growing new walls deeper down. The bioluminescence on the walls shifted from blue-green to a darker teal at this depth, and there was a draft coming up from below that smelled like wet iron.
A Goblin spawned from the wall down the corridor, looked at me, and ran.
I let it go.
The Guild was loud when I got back. Afternoon rush, adventurers filtering in from morning runs, the exchange counter backed up, voices bouncing off the stone ceiling. I waited in line behind a dwarf woman who kept shifting a sack of magic stones from one shoulder to the other and muttering about her knees.
My haul was bigger than usual. Three pouches instead of one. I'd gone deeper, stayed longer, and the Floors 7 and 8 stones were larger, denser, worth more. The exchange clerk counted twice.
"Two hundred sixty-seven thousand valis."
I'd never hit that number in a single run. The clerk slid the voucher across the counter and I picked it up and turned around and almost walked into Eina.
She was standing three feet from the exchange counter with a clipboard against her chest and her glasses pushed up her nose. Her brown hair was tucked behind one pointed ear. She had her weight on one foot and the clipboard was pressed flat against her uniform like she'd been holding it there long enough for her arms to get comfortable.
"Bell. Can I speak with you?"
"Sure."
She led me to one of the advising alcoves along the side wall. Small desk, two chairs, a shelf of maps curling at the edges. She sat down, put the clipboard flat, folded her hands on top of it, and looked at me over the frame of her glasses.
"Your haul today was from Floors 7 and 8."
"Yeah."
"Solo."
"Always solo."
"On Floor 8." She adjusted her glasses. Her jaw tightened. "You've been registered for twenty-three days. The average time for a Level 1 to reach Floor 7 solo is four months. Most never go below 6 without a party."
"I'm a fast learner."
She didn't smile. I'd been hoping she would.
"Bell, your progression-" She stopped. Opened the clipboard, looked at a sheet I couldn't read from this side, and closed it again. Slowly, like she was deciding how much to say. "Your daily exchange totals have tripled in the last week. Your haul composition has shifted from upper-floor stones to mid-floor stones. You haven't visited the medical center once. And today you cleared Floors 7 and 8 solo and brought back more than some full parties manage in a day."
"Is that bad?"
"It's a pattern." She took her glasses off and cleaned them on her sleeve. Without them, the green of her eyes was brighter. "I need to report this to my supervisor. Growth rates this anomalous trigger a review. They'll want to look at your stats."
I leaned back. Hestia was blurring the visible numbers, but the exchange data was public record. The money didn't lie. "What does the review involve?"
"An interview. Possibly an observed Dungeon run. They'll want to confirm you're not receiving outside assistance. Parties buffing your stats, illegal potion use, that sort of thing." She put her glasses back on. "I'm telling you first because I'm your advisor and because-"
Her hand moved from the clipboard to the desk, from the desk to my forearm. She didn't seem to notice. Her fingers pressed down on the inside of my wrist, where the skin was thin and the veins were close to the surface.
"Because I don't want you to get hurt." Her voice was quieter now. The Guild noise outside the alcove receded. "I've had adventurers who grew fast before. They all pushed deeper than they should have because the numbers said they could. And the Dungeon doesn't care about your numbers, Bell. It doesn't care how fast you clear a floor or what your exchange total is. It just sends what it sends. And if you're not ready-"
She swallowed. Her grip tightened on my arm. Her thumbnail pressed a crescent into the skin above my wrist.
"Please be careful."
I looked at her hand. Short nails, unpainted, practical. A firm grip for someone who'd never held a weapon. The clipboard was forgotten on the desk and her green eyes behind her glasses were wide and bright and her brows were pulled together, and she was leaning forward in her chair without realizing it.
"I'll be careful," I said.
She held on for another second. Then she looked down, saw her hand on my arm, and pulled it back like she'd touched a hot pan. Color hit her cheeks. Pink, then red, spreading to the tips of her ears where they poked through her hair.
"I- that was- I apologize, that was unprofessional-"
"It's fine, Eina."
She stood up. Sat back down. Picked up the clipboard, put it down, picked it up again. "I'll submit the preliminary report. It's standard procedure. Nothing to worry about."
"I'm not worried."
"Right. Good." She was looking at the desk. Specifically at the spot on the wood where my arm had been resting. Her ears were still red. "You can go."
I stood up. At the edge of the alcove I turned back. She was sitting with the clipboard crushed against her chest, both arms wrapped around it, her lips pressed together.
"Eina."
She looked up. Quick, startled.
"Thanks for the heads up."
"It's my job," she said.
"Yeah," I said. "I know."
I walked out into the late afternoon. Babel's shadow cut across the main avenue, the west side of the street in cool gray while the east side held the last of the day's gold. An old man was selling roasted nuts from a cart near the fountain, and the smell of them mixed with Orario's evening noise, the stone dust and cooking smoke and the low underground hum of the Dungeon breathing through the entrance.
Magic. I had magic. I had 267,000 valis in exchange vouchers and a Knife that got sharper every time I used it and a growth rate that was about to make people ask questions I couldn't answer honestly. Somewhere in Babel, a goddess with silver hair was watching my soul through her divine mirror and thinking whatever thoughts a god thinks when their investment starts paying off.
And a half-elf Guild advisor had grabbed my arm and forgotten to let go, and her pointed ears had turned a shade of red that she couldn't hide behind her hair because they stuck out too far.
I walked home. The evening was warm and the second lunch was gone and somewhere in the church basement a goddess was waiting who would want to hear about all of it. I'd tell her about Firebolt, about the Dungeon, about the exchange total that was going to make the Guild nervous.
I wouldn't mention Eina's hand on my arm. Not yet.