Chapter One hundred ninety-eight – Move-in Deadly

When Pandy stepped through the door into the library, she drew in a deep breath of Books – paper, ink, even a hint of the wood the shelves were made of.

Then she sneezed sharply as the poignant perfume was followed by earthy notes of mold and mildew. Professor Beeswick definitely wouldn’t be happy about the way these old tomes had been cared for – or not, as the case may be.

From the darkness, a voice said, “Excuse you.” The words were immediately followed by shushing noises, and many, many somethings scattered, disappearing into nooks and crannies far too small for a person.

Pandy blinked. That definitely hadn’t happened in Gacha Love, but of course Clara also hadn’t sneezed, so who knew? “Hello?” Pandy said for the third time since entering the house. An oppressive sort of stillness was the only response, and with a soft sigh she advanced into the room.

This was the second-largest room in the house, and it was absolutely crammed with shelves, and those shelves were crammed with books. It looked like someone had attempted to keep them organized at some point, then simply thrown their hands in the air, possibly along with a few old tomes.

The walls were lined with books, but the ‘open’ area of the floor held bookshelves that reached almost to the ceiling, and those, too, were buried in moldering paper and aging glue. They created a sort of maze, but Pandy turned to her right, advanced two paces, then turned left and took three more steps. If she went the wrong way, one or more shelves would fall on top of her, dealing physical damage, but that was easy enough to avoid. What she couldn’t avoid lay at the center of the room.

At first, the sheet-covered chairs and table in the small clear area looked  like all the others she’d seen since entering the house. Then, as Pandy took a few cautious steps nearer, the sheet covering the largest chair rippled. Pandy froze, but it didn’t, bulging upwards in an amorphous, vaguely unsettling shape. Then a deep crimson stain started in the approximate area of a chest, spreading over the fabric until it reached the edges, at which point some thick fluid began to drip onto the surrounding area.

“You know,” Pandy said, barely managing to keep her voice under control, “you’re going to ruin that chair. Bloodstains are terrible, especially on upholstery. Unless you have a wet-vac? I mean, you might. It’d be an Air and Water thing, wouldn’t it? Or maybe just one or the other, since you wouldn’t actually need Air to push the Water into the fabric and suck it out again, but Air could also shove regular Water in, though it’d be harder to get it back out, so maybe it’s just a Water spell? If you-”

Briefly, it seemed that her flood of words would distract the thing long enough to allow her to get by, but then it swelled up again, spraying a fine red mist into the air – which got on the nearby books, and the dragon definitely wouldn’t like that – and flowed toward Pandy, wrapping itself around her in a gross, clingy, kludgy, viscous blanket that probably would have made it very difficult to breathe if breathing was a thing Pandy had to do.

In the game, Clara could use Dispel to get rid of it, but that used up Stamina, so it was better to bring one of the boys and have him deal with it. Bastian used Thorncage to hold it off until they could escape, while Edgar just burned it up. Kaden, however, had a silver sword, and he stabbed the thing, dealing damage to it, and it was this technique that Pandy planned to use.

Pandy’s hand was pasted to her side by slimy fabric, but the long knife she’d borrowed from Augustus somehow appeared there anyway, exactly as it had been when she put it away. Unfortunately, when she tried to raise her arm so she could cut the material, she realized that it was like pushing against the thick skin that formed on top of pudding when it was left in the refrigerator. It gave, but not enough to allow her to cut anything except her own leg.

-8 LF

Just so you know, if you were alive, you probably wouldn’t be by now.

Oh. She had taken rather a long time getting started, and her head was completely covered in gooey material, which was also wound tightly around her throat and chest. Yes, there was that breathing thing again. Hmm. What to do about it, though? She didn’t want to burn down the library, and she wasn’t nearly as good at controlling Fire as Edgar, so Spark and Scorching Sonata were both out.

Then she had an idea. It was probably terrible, but she was almost certain it would work, so she thought, <Cancel Shifting Faces.>

She shrank, the cold, clammy sheet sinking in around her, then cast Shield of Darkness to hold it off until she could wriggle free of the clinging folds. It wasn’t actually dealing any damage, so it didn’t break her shield as she slipped free, then cast Shifting Faces again and snatched the knife from the fallen fabric. Quickly, she stabbed it, and it remained there, gleaming moistly but quiescent.

Once she was certain the thing had been defeated – and with a good bit less fanfare than she remembered from Gacha Love – Pandy made her sword vanish again, grimacing as she looked down. There were pools of red forming around her feet, but her clothes, skin, and hair were all clean after her shift to and from her rabbit form.

Now that the attack was over, Pandy started breathing again, and was startled by a sharp, sweet scent that absolutely wasn’t what she expected from blood. Kneeling just outside the pool of red, she touched it, then lifted her finger to her mouth. When she took a tentative lick, the flavor of strawberries burst in her mouth, and she received absolutely no notifications about having ingested blood.

“Is that… syrup?” Pandy muttered, gathering another fingerful. She rubbed it between her fingers, feeling the sticky thickness of it. It wasn’t jam, since there were no seeds or chunks, and she didn’t think it was jelly, which left syrup. But why? Unless ectoplasm was significantly different from what she’d been led to believe, she was being attacked by a high-fructose condiment.

Standing, she shook her fingers, then gave in and just licked off the tasty goo before schlucking her way over to the table at the center of the ring of chairs. The one the assault-sheet had been covering was now bare, and she could see the lovely flowers embroidered on the upholstery, and the wide, clawed wooden feet. It was heavy and old, but beautiful, and the red stains made her a bit sad. Maybe Abbington could get them out?

Carefully, she lifted the sheet covering the table, holding her knife ready in case this one also tried to glaze her to death, but nothing happened except that a book came into view. It had probably been lying there since the house was closed up, and probably would have been there after Pandy succeeded in making the house her own, but since Clara read it now, Pandy figured it was probably better if she did as well. Who knew if the magic would work after the event was over.

Lifting it, Pandy reverently opened the cover, flinching as the spine cracked. This was the real treasure of the house: a book that gave the player a Boon they couldn’t get any other way. It wasn’t a necessary Boon, of course, since the house quest was entirely optional, but Pandy still wanted it. Of course, which Boon Clara was given depended on which boy had the highest Affection at the time, but a gacha spin could change it to any of the others. The question was, what would happen when Pandy read the book in real life?

CONGRATULATIONS! You may now select a Boon from the following:

• Martial Grace

• Silver Tongue

• Lion’s Shadow

• Faithful Foundation

Yes! Pandy very nearly used Dance, but the sticky red pool and the knowledge that she had as much chance of doing the Stanky Legg as a pirouette stopped her. She stared at the hovering letters, and for the barest instant she hesitated.

Martial Grace was Dorian’s, and just made all of Clara’s physical attacks ten percent more powerful. Pandy’s goal was to avoid combat as much as possible, and attack using magic from the greatest distance she could manage when she did have to fight, so that one didn’t tempt her. But Silver Tongue and Lion’s Shadow would probably be much more useful to Pandy than they were in the game.

Silver Tongue increased her Eloquence skill, which might actually help Pandy stop spilling word porridge whenever she opened her mouth. Lion’s Shadow made people feel she was more trustworthy, making them inclined to believe her and do as she said. Not that she wanted people to obey her, but it would be nice if the ridiculous things that happened to her became more plausible to those around her.

But in the end, there was only one choice. It was actually the least useful in Gacha Love, the only one that had no effect until the post-game epilogues. If Clara and Bastian lived in the Avington House after they got married, without this Boon the building would be almost as dilapidated as it was today, and the epilogue would mention that they spent years fixing it up. If Clara took this Boon, the building was already fully restored when they moved in, and it was mentioned that the house was always warm and welcoming, even appearing to protect them when they were within its walls. It was a small thing, and seemingly insignificant, but Pandy was willing to take a chance on it.

“Faithful Foundation,” Pandy said, and the house shuddered around her. It wasn’t just her imagination, either, because dust puffed up from the shelves and covered furniture, and a precariously balanced book tumbled somewhere in the shadows.

ERЯϘя

Βøøη ɢяανтєδ: Ƒαιτħƒυł ₣øꭥꞇꬰꜹ○₵ᾹὃỢ

Evεnτ sтαтυѕ – incompłετe

What did that mean? Pandy shook her head, then repeated the question aloud. There was a long pause as the System didn’t answer, didn’t answer, didn’t-

Just what it says.

Complete the event.

“You don’t know either, do you?” Pandy asked, but the System remained stubbornly silent for once. Pandy sighed and lowered the book back to the table, noting as she did that there was now a title on the front: A Homeowner’s Guide to Survival. Well, that wasn’t ominous at all.

The path out of the library wasn’t nearly as complicated as the way in. Yes, she had to make a few turns, but the wrong paths were blocked off by blatantly leaning shelves, so there wasn’t much danger. She also had the strangest feeling that she was now being watched with curiosity as much as malevolence. She didn’t think she was suddenly safer, but it was almost like something new had awoken in the house, and it was stretching and yawning its way to awareness.

There were two doors leading out of the library – one back into the hallway, and one that led to the Ballroom. In the Ballroom she would be attacked by a series of phantasmal dancers, who would slice at her with blades of air as they swung by in graceful circles.

There were a few small loot items, but since they were physical objects, Pandy hoped they would still be there after the dangerous bit was over. In any case, she had a sudden urge to hurry, where before she’d almost been enjoying this opportunity to step into Gacha Love. It would have been better if it wasn’t trying to kill her, but knowing that it would fail took a lot of the sting out of that.

She also skipped the kitchen and the servants’ quarters, both of which had traps but no real rewards. The things in the kitchen were also gross, making the squishy eyeball and the ‘bloody’ killer sheet seem like spooky children’s stories. Nope, Pandy definitely wasn’t interested in going in there, even though there were some stairs in the servants’ quarters that would allow her to bypass some of the attacks upstairs.

Dodging a loose board that would try to drop her into the cellar and glaring back at a set of portraits whose eyes watched her as she passed, Pandy made her way to the stairs at the end of the hall. They twisted upward into the darkness, and only the soft glow that still surrounded her allowed Pandy to see anything at all. She didn’t touch the banister, which would melt away beneath her hand, flooding the steps and washing her back down to the trapped board. She definitely didn’t want to end up in the cellar with the rats. That was a hard no.

What she did want to do was finish the event, so upwards Pandy went.