DTK 40

I successfully resisted pov switching for 39 chapters. I can no longer resist
***
I came back to myself breathing hard, fighting for air as if I had been drowning a second earlier. Sweat beaded on my back.

“What the hell was that?” I said aloud, despite the fact that I was alone. I looked over to the door to my house. For a second, I thought about asking my mom. Then the memory of a conversation floated to the surface.

“…the story ends with him dying, so.”

Alex the Tailor. A story about a Tailor who beheaded a monster with a thread. My mom seemed really excited about it for an instant, then as if she didn’t want to talk about it.

My heart still raced from what I saw in the vision of that memory. It was like I was a passenger in the Seamstress’s head as she tore apart a monster, equal parts fear and exhilaration. In that instant, I knew with absolute certainty that the story of a Tailor killing monsters was something similar. It wasn’t a story at all. It was a memory.

How much could I learn from each of these patterns? No, that wasn’t the right question. The right question was: what did this mean? It meant that there was a social order where the crafting class killing monsters was normal. 

I looked down at the unfinished Houndsmaster set and winced. Even looking at the parts caused me physical pain, a lance running through my head.

Trying to work through it and continue crafting made the headache intensify until it was debilitating. I laid my head across the cool workshop table for half an hour until it receded again.

I wouldn’t be getting any more work done today. Stealing casual glances at the pieces of unfinished armor drove another spike of pain into my head.

So I tracked down Sandy.

It wasn’t very hard. Our town wasn’t very big. And she was always more or less near her house. Today she was working in her front yard.

“Gwen?” Sandy said my name like a question, a note of anxiety in her voice. It was abnormal for me to track her down this early in the morning. Especially if nothing was going wrong.

“Sandy!” I said, smiling as I walked up and leaned over her fence. Then I frowned when I saw Cinnamon wasn’t inside it.

“Done crafting for the day?” She asked, pulling a scale-leather sheet out of the tub it was soaking in and beginning to hang it on a rack.

“Sort of.” I said. Then I looked around. “Where’s…”

Sandy whistled. Cinnamon came running, sliding along the ground as he nearly slammed into Sandy. He was holding — a stick was the wrong word. It was a small tree, roots and all, a sapling that he had clearly pulled out of the ground. He set it down, drool slopping off of where he was holding it to put it out in front of Sandy.

“Did you teach him keep away?” Sandy asked. She took a single step toward Cinnamon.

He whipped up the sapling and ran.

“Anyway. What’s up?” She asked, turning back to look at me as Cinnamon sprinted into the middle of town.

“I wanted to ask you something about your crafting.” I asked, pausing to consider how to word this. “When you… use a skill, do you see a memory?”

Sandy paused, then continued pinning the piece of leather up.

“Sometimes, not for… this, though.” She waved at what she was working on before slapping her hand on her thigh.

“But for…?” I asked the leading question.

“For butchering.” Sandy nodded. Then she wrinkled her nose. “But I don’t get it. The memories make it look much easier than…” Sandy stopped. She turned to look at me, her eyes widened with an unasked question. “You have memories of people fighting with Seamstress skills? How does that work?”

“I only get memories on the patterns. Feelings. But they’re not all from crafting. And I just had one today of a Seamstress fighting. With a giant pair of scissors.” I said.

Sandy just nodded. When she didn’t say anything else, I asked another question.

“Is that… normal for you?”

“As far as I know, its normal for all classes. Even dad’s.”

I blinked.

“How does a cook fight monsters?” I asked, stepping closer and almost whispering.

“Dunno. Maybe a [Seamstress] makes them clothes with [Bow Proficiency] or something.” Sandy said. Then she paused. “Actually, that would make a lot of sense. Like, all our classes can boost the shit out of one Valjean. Or you could boost like a hundred people a little bit.”

“Okay wait. Go back. The butchers in your memories make it look easy?” I asked.

“Yeah. They have to have higher stats. Even cutting into my first corpse when I unlocked the class, the memories have to be half people cutting into live monsters, learning the best way to cut them.”

“How many people are clearing the dungeons? If every class and every skill has memories like this, then somewhere or sometime this must have been the norm.” I said, biting my lip.

“Can’t get my stats as high as the memories seem.” Sandy shrugged. “Maybe things were just really different at some point. Maybe we used to get points like nobles did.”

“Maybe there’s a skill you have to raise to ten for your class to gain more stats. Like when I raised [Wardrobe]  to X.”

Sandy finally finished her work, pinning the leather up.

“Wanna steal lunch? There’s leftovers from last night.” She asked. “Then you can tell me whatever memory has you freaking out.”

“Sure.” I replied.

We ate a lunch of cold, but cooked crab meat while I relayed the memory and the headache to Sandy.

“That’s weird, though.” She said about the headache. “Hasn’t happened to me yet.”

“I still feel like my head hurts.” I complained, leaning back in the chair. I was stuffed.

“Should we harass Gerald?” Sandy asked.

“I don’t want to see anymore sunlight.” I groaned.

Sandy let out half a laugh.

We burned half a day relaxing until my headache started to recede. Then we swept into the dungeons. It was still early afternoon; we had plenty of time and plenty of mana once Henri made us food later, so we resolved to clear all four of the dungeons. We started with the north and south.

Now that we knew what to expect with the horde of little golems, we approached with stealth. Sandy and I crept up to the monsters from the bushes, creeping around the edge of their encampment.

I practiced my [Thread Mastery,] throwing needles and wrapping them around the golems legs before using the enchantment to rip them into the bushes. We crushed the first four of the little monsters without the rest catching on. Then they began to search the area in little groups. The tiny monsters only rose up to my shin.

Sandy cut them down with waves of her wind blade. We plucked out the tiny elemental cores inside of them, pocketing them until we could figure out what they were good for.

We reached the south dungeon with mana to spare.

“You really need to make me a warmer outfit for this one.” Sandy said, decked out in the Hunter pattern rather than Stormcaller. She was still rubbing her arms as we jogged to the first of the elementals, breath visible in front of her. We didn’t want to spend any longer than necessary in here.

Killing all four of the elementals brought my experience up to four. At this rate, we could level again tonight.

We were sore, cold and tired by the time we returned home, now in the waning hours of the evening, golden light hovering through the town.

Henri met us with a tentative smile and actual plates of food along with the flasks. I felt like I was eating double as much since I started clearing the dungeons.

“Does having higher stats raise your metabolism?” I asked between bites. Then, before Henri could answer, I asked another question. “Do cooks enchant their food?”

Henri shrugged, waving his hand in a universal ‘sort of’ gesture.

“What are the cooking memories like? Do you have to spend points on recipes.”

“Yes.” Henri smiled ruefully. “Though you can get a skill to learn recipes by eating them. Most Chefs get that one early. As for the memories… they’re full of yelling. Kitchens can be as intense as dungeons. Ah, at least that’s how the saying goes. I haven’t actually…” He trailed off.

“Okay wait, you literally get to earn skills by eating? That’s so unfair.” I said. Then I took another bite.

Henri smiled again.

We joked and ate, and when my plate was empty I slowly pushed back soup until my mana was full, and then we left to clear the dungeons again. First the lizards, which we dragged back to Sandy’s house.

They were all the way down to giving me a single experience each, but in total the dungeon had pushed me eighty percent of the way to leveling. I would level tonight in the beach dungeon.

It was a shame the golems — the earth elementals, I thought — didn’t give any experience. I could’ve leveled already.

Finally, with trepidation, we headed to the beach dungeon. We passed through the town without incidence, but there was an air of nervousness. Neither I nor Sandy had commented on it, but the quake that followed as the dungeon’s floors were cleared was slowly growing more and more intense, to the point it was noticeable over today.

We stopped outside, stretching before entering. My legs were sore from how much running around we had done today; but only barely. It probably would’ve been worse without my boosted stats.

“Are you ready?” I asked.

“Not really.” Sandy said, looking over at the dungeon. She stared at the entrance for a long moment. “I leveled up.”

“Just now?” I asked.

“Yeah. In the last dungeon. But I just spent the points. Okay. It’s kind of dumb, but, I had [Butchering] at level nine. I raised it to ten. Because of what you said earlier.” 

“And?” I asked.

Sandy made a tching noise.

“If I’m reading it right, I can gain attributes while butchering.”

“No.” I said. “Permanently?”

Wind whistled through the trees. It was proper night time now, blue light spilling down the canopy and highlighting Sandy’s face. She was frowning.

“Permanently.” Came the reply. “Could’ve been so much farther if I had it but… its limited. I can only pull a point from most monsters. A few from some.” Sandy groaned.

“This is great!” I said. “No point in worrying about losses that haven’t happened yet.”

“It’s not that. It’s that we’re going to have to kill that giant bear again to pull points from it.” Sandy sighed.

“Then we will kill it as many times as it takes.”

Sandy choked on a laugh. Then she laughed a bit harder.

“Have I told you you’re crazy?” She asked.

“All the time.” I said. Then, without waiting, I stepped into the dungeon.

 The amount of mana in the air made the hair on my arms stand on end. The feeling was familiar. The gate to the next floor was going to open. A look back at Sandy told me she felt it too.

We hunted down the monsters one at a time, but we didn’t see any sign of the gate, even as we killed the Octopus creature and the ground started to rumble. It definitely wasn’t in the tide pool.

I had leveled up once, too, and now I deliberated over my options as we stood over the tide pool. The sun in the beach dungeon was rising and beating down on the back of my neck. I wondered if my constitution helped me resist sun burn.

[Skill Shop]

►Alteration I

[COMMON] Aids user in retrofitting clothing to increase its quality level and repair it. Additional levels allow user to upgrade old equipment to higher levels.

►Pattern Projection I

[COMMON] Seamstress vision skill. Grants user access to a pattern overlay on fabric. 

►Efficiency I

[Rare] 10% chance to not cost mana when using a skill

I paused on [Efficiency.] That skill was good. Really good. But not the most helpful thing right now, not while I had Henri’s soup potions to restore my health. Not to mention it was Rare… I bit my lip. But I didn’t want to choose it. Not in light of the memory I had seen while crafting the Houndsmaster set — the explosion of gore and viscera as the [Seamstress’s] scissors tore open the monster, blood erupting from it like the lines dividing puzzle pieces. 

The headache started to build behind my eyes again, so I grabbed onto a different though to distract myself. The one that came to mind was the giant pair of half finished scissors Gerald had back in the town.

Both points dumped into [Pattern Mirroring.]

“Tomorrow, definitely.” I said to Sandy. She was looking down at her knife. She couldn’t have just leveled up again. “You good?” I asked.

I had been too absorbed in my own system to notice.

“Yes.” Sandy practically growled the reply, looking down. “I just got a point in Constitution.”

“That’s great!” I said.

“It would’ve been better if I had this skill forever ago.” Sandy sighed.

We walked back to the gate to exit the town. It stood out, a white stone archway jutting out of the sand. The wind blew drifts against it, piling up miniature dunes on the side of the gate.

I took another look at the horizon. Before I could process what I was seeing, I felt Sandy’s hand gripping me.

Out in the water was a second archway.

It was opening tonight after all.

***

Cinnamon sniffed at the ground.

Sandy had been out all night. It was safe now, he thought, as he leaped over the fence.

There was a shuffle inside. He flattened himself to the ground now, following his instincts, his ears pressed back on his head. The old man, the mean man who wouldn’t share his good smelling food, shuffled about inside the house.

Cinnamon thought he was approaching the window… but maybe not. There was running water inside the house now. When the mean man didn’t approach the window, Cinnamon kept going.

Cinnamon was a growing boy. He couldn’t live on just the snacks Sandy gave him. No, he had to supplement his diet at night. And he loved to hunt.

He was dragging his belly along the ground, being sneaky like Sandy was. She would be so proud of him if she saw him!

He followed his nose. There so many strange smells, good smells, delicious food! Nothing as good as what Sandy brought home. That tasted better. It made Cinnamon grow! So full of life.

But the food here was good, too! Once Cinnamon was far from the town, far enough that he wouldn’t be hurt, he burst into full run. The earth zoomed by under his feet! He shot through the trees, passing the most hospital land around the town until the foliage grew thick. Plants were torn apart as he shot through the woods.

Then he brought himself to a stop, tearing apart a gouge in the ground as he uses his paws like gigantic brakes.

He sniffed the ground. He smelled something delicious. It was above him, hiding in the thick foliage of the greater forest outside the town. Cinnamon leaned up against a tree, scratching at the bark and peeling free layers. He wasn’t any good at climbing yet. He only managed to get a few feet up before falling.

He spun around, leaned into a pounce, and barked up the tree.

His snack jumped down voluntarily.

There was a woomph as cinnamon bit it out of the air, his tail running at full speed. He loved them ever since Sandy had given him some. It was one of his favorite snacks; it was crunchy, and it helped him level up.

Not to mention how many legs it had! The legs were the best part. Ever since he had started hunting them, though, less and less stayed around the town! He had to go a little bit farther every time to find one.

It was like they were running away from him!

A long, white string hung from the end of the monster, connecting it up to the nest of them above. As Cinnamon ate the one on the ground, he pulled at the rope, hoping there would be more. He would need more than this for food tonight.

He was a growing boy!

That’s why he ate his whole meal. By the time he finished, there was nothing left but splotches on the ground. His tail waggled as he sniffed, trying to find more. None came down on him.

Then he smelled something strange. There were people. And animals! Ones he had smelled before.

His tongue lolled out of his mouth as he chasing the smell, crashing through the bushes. He stopped a few dozen feet away, crashing into the bushes as he came to a stop and scooting along the ground as he tried to see them.

They were tense.

Three of them stood a top their wagons, covered in armor and blood. One of the wagons had a slap job patch applied to it, tears in the wood that looked like they matched a gigantic, clawed hand raking it.

Cinnamon very slowly pulled himself back through the bushes, staying low. That was the nobles!

They were not very nice.

And Sandy didn’t like them!

Cinnamon had to tell her.

But she wouldn’t be back for hours!

Cinnamon sniffed at the ground. Then he shot back toward the town until he found Sandy’s trail and started following it. His [Tracking] kicked on, a red line in his vision showing him where to go.

He had to tell her!