[Shrubley, the Monster Adventurer] Chapter 134 – Dawn of the First Day VI

Shrubley motioned at the remaining clock coins on the table. Those in Cal’s hand had disappeared as he had inadvertently used them.

“As you can see, these are potent magical items, but they also use them as currency,” he pointed out.

Miranda looked greedily at the pile. “It is easy to see why they would disdain common coinage then. Compared to this, ours is worthless.”

“Am I on fire?” Cal said with alarm. “Oh, yes! Yes, I am!” He hastily tried to put out the flames that were beginning to crawl up his cloak. With just bones for hands, his increasingly frantic efforts weren’t that effective. It took Slyrox slapping the fire out for Cal to finally stop burning.

“Stop playing around,” Miranda scolded absently. The coins were Shrubley’s, but she wanted to see what she might be able to do with them.

“Did you want some, Countess?”

“No! What? No. I do not need paltry trinkets,” she said haughtily.

“...I do,” Sose put in.

Shrubley offered him a small pile of assorted coins. “Here you go, Sose. And maybe you would like to share with the Countess.” He looked meaningfully at his teacher. “If she changes her mind at some point, that is.”

Nodding, the oppa’s greedy eyes went wide, then he scooped them up with his paws. He trembled with the effort of restraint now that the coins were in his possession.

Slyrox blew on her smoking mitts. “Whew! Cal was nearly smolder-dust!” She turned and looked over at the rest of the group. She saw the coins, then noticed the way Sose and Miranda both looked. “Slyrox thinks we will use all magic coins before Konko gets back.”

Cal looked down at his exposed ankles now that his cloak no longer fell to the ground. “Think I might need some new boots.” The tops of his boots were still there, but they were smoldering. The soles of his boots were little more than black smears left in a crazed pattern across the floorboards.

“Why don’t we do a little shopping while we wait for Smudge and Konko?” Shrubley offered. “We have some money. Might as well spend it, right?”

Miranda nearly choked. “You can manipulate time with this currency, and you want to spend it?”

Shrubley shrugged. He did not see anything amiss with that. “Why not?”

The Countess stared. It felt like her brain had just short-circuited. How could Shrubley fail to see the potential?

“It’s money, but it’s also magic!” Sose whispered feverishly. “What better thing to hoard is there?”

“Love,” Shrubley said, counting off on his wooden fingers, “friendship, happiness, good food, a pleasant memory… many things are better to hoard and amass than money.” He said the word with the same disdain as somebody would use for an item found buried within a cesspit.

Sose stared at Shrubley, then shook his head. “But can you put those things into an oppa’s stash?”

“If you try hard enough.”

“...Hm.” Sose appeared to concentrate deeply on this matter.

“Spend it after the Dungeon,” Miranda cautioned. “We might need these in there.”

Shrubley looked doubtfully at them. “The mayor told me that their magic does not work as well outside of Clocktown.”

“Even reduced, the coins could be of great use.”

Cal looked down at his bare ankles. “Don’t worry about me, Shrubley. I’ll be okay even with a partially burned cloak. It still seems to work, see?”

Cal’s [Hide] triggered, and he vanished, but only briefly. His image fizzled, and he flickered intermittently. Clearly visible from time to time. “Aw, gravedust!” Cal cursed.

Slyrox nodded. “Is bad.”

They all looked at the Countess.

“What? It’s your money. Do what you want with it. I’ve given my advice.”

“Slyrox could fix with materials,” she said. “Using [Kludge] and my Tinkerer proficiency.”

The Countess looked at her curiously. “What do you require? Sose has a lot of various materials that you might be able to use if you need.”

Sose gasped. “Mistress!”

“It is true, Sose. And your hoarding can finally be put to some good use for once!”

Slyrox knelt beside Cal, inspecting the damaged cloak. After a few moments, she rattled off a list of materials she would need.

It was not a long list, but it was odd. Thread, some cloth, gold shavings, all of which were not too odd, but then came the roast mutton, wax, incense (preferably sandalwood), and then the oddest thing of all: a card.

“Is enchanted, yes?” Slyrox said as a way of explaining. “Muchly need curios.”

“But why the card?” Shrubley couldn’t help himself. He had to know.

“How else would Slyrox return repaired and gifted item to friendly skelebro?” Slyrox said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

“Oh.” Shrubley understood now. That was just good manners. “I understand. What materials do we have on hand?”

Sose rooted around in the Countess’ clothing as if she was the one who had all those items. The Countess’ bland expression told Shrubley that she was not only used to it but did not see anything wrong with it.

The oppa continued to root around, moving from arm to arm with the speed only a ferret-like creature could manage within clothing, then into her jacket.

“Is the Countess… the oppa’s inventory space?” Cal whispered to Shrubley.

“Don’t be an idiot,” the Countess told him while Sose continued to search.

Before long, Sose was throwing things out from his various hidden stashes, thread, wax, everything Slyrox could ever possibly want, and more.

“Ohh, I forgot I had those!” Sose said as he tossed out a pair of ruby red silk socks. “Don’t take those!” he called, before throwing out more materials.

Slyrox didn’t think anything of it and as soon as Cal removed his cloak, she got to work on a spare area of the table.

Shrubley ambled over to watch her work because he was always vastly interested in the things other people could create. Creation, to Shrubley, was the highest form of self-expression that he could imagine.

Her mitts moved in an almost stop motion blur. Disappearing with a bit of wax only to reappear elsewhere with a bundle of thread. For a brief moment, Braver essence flared around Slyrox’s arms.

Items vanished from the tabletop as the cloak grew as if it was being weaved anew. A faint shimmer of magic rolled over the tattered and burned holes of the cloak’s edge until it was fully repaired.

It had clear patches, but the patches–a few were ruby red silk, earning a glare from Sose–were somehow woven into the whole of the piece so that they looked like a gleeman’s cloak. All fluttering patches that seemed there on purpose instead of hastily darned over and over again.

“Oh, thank you Slyrox,” Cal said. “This is much better than what I was able to do before. It used to be Primitive rarity, could you believe it?”

Slyrox put up a mittened hand to stop him from taking the cloak. She whipped out a fountain pen and began to write slowly and carefully on the card.

By far, this seemed to be the most difficult thing for the koblin, who took great care with each letter. While she had worked on the cloak, she seemed to be slapping it together without a single care.

Shrubley noticed that the suit she wore ever since arriving on Almora from another world seemed to be holding her back. Without any other koblins native to Almora, he figured it would be difficult to find an upgraded form of her attire.

Maybe that is why she picked [Tinker], so that she may carry on her kind’s traditions? Shrubley thought.

Finally, she finished and handed both the card and the folded-up cloak back to Cal. “Is done, many thankings.”

Cal bowed his bleached skull to her. “Thank you, Slyrox. This means a lot to me.” He threw it back across his shoulders and fastened the clasp over his collarbone. Somehow Slyrox had managed to turn the boring fastener into a silvery skull set with tiny emeralds for eyes.

Just like my eyes, Cal thought as emotion choked him up.

It took a moment of concentration for Cal to disappear completely. He gasped. “It makes me move faster when I’m hidden now! How did you do that?”

Slyrox shrugged. “Is good?”

“Very!”

“Then Slyrox’s job is done.” She handed one and a half socks back to Sose.

The oppa grumbled but took them back all the same. It was a clear sign that he wasn’t upset when he didn’t even remark on them.

Shrubley found a nice sunny spot, took some of his coins, and sat down to test out some theories on how they might improve his enchanting.

As has long since been established, Shrubley is a shrub. A soul shrub, to be exact. One of the smallest, weakest, and most insignificant types of monsters around. Barely sentient, let alone sapient, it is often not even killed because of the simple fact that soul shrubs offer no real threats.

They were one of the rare monster types that were viewed little differently than plants.

It was because Shrubley was a soul shrub at heart that his enchanting took on the slow and rather plodding pace that a plant would find comforting and familiar.

His enchanting pots were built for just that purpose. To allow him to slowly enchant and improve things without having to constantly tinker and work with them.

It felt natural.

There was one major flaw in Shrubley’s enchanting method, however. And that was that it took a considerable amount of time.

But what would happen if I sped up time?

That was the question Shrubley found himself asking again and again. Could he improve a weapon’s rarity much faster if he also used the currency of Clocktown? It certainly seemed possible.

The masons and laborers that had repaired the roads had clearly done it, though how the magic worked was still unknown to Shrubley. He tried to talk to Cal about it, but the skeleton couldn’t give him any exacts about how it worked.

He had triggered the magic entirely by accident and was screaming the whole time.

As much as Shrubley loved Cal, he was a bit of an unreliable witness at times.

The only way to know for sure, in Shrubley’s mind, was to do some testing himself.

While everybody else was busy preparing for the coming trip to their last Dungeon, Shrubley started on his enchanting.

At some point while he was tending his pots, Konko and Smudge returned and began creating their potions. The air smelled like cotton candy and beeswax, a strange but comforting aroma.

Nobody bothered Shrubley, and if they did, he was too engrossed in his tests to notice.

The first thing Shrubley did was take a few brass coins, the second hands as he had been told. These were small and light. He mixed a few into the dirt with his [Death’s Razor] and gently sprinkled some mana into the soil.

If Shrubley was expecting a slow and stable change, he was in for a wild surprise. Instead, the pot changed immediately. Both pot and plant took on an Orange haze. The soil went from dark and loamy to dry and sandy in no time flat.

“So it requires more mana then,” Shrubley confirmed. Which meant that the coins did precisely what he had hoped they would. They sped up time based on the currency and amount used.

That didn’t change the amount of mana needed, and in extreme cases, if he used too many coins at once, then the effect would be the same as leaving the pot unattended for long stretches of time.

Shrubley continued to try striking the perfect balance between speeding up the process and applying mana interchangeably.

It wasn’t easy, nor simple, but Shrubley soon got into the swing of things by using a small handful of minute coins, sprinkling mana, then repeating the process again and again until he was able to increase the rarity of his [Death’s Razor] from Uncommon to Unusual.

Just as Shrubley was taking out his sword, the last of the potions was completed. His [Death’s Razor] glittered maliciously in the midday light.

Shrubley didn’t like that, but he knew he would need longer to create a greater change than improving its rarity.

However, just being able to increase the rarity in such a short time was an incredible accomplishment that made him light up like somebody had draped Entmas decorations and lights across his leafy branches.